1979 in British music

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
←1969	1980→
Top 10 singles 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979
←1969	1980→

This is a summary of 1979 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year. 1979 saw the beginning of a few trends in British music. Electropop reached number one in both the singles and albums charts in the form of Gary Numan and Tubeway Army, and synthesiser bands began to gather momentum which would come to dominate music in the early 1980s. The first rap hit in the UK came from the Sugar Hill Gang. The 2 Tone movement also emerged with early work from bands like The Specials and Madness. Disco music was still the most popular music of the year, although showed signs of dying out in later months. 1979 remains the biggest-selling year ever for physical format singles sales in the UK.

1979 appears to be the only year since 1977 for which "full year" year-end charts do not exist. The British Market Research Bureau (BMRB), which compiled the official UK charts from 1969 to 1982, used a cut-off date for the collection of sales data sometime in early December each year, in order for the "end of year" chart to be published in the year's final issue of Music Week and to be broadcast on BBC Radio 1. However, from 1977 to 1982 BMRB produced updated charts a few months later which included the missing final weeks' sales for each year.

No updated chart appears to exist for 1979, so the tables below include only sales between 1 January and 8 December 1979. The two singles most affected by the lack of a full year chart are the records that were at number one and number two for the final three weeks of the year, "Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)" by Pink Floyd and "I Have a Dream" by ABBA: neither of these records appear in the end of year list for 1979.

Notes:

...
Wikipedia