#FirstLastEverything meets "Disco's greatest band", according to the #Chic website. Nile Rodgers played guitar, Bernard Edwards on bass, Tony Thompson drummed, singers included Luther Vandross, Jocelyn Brown, Norma Jean Wright, and many more.
Soul and funk incarnate, Chic moved with the times, stayed ahead of fashion, chortled at homages from Queen and Steps. Here's a performance from Top Pop in spring 1978. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbwFZMi8YhE
#TakeThat were assembled by Nigel Martin-Smith. Five likely lads from the Manchester area, hyped to high heaven, and eventually found a suitable audience - both gay men and tweenage girls wanted to be with the band.
Barry Manilow wrote the song, Donna Summer covered it in the late 1970s, and Take That made a version of Donna's song. Their stomper of a single for Christmas 1992. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVBIfSt0lAo
This 2001 single's about the various ways things orbit a planet. Communication. Pollution. Radioactivity and traffic and debris and everything.
#SuperFurryAnimals were the heavier, less fashionable rock band from Wales. This album sees them at their most solid - they're not polished, are properly on top of their game.
A 1972 single from Lynsey, it's about a girl who gets annoyed when her bloke starts wearing her clothes. Not because she's some sort of dragphobe, but because he looks better than she does.
We don't have Lynsey's performance on TOTP, with Marc Bolan grinning from the sidelines. We do have this from ARD's show.
The fourth single from their arena rock album "Once Upon a Time" was released in aid of #AmnestyInternational. Jim Kerr and #SimpleMinds had always had a social conscience, here it is on display for a controversial political cause.
T-Bone Burnett's wife turned her back on Christian music, to channel her secular singer-songwriter talent. It's a single from "The Indescribable Wow", which reminds me of late-era Beatles psychedelia, or the work of Bourgeois Tagg.
Rosa Linn's new single is fresh off the press. It's only released today.
"Hallelujah" works on a lot of levels, just like similar titles by Leonard Cohen and George Handel. Religious iconography? Not out of place.
It's got a scrapbook video, which recaps everything in the life of last year's #AMPTV entrant to #Eurovision. #RosaLinn has embraced that start, and extended it far beyond anyone's wildest dreams.
...and, yes, I am aware how this breaks my self-imposed #FirstLastEverything "title and performer both start and end with the same letter" rule. One of my later picks has fallen through because the song isn't online anywhere, and this is too good to miss.
#FirstLastEverything goes to the flicks, with the title track to 2000's "Charlie's Angels" film.
The film's stars Drew, Cameron, and Lucy all get namechecks, and the video is an homage to the film.
Was this the point when #DestinysChild moved from R&B to the mainstream? Possibly, because "Survivor" is next, and then the group shatters into its constituent parts.
Revenge is a dish best served cold. On this 2011 single, Jessie J delivers a message to the peers who doubted her ambition, thought she'd amount to nothing, or generally doubted.
Very much a single (and video) from 2011, really don't think she would release anything this aggressive in the present day.
Ian Astbury and Billy Duffy were the core of The Cult, a very hard rock band from the late 80s. This song's about someone Astbury once knew, and we mean that in the biblical sense.
This single came from the 1987 album "Electric". Rick Rubin produced, and crushed much of the musical genius out of the mix. Energetic, fun, but they've done better and they'll do better.
After almost two decades on the fringes of success, metal-prog band Magnum had broken through in 1988 with hits "Start talkin' love" and "Days of no trust".
Their next album was an effort to break the States, but "Goodnight LA" broke the fans, who called it too commercial; it ended up costing them their record deal.
Magnum have split, reunited, changed lineups, and still perform.
Rock week continues with one of the best bands I've ever seen.
Ned's Atomic Dustbin rocketed to fame on the back of Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wonderstuff, the closest we got to a Stourbridge Scene.
Their brand of funk-punk may not have sold huge quantities, but their Christmas shows at the #Wolverhampton Civic became legendary parties, crowds of merry festive debauchery.
Rock week concludes with a song from 2018. By now, the Stone Temple Pilots have a new singer - Jeff Gutt from Yankee X Factor - and less of the internal tension from Scott Weiland's era.
This is a bluesy song, the sound of a band getting to be at ease with itself.
From 2019's "Living Mirage" album, a song to celebrate diversity and find a common core to humanity. The whole album is about personal growth, and was written when one of the band had his struggles with addictions.
1979 marked a change of direction for the Mael Brothers, working with hip-and-happening producer Giorgio Moroder.
It's a musing on disco culture. And hedonism, and mortality, and drugs, and commercialism.
Released at the moment disco music jumped the shark: after summer '79, fashion changes and Sparks moved to be a heritage act. #FirstLastEverything#Sparks
From 2015, the breakthrough track for the singer / songwriter / hunk. Nothing difficult, nothing flash, it's simple and catchy pop with more handclap than vocal dexterity. The performance comes from BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge.
It started as "Mbube", translated as "Wimoweh", hit big for The Tokens.
"The lion sleeps tonight" was a number one hit for Tight Fit - model Steve Grant with singers Denise Gyngell and Julie Harris.
They looked great on #TOTP, with literal choreography. And they could sing! But management didn't pay wages, and the group split within months They've reunited for the nostalgia circuit.