CHART BEATS: A JOURNEY
THROUGH POP

1. Sign up as a site member or log in if you are an existing member

2. Choose a monthly or annual subscription here

Subscribe to
Chart Beats in
two quick steps

Apr 22, 20153 min read

This Week In 1990: April 22, 1990

By 1990, it was nothing new for a soap star to try their hand at being a pop star — and quite often the songs that would take them into...

Apr 21, 20153 min read

This Week In 1985: April 21, 1985

For most of the first half of the decade, Duran Duran had been one of the biggest bands in the world — and then in 1985, the five-piece...

Apr 15, 20154 min read

This Week In 1990: April 15, 1990

When you think of Detroit, one of the first things that comes to mind is Motown. Seattle is synonymous with grunge music. And this week...

Apr 14, 20154 min read

This Week In 1985: April 14, 1985

For musicians, the question of what to name their band is a crucial one to get right. After all, if you do have a hit record, the last...

Apr 8, 20154 min read

This Week In 1990: April 8, 1990

In the 1980s, I liked the odd bit of middle-of-the-road music as much as anyone. Phil Collins, Toto, Chicago (who we saw on my 1985...

Apr 7, 20156 min read

This Week In 1985: April 7, 1985

Even without the chartbusting debut of "We Are The World", it would've been a big week on the ARIA singles chart this week in 1985....

Apr 1, 20155 min read

This Week In 1990: April 1, 1990

Unlike today, when albums sales are perilously low, back in 1990, the album was all-important — and artists would often keep an album...

Mar 31, 20154 min read

This Week In 1985: March 31, 1985

Good use of backing vocalists can make all the difference in a pop song. Just ask Jason Donovan, whose voice was practically drowned out...

Mar 25, 20154 min read

This Week In 1990: March 25, 1990

When it came to using other musicians' works, it was still a bit of a free-for-all in 1990. Record companies and, more importantly, the...

Mar 24, 20153 min read

This Week In 1985: March 24, 1985

Most bands will forever be associated with one or two key songs — and unfortunately that means their other singles become sidelined as...

Mar 18, 20153 min read

This Week In 1990: March 18, 1990

Guess it would've been too much to expect another week like last week on the ARIA chart. After a flood of new entries into the top 50,...

Mar 17, 20154 min read

This Week In 1985: March 17, 1985

There are some songs that are so much a part of pop culture that it's hard to remember a time before they came into existence. The...

Mar 11, 20156 min read

This Week In 1990: March 11, 1990

After the terrible effort we saw last tme, the ARIA top 50 singles chart more than made up for it this week in 1990. With eight new...

Mar 10, 20154 min read

This Week In 1985: March 10, 1985

Lady Gaga excepted, they just don't make pop stars like they did in the '80s anymore. Flamboyant fashion sense, overblown egos,...

Mar 4, 20153 min read

This Week In 1990: March 4, 1990

I'm just going to get this out of the way at the start — this week in 1990 was a terrible one on the ARIA chart as far as I was...

Mar 3, 20154 min read

This Week In 1985: March 3, 1985

It's an important career move to get right — when should the singer of a successful band go solo? In the last few weeks, we've seen...

Feb 25, 20154 min read

This Week In 1990: February 25, 1990

For some musical acts, chart success is a breeze, while others have to slog away making slow progress towards their first top 40 hit....

Feb 24, 20153 min read

This Week In 1985: February 24, 1985

When we looked back at the ARIA singles chart from 1985 last week, it was all about the guys, with new entries exclusively from male...

Feb 18, 20156 min read

This Week In 1990: February 18, 1990

After last week's rock-fest, order was restored this week in 1990 on the ARIA singles chart with the new releases coming from a more...

Feb 17, 20154 min read

This Week In 1985: February 17, 1985

It was a bad week for female performers this week in 1985, with the new entries on the ARIA top 50 singles chart performed exclusively by...

A Journey Through Aussie Pop - green light.png

A Journey Through Aussie Pop is shining a light on classic Australian pop artists and releases from the 1980s, '90s and 2000s.

A Journey Through Stock Aitken Waterman is working its way through every single produced by Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman in chronological order.

Chart Beats subscribers have access to exclusive content, including extended interviews and extra discussion we can't fit in the regular episodes. Click here for more info.

Podcasts

About Chart Beats

Chart Beats: A Journey Through Pop has been looking back at music from the '80s, '90s, 2000s and 2010s since 2012. Run by freelance journalist and content creator Gavin Scott in Sydney, Australia.