Top of the Pops, one of the longest-running shows on British television, had been in a shaky position since its first Uranus Opposition hit last spring (2005). When the last of the exact transits of Uranus opposite Uranus expired early this year in 2006 the pop music programme was shunted off to BBC2 after 42 years on mainstream BBC1. Less than six months later it was all finished. Saturn finally trampling across its Leo ascendant and rising Moon in July put it out of its misery altogether. (Last broadcast: 7pm Sunday 30 July 2006)
"It’s Number One - It’s TOP OF THE POPS"
Top of the Pops started life on New Years’ Day 1964 in a Britain at the height of Beatlemania. It was a format that could hardly fail in any era: The top 20 or 30 best-selling records of the week were reeled off and a selection of them performed in person by the relevant artists. A host deejay or two made quick introductions but were not the stars of the show. The Number One record was always played at the end. And in essence the 30-minute programme barely changed in its forty-odd year run.
The Top of the Pops chart is an interesting one with a Leo Moon rising and an Aries midheaven. (It’s Number One - It’s Top of the Pops). The inclusion of the Capricorn Sun gives a repeat of the prominent signs (Carter’s ‘boss’ signs) found on the chart of that other legendary music programme Ready Steady Go! In fact Top of the Pops began just a few months after Ready Steady Go! on the opposite channel and the two ran in a kind of weekly harness over the next couple of years.
The Capricorn Climber
It was perhaps the durable weight of Capricorn; the sign that traditionally gets stronger with age, that kept Top of the Pops on the rails for so long. With Sun, Mars and Mercury in Capricorn plus a Fixed Moon and ascendant, it succeeded in sticking successfully to its formula through decades of changing tastes and fashions. The difference in having Capricorn as the Sun rather than the ascendant, as did Ready Steady Go! , is apparent when we examine the features of these two charts. The Sun is the heart of an enterprise, the fuel it runs on, and Ready Steady Go! ran on leonine fuel, full of celebrity pride and glory. If it couldn’t be the best it wouldn’t exist at all and in the end it preferred to die before it got old. (Last ever Ready Steady Go! 6.08pm Friday 23 December 1966). But Top of the Pops ran on slow-burning Capricorn fuel and was better primed for the long haul. Capricorn is also an upholder of tradition and established views, and the whole idea of a “Top Twenty” had by this time become an accepted if not enshrined piece of public pop legislature. Conversely it was this Capricorn stance that sometimes presented its own problems, for when pop songs banned by the BBC for their unacceptable content duly shot into the Top Ten, as they inevitably did, Top of the Pops was forbidden to play them and would be left with an embarrassing hole in the programme. Even announcing their title without playing anything was not always enough, as some records were banned for their titles. (An awkward situation when the announcer was counting down the top sellers). In later decades such problems rarely arose, as the record companies also produced special cleaned-up ‘radio versions’ of dodgy songs. But when marketing was a less serious affair Top of the Pops suffered accordingly.
Also, in pre-video days, many artists were unavailable to perform or mime to their records in person every time, leaving the programme with another gap. But this little hitch was circumvented more comfortably. The female dance troupe Pan’s People were employed to perform last-minute interpretations of the missing artist’s record. Rather than an irritation to the viewer this proved one of the most popular features of the show with an appeal to all ages and both sexes. This feminine balance, to a largely male-dominated programme, was made welcome by a chart with an angular Moon opposite Venus.
Dancing decorum
Dancing in and by the studio audience was a feature of both Ready Steady Go! and Top of the Pops, but it was the latter that seemed to display a safer, more conventional kind of crowd. (Capricorn). Like 6.5.Special before it, there was more of an atmosphere to the viewer of having dropped in at a respectable local Youth Club rather than the epicentre of Swinging London. (Which was to some extent true, as Top of the Pops was not originally broadcast from London). Just as in 6.5.Special, the top pin-up artists of the day, who might otherwise have expected to be mobbed by screaming banshees, enjoyed the novelty of a civilised environment and a slightly indifferent teenage audience to perform to.
It is largely due to Top of the Pops’ longevity that although most of its very early material was wiped from the tapes soon after transmission, much did remain available as an amusing archive of the fashions of yesteryear and a valuable visual resource for pop music from the late sixties onwards. Applying as much to American artists as British ones, Top of the Pops could turn up priceless footage of many a big name in contemporary music provided they entered the British Hit Parade at some time. In the 1990s a spin-off show called Top of the Pops 2 regularly plundered the archives on our behalf to showcase a variety of past hits from the intervening years. Real film of an artist actually singing or playing rather than the gloss of an expensive pop video also became more appreciated over time. Once more it was the Capricorn influence, which had had an uneasy time when pop videos first became the rage, that allowed Top of the Pops to plod on regardless and eventually withstand the test of time.
The Top Cat
We should not ignore either that Top of the Pops had a rising Leo Moon. This Top Cat also played a strong mother role, identifying with children, home and family; and Top of the Pops was always a popular family show. While seeking the spotlight a Leo Moon reacts generously and openly and Jupiter widely culminating and Leo ascending made this a rather royal chart. With the obvious climbing energy of Capricorn we can see why its astrology aptly fitted a programme solely concerned with showing what was climbing to that week’s highest selling top-of-the-mountain position. Leo, Aries and Capricorn combined to inform us just who was the week’s musical king or queen, who was the top cat, who was the 'Number One'.
The End
Top of the Pops finally ended at the end of July 2006. The twenty-first century had seen the relevance of a Top Twenty singles chart fade into the sunset when other ways of hearing and recording music and other charts, like computer downloads, became more commonplace. But the programme had been veering downhill for some years after it had unwisely abandoned its strict policy of playing only the top-selling hits. A couple of live tracks from a favoured artist’s new CD may have been pleasant on the ear but it was not what Top of the Pops was all about. Times were changing and it was the Uranian mid-life crises that finally defeated its Capricornian tradition.