Top Of The Pops 71-80

To be in tip top shape – pop one into your collection!

Volume 75 marked the platinum anniversary of the Top Of The Pops series, although apart from the back cover blurb it was business as usual. Amazingly, they had sold in excess of twenty million albums since Volume 1 worldwide. Hallmark had begun a new catalogue sequence for Top Of The Pops albums with Volume 65 – the 3000 series – which was for a time reserved just for these albums. This continuity didn’t last long and some numbers were allocated to other albums between Vol 71 and 80.
The cover images retained their professionalism during 1979  (with the same model on Vols 74 and 78). Lycra and, even worse spandex (shudder), became more popular, and we even had a body-stocking on Vol 72. The best baco-foil outfit to date appeared on Vol 75 too (easily the most Top Of The Popsy sleeve of this batch – and perhaps the silver was in fact platinum to mark the anniversary), right down to the shiny silver ‘boots’. It is probably the exact same outfit which had been used by a different model on Vol 67, though here the collar has been folded under to emphasise the cleavage.
Christmas was heralded by kitting out the model in a red bikini and adding a tinsel ‘scarf’, cheap but effective, and there was even a leopard print outfit on Vol 73, again a look very much in vogue (albeit not in Vogue) at the time .
The glamour shoots were very typical of the era really, the high-cut / low-cut one-piece swim-suit from Vol 79 particularly so, very Page 3, albeit still (just) covered up on this frame. The ’16 Fabulous tracks’ logo was missing on this and the following volume (maybe just a designers oversight, it reappeared), though the track count remained.

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