1970s in music in the UK | |
Number-one singles | |
Number-one albums | |
Best-selling singles | |
Best-selling albums | |
Summaries and charts 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 |
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←1969 | 1980→ |
Top 10 singles 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979 |
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←1969 | 1980→ |
This is a summary of 1977 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.
1977 is the first year for which "full year" UK year-end charts exist – in order to be published in the year's final issue of Music Week and to be broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on New Year's Eve, the collection of sales data had a cut-off point sometime in early December each year. This continued to be the case until 1983, when Gallup took over the compilation of the charts from the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) and automated the data collection process, which meant that sales could be tabulated right up until the end of the year and still produced in time for the Radio 1 broadcast. However, from 1977 to 1982 (with the exception of 1979), BMRB produced updated charts a few months later which included the missing final weeks' sales for each year.
The tables below include sales between 1 January and 30 December 1977: the year-end charts reproduced in the issue of Music Week dated 24 December 1977 and played on Radio 1 on 1 January 1978 only include sales figures up until 10 December 1977.
Despite spending four weeks at number one, Rod Stewart's "I Don't Want to Talk About It"/"The First Cut Is the Deepest" was only placed at number 33 on the year-end chart for 1977, the lowest ranked number one single of the year, and lower than another of Stewart's singles, "You're in My Heart", which only reached number three. Some chart-watchers claim to have evidence that an incorrect panel sale figure was applied to sales during the period that "I Don't Want to Talk About It"/"The First Cut Is the Deepest" was out, resulting in a lower estimation of the single's total sales, and that the single should actually be placed inside the top fifteen year-end positions. However, this claim has never been verified by BMRB or any of the subsequent chart compilers.
The list of the top fifty best-selling albums of 1977 were published in the third edition of the BPI Year Book in 1978. However, in 2007 the Official Charts Company published album chart histories for each year from 1956 to 1977, researched by historian Sharon Mawer, and included an updated list of the top ten best-selling albums for each year based on the new research. The updated top ten for 1977 is shown in the table below.