I've been writing some autobiographical stuff about the final few months of 1977 recently. I knew even then that it was the first time in my life that I'd been genuinely happy, and just like some nineteenth century poet's sense of pathetic phallacy, the charts - and music beyond the charts - seemed to reflect and amplify this inner happiness. September to November 1977 had some ace charts, and so it's with great regret (and a profound sense of bathos) that I have to inform you that December 77's charts are not reflective of my new-found sense of beauty and a warm inner ambience, and both suck and blow with an almost hurricane-like ferocity.

Crystal Gale - Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?
I can't be the only person who sings the vulgar version of this terrible song, Shirley? 2/10

Elvis Presley - My Way
I sang Sid's version throughout. Sometimes, when t'King sings crap like this, Peter and the Test Tube Babies' classic 'Elvis song' also comes to mind. 2/10

Elvis Costello - Watching the Detectives
Allowing the wretched Gambaccini to make the sort of shitey connection between the two performers' names that even a DJ at Filey FM would reject just made this single even more depressing. I didn't think it was ever going to end. 1/10

Bonnie Tyler - It's an Arseache
The woman who did our roof was very pretty; in fact she was a really bonny t_
1/10

Donna Summer - Love's Unkind
Donna could sing the telephone book (my, that's a zeitgeist-threatening allusion) but it would get boring after the second entry. Not her finest moment, but (just about) OK. 4/10

Bing Crosby - White Christmas
When he wasn't battering his kids (or psychologically destroying their young minds), or leaving his cancer-stricken wife for the pneumatic charms of the much too young Kathryn Grant, Harry Lillis Crosby was eternally raiding the seasonal charts with this really maudlin, morbid, f***ing horrible song. It's saving grace is that it's not 'White Christmas' the film, and I don't have to look at Danny Kaye for two hours of rampant misery. 0/10

Status Quo - Rocking All Over the World
Oh, just f*** off. 0/10

Queen - We Are the Champions
A surprisingly morose version of Ron Pickering's pre-teen gameshow. 0/10

The Dooleys - Love of My Life
I've never been grabbed by The Dooleys before (apart from at Swansea City's Vetch Field in 1982), but the economical lyric simplicity (and odd caesura) of the opening lines:
"Darling when - you touch my hands -
Who needs words to understand?"

Is rather fetching. But it's worrying that The Dooleys is the only record I haven't disliked this week.
I feel another 'band' tattoo is in order. 6/10

Boney M - Belfast
Odd then. Odd now. Gambaccini (of all people) made two references to BM's seemingly 'weird' pronunciation of the title.
What a wanker. 4/10

Darts - Daddy Cool
Oh my God, NO. 0/10

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers- Egyptian Reggae
It was quite nice to have two 'New Wave' artists in the chart, but this - like Elvis Costello's record - is interminable and awful. 1/10

The Bee Gees - How Deep is Your Love
The Gibbs have been record of the week this year ('Night Fever'), but this is soporific, emetic and some other words ending in 'C'. At least it's not Tory tax dodger Barlow and his gang. 3/10

Ruby Winters - I Will
Rather nice. 6/10

The Brighouse and Rastrick Colliery Band - The Floral Dance
We went to see Brighouse FC v some former colliery team a couple of years ago. Blimey, that was a rough match - both on and off the pitch. A f***ing dreadful record - it's only SG being that it's not the Wogan effort - a man whose charm and 'body of work' seem hard to recall in the cold light of actual remembrance. 0/10

Wings - Mull of Kintyre
The biggest selling single of the decade. For someone who at one stage seemed to be divining something directly from God, Paul McCartney made some appalling drivel. 0/10

Gambaccini: 0/10
Programme as a Whole: 1/10
Worst Record: Floral Dance
Best: nobody, so I'm linking my favourite song of 2021, Mannequin Pussy's tremendous 'Control'.

Click on the link to hear the song