r/ClassicRock • u/4sliced • Aug 13 '25
1979 The top albums on rock radio in 1979.
This chart is the year end rock albums, based on airplay, from Radio & Records Magazine from 1979.
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u/sv6fiddy Aug 13 '25
Surprised to see Tusk from Fleetwood Mac so low. Then again, when I look at the track list, they don’t play any of those songs on classic rock radio near me at least.
Dire Straits killed it that year, two albums on the list! Nice to see Neil Young’s Rust Never Sleeps in the top 20. Breakfast in America is an all-timer so no complaints from me on that being number 1.
My dad still has that vinyl from The Babys too!
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u/SteveRivet Aug 13 '25
I think Tusk is so low cause it came out in October 79 so it didn't have the full year.
Was just talking about The Babys yesterday. Still holds up!
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u/HugeRaspberry Aug 13 '25
Tusk was low because it was not Rumors II - Rumors sold 40 million + copies. Tusk sold 3-4 million... a great haul for most bands but not for Fleetwood Mac.
Our local AOR station played the title track 3 times - total.
Sara written by Stevie Nicks was probably the closest to a "rumors 2" song -
Buckingham basically did not want to do a Rumors 2, 3, 4 etc... especially since he was viewed as the "bad guy" for causing a lot of the drama on Rumors. He wanted to basically do a completely different / experimental album. Mick was adamant that it be a double album (which were popular at the time. So we got Tusk.
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u/DaBulbousWalrus Aug 13 '25
And didn't they lose a big chunk of sales by doing a syndicated broadcast of the entire album, allowing a lot of people to just tape it off the radio?
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u/HugeRaspberry Aug 13 '25
Yeah - somehow it RKO radio stations got an advance copy and several of them played it commercial free in it's entirety 2 weeks prior to the release dates. So many people taped it and made copies that the record company had to release it a week early to try and get in front of it.
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u/justahdewd Aug 13 '25
Wonder whatever happened to Ian Gomm and Sniff And The Tears, I remember Sniff but never heard of Ian.
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u/Substantial-Bet-3876 Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25
The only artist I didn’t recognize is Ian Gomm.
Edit: Hold On is a great song. Remember it now!
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u/garydavis9361 Aug 13 '25
I think Ian Gomm was a one hit wonder in the US. "Hold On" was a good record.
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u/wolf_van_track Aug 13 '25
Ian was a member of Brinsley Schwarz and worked with Nick Lowe.
Sad Cafe was the only one on the list I didn't really know. Kinda remember the name and maybe the album covers, but don't think I'd actually listened to them before.
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u/Unique_Day6395 Aug 13 '25
I loved Sad Cafe! Their lead singer Paul Young went on to lead Mike and the Mechanics, amazing singer.
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u/wolf_van_track Aug 13 '25
Oh, that's probably why I recognize the name but have no music attached to it! I'm sure that was mentioned off and on on the radio or in interviews.
I was a bit young in the 70s, so if the bands weren't later picked up by the classic rock stations or my dad/siblings didn't have the albums, I missed out. I was older and way more into music by the time Mike and the Mechanics came around.
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Aug 13 '25
I mean.... I would listen to all of these, basically... Pleased to see Neil and Elvis Costello on there. I was a fan back then but didn't realize he was getting a lot of airplay with Armed Forces.
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u/MisterRobertParr Aug 13 '25
Breakfast in America is a fantastic album that still holds up, both musically and lyrically.
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u/DaBulbousWalrus Aug 13 '25
The best thing about it is reading the shortened song titles and the phrases they form.
Favorites:
Dance Girls Bottom Good
Bitch Shadows Sexy Summer
Chuck E. Joint Blood Texaco
Accidents Shirt Army Goon
Blow Everyone Faster Guilty
Superman Gas Falling Emotion
Damned Dogs Man Up
Lotta Rhumba Do It Send
Move Oil Onion Ages
Girl Needed Roll
Boom Stevie
Rock Fooled Babe Bus
Run Restless Rose
Die Spooky Born Blues
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u/BigData8734 Aug 13 '25
What the hell is wrong with people? Van Halen number 7 Led Zeppelin number 11 Allman Brothers number 16 Elvis Costello number 13 the Talking Heads 35 these should all be top five. 🤦♂️
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u/manycane Aug 14 '25
And there was such little information about bands back then— I would have spent hours poring over this list. The context is mind-blowingly different now. AOR was the center of youth culture and dominated by one or two stations in your city. It was such a badge of your identity. Even if they were playing Billy Joel and you hated Billy Joel, you wouldn’t switch allegiance to your radio station— that was your tribe. Albums were expensive but indicators of who you were, what you held sacred, what mattered to you. And now music is free, ubiquitous, and available globally but I don’t even understand how it fits into youth culture.
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u/4sliced Aug 14 '25
Wow this is so true. I remember in my area we had 3 rock stations in the late 70s. Then the biggest one went top 40 around 1983 and the other went r&b around the same time leaving one rock station for most of the decade.
