Record Mirror Disco Charts

By late 1985, Luke Una had started to immerse himself in dance music and club culture – initially in his native Sheffield, just ahead of a move to Manchester – and so many of the tunes in this chart served to lay the foundations for his pioneering and influential DJ career.

At the end of a year largely dominated by glossy, polished, but still fairly orthodox soul/funk productions (some of which appear here), new shoots ...

As the son of a New Jersey DJ, Kerri Chandler started mixing records in public in his early teens, and so many of the tunes in this chart – published when he was 14 years old – are part of the soundtrack of his formative years. Then again, as we discover, there was often a disparity between the UK and the USA in terms of which tunes became successful: a high-charting track on the Record Mirror chart was sometimes only a...

A year before his first single "Theme From S-Express" topped the UK charts, Mark Moore was DJ-ing at Philip Sallon's Mud Club, and at Pyramid (formerly Asylum), Heaven's midweek alternative gay night. He joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson to take a look at a Record Mirror Disco Top 20 from May 1987: a time where London was still "rap city", while the rest of the country was becoming a "house nation". You can see both factions in t...

Before co-founding Defected Records in 1999 and Glitterbox in 2014, Simon Dunmore was working behind the counter at Rayners Lane’s Record & Disco Centre in 1989, where James Hamilton was one of his regular weekly customers. In this Club Chart Top 20 from March 1989, you'll hear about some of the tunes that opened Simon's ears to soulful garage house, which was in the ascendancy in the aftermath of 1988's acid house explos...

Colin Curtis joins Greg WIlson and Mike Atkinson for a countdown of the first Disco Top 20 of 1983: a time when electro-funk was in the ascendant, and even long-established soul/funk acts were incorporating electronic elements. Scratching was this month's new thing; jazz-funk was on the wane, club hits weren't always guaranteed pop crossover hits, a superstar's follow-up was briefly struggling, and a couple of formative underground...

Graeme Park joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a look at the dance music of October 1986: a time when Graeme was the resident weekend DJ at The Garage in Nottingham, blending Chicago house with hip hop, soul/funk and Washington DC go go. Listed in James Hamilton's columns as the first British DJ to routinely feature house music in his sets, Graeme provides us with expert guidance through this eclectic era, with stories to tell...

Having spent all of summer 1987 in Ibiza, dancing to Alfredo at Amnesia and experiencing an epiphany, Lisa Loud returned to London with a new-found determination to break into the music industry. By the time of this chart, she was DJ-ing at major venues and working in promotions for Virgin Records, where she was responsible for breaking acts such as Neneh Cherry, Massive Attack, Soul II Soul, and the act at Number One on this parti...

Bill Brewster – DJ, writer, music consultant and dance music historian – joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a look at the Record Mirror Disco Chart of 26th May 1979.

To accompany this episode, you can listen to this entire Top 20 in full, or alternatively as a shorter medley of snippets.

Further listening:

* Other tracks mentioned in this episode (Spotify)

* James Hamilton at Gullivers, 18 August 1979

Further reading:

...

John Morales - remixer, producer, DJ, and best known in the 1980s for his M&M mixes with the late Sergio Munzibai - joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a look at the Record Mirror Disco Chart of 12th April 1980.

To accompany this episode, you can listen to this entire Top 20 in full, or alternatively as a shorter medley of snippets.

Further listening: other tracks mentioned in this episode.

Further reading:James...

Peter Hook (Joy Division, New Order, The Light) joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a countdown of a Record Mirror Disco Top 20 from the fabled long hot summer of 1976. As the country sweltered, Peter was finding his true path, having witnessed the Sex Pistols at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall a month earlier. Meanwhile, this chart mixes pop and rock crossover hits with disco classics, funk tracks, three slowies and ...

For our second visit to 1982, Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson are joined by Arthur Baker: producer, remixer, songwriter, DJ, and one of the prime architects of electro-funk (Planet Rock, Walking On Sunshine, Play At Your Own Risk, Confusion, IOU etc). In this Top 20 countdown, we can see these electronic elements starting to emerge, with some well-established funk acts already embracing the changes. Elsewhere, jazz-funk and Britfunk ...

DJ Paulette joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a detailed look at the last of James Hamilton's short-lived Futurist/Electro-Disco charts, from April 1981. Not only an award-winning DJ, but also a writer and broadcaster, Paulette's earliest clubbing roots lie within the Futurist/New Romantic scene, in which she was an active and enthusiastic participant. This gives her a unique personal insight into an era when electronics, fa...

Irvine Welsh joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson to take a look at a Disco Chart from September 1978: a time when, in the wake of Saturday Night Fever's enormous success, certain UK DJs were starting to plot a different way forwards, with jazz-funk in particular emerging as a significant new force. As we discover, many of these US tunes, although huge on British dancefloors, did not enjoy the same success in their home country.

Divi...

To mark the 50th anniversary of James Hamilton's first Disco Page in Record Mirror, Alexis Petridis (head rock & pop critic for The Guardian) joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a countdown of the first ever Disco Chart that James compiled, based on DJ returns from around the UK.

To accompany this episode, you can listen to this entire Top 20 in full, or alternatively as a shorter medley of snippets.

Further listeni...

Leee John joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a Disco Chart Top 20 countdown from July 1981. Already a committed clubber and an active member of the Britfunk community, Leee had just started to find success with his band Imagination, who had been signed to Morgan Khan’s R&B label, and so he has vivid memories of this particular period: a transitional time, when the disco era had ended, the electronic era had yet to em...

Morgan Khan joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson for a countdown of the biggest dance tracks of December 1979. As the disco backlash was taking hold in the USA, British dancefloors were experiencing a shift in styles, as dance music started to prepare itself tor the 1980s. Already a key figure in the UK music industry, well ahead of his success with the Street Sounds compilations that cemented his reputation, Morgan provides us with...

Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson are joined by Jeff Young: "funk mafia" DJ, presenter of BBC Radio One's first ever specialist dance music show, remixer, studio owner and music industry professional.

To accompany this episode, you can listen to this entire Top 20 in full, or alternatively as a shorter medley of snippets.

Further listening: other tracks mentioned in this episode.

Further reading: James Hamilton's Disco Pages 1975-1982.

Mik...

Dave Lee joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson, for a look at the biggest UK dance tunes of September 1980.

To accompany this episode, you can listen to this entire Top 20 in full, or alternatively as a shorter medley of snippets.

Further listening: other tracks mentioned in this episode.

Further reading: James Hamilton's Disco Pages 1975-1982.

Mike also hosts the podcast Which Decade Is Tops For Pops?

Norman Cook joins Greg Wilson and Mike Atkinson, as we take a detailed look at what was happening on UK dancefloors in August 1982: a time of significant change, as the dominant post-disco sounds (retrospectively known as "boogie") were starting to make way for groundbreaking - and divisive - electronic innovations. With underground import tracks rubbing shoulders with crossover pop hits, this particular Record Mirror Disco Top 20 ...