Three further weeks at number one from 12th December 1987
The way "Birthday" sold in late 1987 was downright peculiar, even by cult indie standards. In a similar fashion to This Mortal Coil's "Song To The Siren" - with whom it possibly shared a few fans - it kept selling modestly week in week out, selling a thousand copies here and there. While other indie records were swift fanbase sellers in their debut week then ebbed away, "Birthday" kept on reaching new listeners who were intrigued by its sound.
Such records always tend to bubble back up to the top of the NME Indie Charts during quiet weeks, and the Christmas 1987 period served Bjork and company well, allowing them to take the prize away from The Smiths during the entire festive season.
Here's what was going on lower down the charts.
Week One
6. Barmy Army - Sharp as a Needle (On-U Sound)
Peak position: 3
More On-U Sound shenanigans, this time of the football kind - an entire track built around Liverpool FC football songs and chants, with "Abide To Me" sounding as if its being kicked right back to its hymnal roots in this context.
While this one has been known to make drunken men cry on the dancefloor, as a non-football fan I just think it's an interesting and occasionally strangely touching idea - moments of terrace unity set to a steady, pulsing beat. Unsurprisingly, John Peel played it a lot.
Peak position: 7
The debut for The Sea Urchins, a band who picked up Primal Scream's fey sixties-inspired jangle and arguably upped the ante considerably. It's also the debut single for Sarah Records, a label who would suffer a number of inaccurate critical brickbats over the years but develop a fiercely devoted tribe of collectors.
"Pristine Christine" is so straightforwardly agile and pretty that it's hard to imagine why it hadn't been written and released in 1966; whereas some of the records Sarah put out sounded messy and under-produced, this one strikes the balance just right between appropriate, luddite rawness and lovelorn melodies. A pearl.
Peak position: 16
One minute and eighteen seconds of romantic tiffery on 45, which rushes past all of its ideas so quickly, and in such a thistly soup of lo-fi sound, that it feels as if you might have missed a key point or development - not unlike real-life romance in that sense, then.
Peak position: 17
Despite being lovers of sixties garage rock and releasing material which occasionally veered close to pastiche, the Groove Farm found themselves strangely loved by the indiepop kids too, perhaps due to their arrangement with the otherwise somewhat twee and snappy Subway Records. "Surfin' Into Your Heart" gives you a good idea of what they were about - quickly recorded, super-speedy pop tunes which may have sounded distorted and rough, but contained an optimism and euphoria few of their contemporaries could match. This 45 in particular sounds like a celebratory jig when so much of the indie chart was filled with either angst or contemplation.
Peak position: 20
23. The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - Down Town (KLF Communications)
Peak position: 2
The Christian element continued with their collaborators. Recorded with the London Gospel Community Choir, this is one of their more polished and well-realised early works, combining sour, cynical and heavily accented Glaswegian rapping with a joyous, happy-clappy chorus. "Glory!" sing the choir. "What glory?" answers Bill Drummond (aka King Boy D) "In a wine bar world? In a tenement block?" Conquering the charts with a Christmas tune was clearly not on his agenda at this point, as despite the overwhelming pop and fizz of the chorus here, the tune is torn in two directions. The Community Choir are pulling towards the holiness, the preciousness and the generosity of the season, whilst Drummond points out the harsher mid-winter realities, only for a sampled and stammering Petula to chip in at irregular intervals. "Neon signs are pretty" she sings, sounding pathetic and weak in this context, before another hard-edged, shouted, Special Brew-sozzled verse barges her out of the way.
Early KLF records were often clumsy and awkward, and whilst "1987 What The Fuck Is Going On" was a groundbreaking and copyright busting album, it seldom had grace on its side, being filled with often clumsily placed distorted samples. By the time "Downtown" emerged, they sounded as if they'd finally got the hang of their direction and could no longer be criticised as being a novelty act - this (along with most of the forthcoming album "Who Killed The Jams?") is pop music with a bitter underbelly, the sound of a band absorbing the sounds and culture around them and criticising and distorting it. By the end, even the choir are singing "Jesus, what can we do?"
This is probably the finest early KLF single, and whilst you can't quite hear the future they'd have as mega-selling Stadium House releasing millionaires, it's a step closer towards that. It's certainly a pivotal indie release, and it deserves to be heard a lot more often.
Peak position: 16
Sidebottom's typically ludicrous cover of The Kinks "Waterloo Sunset" sees him describing his suburb of Manchester with an affection which almost sounds genuine rather than joking; if Davies always sounded a bit sinister as he delicately trilled "I don't need no friends", Frank is only too keen to paint a keen, childlike picture of his community.
It also feels as if marginally more budget and effort has gone into this than his earliest EMI releases, not that it really resulted in many sales outside his core fanbase.
25. Society - Love It (Big Life)
Peak position: 14
Way before Bobby Gillespie chanced a hit with an Andrew Weatherall remix, the indie chart was treated to the spectacle of goths Danse Society collaborating with Coldcut on this record. It's not a complete success, with far too many spiky guitar riffs and distorted vocals in the mix, but is nonetheless one of the earliest examples of a crossover record - probably far too soon for either their fanbase or the House kids to fully throw their support behind it, though it seems to have picked up some more recent acclaim from the retro kids.
Weeks Two and Three (only one chart published)
Peak position: 2
The final offering from The Smiths, "Last Night" slipped out around Christmas with barely any promotion or music video, feeling strangely like an afterthought rather than a swansong. As such, it suffered and was one of their least successful singles in years, reaching number 30 in the national charts and failing to top the indie charts, the first occurrence of this since "That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore" reached number three in 1985.
Of course, if you're going to pick a song to roll the end credits to The Smiths career to, this isn't actually a bad choice; its lonely, looping melody resembles "How Soon Is Now?" without repeating the idea, Morrissey and Marr instead treating us to a music box lullaby of unresolved business, a ballad of ongoing loneliness. As The Smiths sounded when they entered, so they seemed as they left; isolated, slightly strange and unquestionably backwards looking. Instrumentally speaking, this record sounds like the end theme to a heart-wrenching black and white movie, where perhaps a priest or a soldier who is sent to the front is doomed to never experience romance, to always march to this funeral rhythm for eternity.
As for Morrissey, he left the indie sector for EMI and, contrary to popular view, did occasionally produce the odd groover on the way; no Acid House for him, though, as he usually ended up having more in common with Shakin' Stevens when he wanted to cut some rug, rather than S'Express. He continued to find comfort in looking backwards.
Peak position: 16
29. Alien Sex Fiend - Stuff The Turkey (Plague)
Peak position: 20
A gothic Xmas single? Why not, I suppose, and certainly why not from Alien Sex Fiend, who were always rare examples of party-movers rather than the party-poopers of the Goth sect. Impersonations of Bernard Matthews mix with screaming, off-the-peg festive observations and occasional stabbing discords. The group operated within their own particular mutant zone, selling their records to the same five thousand fans, never really taking this business very seriously and somewhat getting away with it.
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Number One In The Official Charts
T'Pau - "China In Your Hand" (Siren)
Pet Shop Boys - "Always On My Mind" (Parlophone)