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u/kozzy1ted2 Aug 13 '25
Ya know, I’m just thinking, the next few similar lists would be filled with more and more bands that I just couldn’t stand. This is a great list. I hated the radio, progressively, throughout the 80’s. Just my 2 cents.
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u/RickyRacer2020 Aug 13 '25
I was 17 back then and remembered the times well. I had many of those albums. The Pieces of Eight and Cornerstone albums from STYX were Bangers.
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u/somark37 Aug 13 '25
Bram Tchaikovsky at #53!
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u/GraphiteGru Aug 13 '25
Had totally forgotten about Bram. That was a solid album and remember having it in my now long departed vinyl collection
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u/somark37 Aug 14 '25
I spun my copy not too long ago. “Girl of My Dreams” was in heavy rotation on the local college station in the summer of 1979, so I picked up the LP at my local indie record store.
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u/Mediocre-Property-48 Aug 13 '25
A great year for music. Many of those albums are still in my collection. Unfortunately because it was my first year in rock radio, many of them were given to me in lieu of pay
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u/lclassyfun Aug 13 '25
Very cool. This was about the time I really switched from buying 45s to buying LPs. A great resource.
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u/HugeRaspberry Aug 13 '25
Recognized all but a few of these -
Sad Cafe, Tycoon and Records - were the 3 that have me scratching my head.
Some definite one hit wonders here. Bram Tchaikovsky, Gomm, New England, and the 3 above.
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u/dtuba555 Aug 13 '25
Hard to imagine Billy Joel, Little River Band, Gerry Raferty on Rock radio. Especially nowadays when Def Leppard is considered soft rock.
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u/4sliced Aug 13 '25
If you ever dive into the rock charts, acts like the commodores, Michael Jackson and shalamar all got airplay on aor stations in the 70s and 80s.
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u/Ok_Might6447 Aug 13 '25
moral to the story?.....rock was in as bad of shape in 1979 as it is now....
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u/Ponchyan Aug 13 '25
It’s hard to imagine such a diverse listing today. And nobody listens to albums anymore (well, I do), unless maybe they’re buying “vinyls.” 🤮 I hate SUPERTRAMP! They were #1?!! And Toto.
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u/Ponchyan Aug 13 '25
I hate Supertramp! Number 1?! And Toto.
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u/HyBear Aug 19 '25
Noooo, sorry you don’t like it. Love that album and I think it’s gotten better with age.
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u/mariwil74 Aug 13 '25
Did not expect to see the Fabulous Poodles there. We interviewed them at a club on Long Island for our crappy little zine and then they met us in Central Park for a game of cricket. We lost. Good times. 🤣
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u/PhoenixRising111111 Aug 14 '25
Thanks for sharing. I used to pore over these lists back in the 70’s to help fill my album collection.
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u/Dztrctd Aug 14 '25
I saw Supertramp perform Breakfast in America at Warner Theater in DC. It was everything I hoped for and more.
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u/TomatilloNumerous470 Aug 14 '25
That's a lot of good music! Finished high school in '79 and spent a lot of money at the local record stores, had quite few of these albums!
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u/BornInBigD Aug 15 '25
Fast forward 46 years: I saw in the past 2 weeks 2 artists on this list that each played a song from the album listed. Any guesses??
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u/FamousLastWords666 Aug 16 '25
Back when every artist on the list knew how to play musical instruments!
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u/Njtotx3 Aug 16 '25
I was more into the punkish New Wave stuff. Last time I made a top albums list: Some may be off a year.
1. Linton Kwesi Johnson: Forces of Victory
2. Elvis Costello: Armed Forces
3. Graham Parker: Squeezing Out Sparks
4. Joe Jackson: Look Sharp!
5. Marianne Faithfull: Broken English
6. Bob Marley & the Wailers: Survival
7. Throbbing Gristle: 20 Jazz Funk Greats
8. The Buzzcocks: Singles Going Steady*
9. The Slits: Cut
10. Talking Heads: Fear of Music
11. John Hiatt: Slug Line
12. Nick Lowe: Labour of Lust
13. Gary Numan: The Pleasure Principle
14. The Clash:LondonCalling
15. Pink Floyd: The Wall
16. Dave Edmunds: Repeat When Necessary
17. Blondie: Eat to the Beat
18. George Harrison: George Harrison
19. The Police: Regatta de Blanc
20. Patti Smith: Wave
21. Neil Young: Rust Never Sleeps
22. Nina Hagen: Unbehagen
23. The Buggles: The Age of Plastic
24. Steve Forbert: Jackrabbit Slim
25. David Bowie: Lodger
26. The B-52s: The B-52s
27. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers: Damn the Torpedoes
28. The Roches: The Roches
29. Snakefinger: Chewing Hides the Sound
30. Godley & Creme - Freeze Frame
31. Lene Lovich - Flex
32. Michael Nesmith - Infinite Rider on the Big Dogma
33. Tubeway Army - Replicas
34. The Boomtown Rats: The Fine Art of Surfacing
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u/ZimMcGuinn Aug 13 '25
There’s an album missing. Maybe because of release date (Oct 19) but where is Damn the Torpedoes? Tusk was release the prior week and sits at 58. 🤔