1975 was a vintage year in British chart terms -- literally. Oldies mania swept the land as Hollywood veterans
Laurel & Hardy, country icon
Tammy Wynette, hairless detective
Telly Savalas, and the 1940s standard "Whispering Grass" all assaulted the upper echelons of the listings and, in all but the first-named instance, made it to the top. Add to that a reissue of
David Bowie's six-year-old "Space Oddity,"
Art Garfunkel's reappraisal of "I Only Have Eyes for You," and
Mud's a cappella revision of
Buddy Holly's "Oh Boy" and it was hard to believe that just two years earlier the country had been in the thrall of its most creative pop era since the heyday of
the Beatles. Concentrating as it does on the best of the year's chart-toppers,
Top of the Pops: Best of 1975 captures 14 of the year's 20 number ones, drawn in turn from the seven (volumes 43-49) editions of the
Top of the Pops albums released during that span. It's a fabulously mixed bag with the only coherent thread being, again, that accursed obsession with the past -- indeed, the team's version of
the Bay City Rollers' cover of "Bye Bye Baby" sounds as much like
the Four Seasons as it does the tartan terrors. Similarly,
Rod Stewart's "Sailing" is fronted by a vocalist who sounds closer to writer Gavin Sutherland than the erstwhile mod ever could. "Space Oddity" is thrillingly spot-on, though, and actually conveys a touch more tension than
Bowie's own, while vocalists George Chandler and Jimmy Chambers' reiterations of
the Stylistics' "I Can't Give You Anything" and
the Tymes' "Ms. Grace" pack an aggression that the originals certainly lacked. But the cream of the crop has to be
10cc's "I'm Not in Love," which isn't simply the equal of the original -- it also makes one wonder why it took
10cc themselves so long to perfect the tune. Famously, the group used over 240 overdubs on the breathy vocal wash that guides the melody and spent weeks tweaking them into shape. The
Top of the Pops version was recorded in an evening and sounds just as lush. ~ Dave Thompson