A light-hearted look back at what we were listening to when Home and Away began.
January 17th 1988
When you look back to a certain years in music you are often faced with singers that are still big today or were at least big enough for a long period of time to be remembered for more than two months. Certainly Kylie Minogue was never big in the size perspective, but she was top of the tops back then and is still around today. However, who the hell is Glenn Medeiros who topped the charts all summer in the UK or where are Cheap Trick now? And, quite frankly, how did anyone like Bros? Then again Dannii must have.
Number one in the UK on that day was Belinda Carlisle with "Heaven is a Place on Earth". Maybe she was singing about Summer Bay, this seemingly utopian seaside village that Tom and Pippa were taking their kids to. One things for sure, she definitely wasn't singing about Hull. Reaching Number One in the album charts that day in the UK was Kate Bush with her compilation album "The Whole Story". Obviously this wasn't the whole story as she has subsequently released more singles and albums. Still, I do own this album, albeit bought in 2005, so I should perhaps not bag it out too much.
The ARIA charts in Australia were still five months off, so the good people in Australia had to rely on the the Australian Music Report. I'm not going to bore you with details of this, just to say that Number One was Rick Astley with "Never Going to Give You Up". Again this is quite apt, because the reason Tom and Pippa moved to Summer Bay was that they didn't want to give up their children. Freaky! Well, perhaps not, regardless of the song title, I would have no doubt managed to twist the lyrics to fit the situation in Home and Away. Top of the Album charts was Jimmy Barnes. I've never heard of him, but it's been brought to my attention that he's quite big in Australia. Ah, well, I'll just continue to be ignorant and pretend he's a nobody because god forbid I actually go and do any research.
Whilst Rick Astley and Belinda Carlisle weren't never quite the one hit wonders people such as Charlene or Chesney Hawkes were, these were probably the pinnacle of their careers which shows the power of both reinvention and clingyness Home and Away has shown over the years. It could have been all too easy for this to be the celebration of the 20th anniversary of a show that had been sadly defunct for 12 years.