Chartography - Talk Talk

Very sad news of Mark Hollis's passing. A very distinctive talent, both as a singer and a writer, who deservedly made himself a force to be reckoned with. Artistic evolution of his band Talk Talk is second to none in its scope and determination to eschew the commercial motivations. And yet along the way Mark and his colleagues managed to carve themselves a very nice niche in the market, having a widespread commercial success worldwide during early to mid 1980s. They even made their least commercial outings chart quite nicely, such was the power of their music. Always a bit of an underdog in their native UK, they somewhat surprisingly hit real hard in continental Europe and even managed to break the US market (albeit briefly). Their success story is only a little less fascinating than their creative one. I won't pretend I understand or like or rate that highly their experimental output - but their first two albums are stellar examples of "New Romantic"/synth-led sound of their era, I love them very much. So with this in mind and in memory of Mark Hollis, here's a compendium of their chart achievements:

Talk Talk

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Nb. Discography

Chartography - The Human League

Next let's look at the chart activities of the band most close to the Kraftwerk synthesizer format, even a bit wilder at it at times: The Human League. Probably the biggest band of the early 1980s synth explosion, they, along with Ultravox (whom we'll get to in time, for sure), pioneered the British synth-pop and became one of the biggest influences on the electronic pop movement. For years dismissed as a "pop band with synths" (there was a time when this was seen as something wrong, for some reason), in 2000s they finally got their recognition as one of the most important bands of their era - 20 years too late, some might say, but at least it happened.

Surprisingly, for the band of their stature, their consistently successful years are limited to 1981-1986, with later ones providing increasingly diminishing returns. Truly a story of the band that record companies hardly knew what to do with. Still, they did remarkably great for some time, with 12 pages of the Word file to show for it!

I also decided to include solo efforts by The HL vocalist Philip Oakey - just for the hell of it😊

The Human League

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Nb. Discography

Chartography - Kraftwerk

So, before long, let's start. And what better place to start than at the beginning - with fathers of all things electronic pop and dance: Kraftwerk! Fantastic band, whose pioneering status and place in the canon of pop music among the greats are undisputed. Frankly, it's a small wonder they managed to succeed in probably the most unwelcoming music climate - but they did, and did it in grand style, blowing minds and tearing down the rule books, making it all possible for those who followed. Chart-wise, they are very uneven - apart from Autobahn, their biggest hits differ from country to country and there's no clear pattern to their success, hitting big with one album in some areas while at the same time completely missing out in others. Still, it makes charting their success interesting! So here we are:

Kraftwerk

(Download and open in Microsoft Word for the best viewing experience😊)

Nb. Discography