Festive Fifty

The Festive Fifty was originally an annual list of the year's 50 (though the exact figure varied above and below this number) best songs compiled at the end of the year and voted for by listeners to John Peel's BBC Radio 1 show. It was usually dominated by indie and rock songs which did not fully represent the diversity of music played by Peel but rather the majority opinion among his listeners. After Peel's death the tradition of the Festive Fifty was continued, first by other Radio 1 DJs and then (when Radio 1 decided to discontinue it) by the Internet radio station Dandelion Radio.

History

The first Festive Fifty was broadcast in 1976 and differed in format to later charts in that it was not restricted to songs from that year. It was topped by Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven", first released in 1971, and also contained many older songs. The following year, Peel's producer suggested that instead of taking a poll (which might simply be a retread of 1976's list), Peel should simply compile a list of his favourite songs of the year. Long thought lost, this list of the "Forgotten Fifty" (consisting of 61 songs) was finally pieced together from rare archive materials for the 2007 BBC book The Peel Sessions. The following years returned to a listener poll and listed mostly contemporary songs; "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols topped three consecutive charts from 1978 and came second in 1981. This marked a period of domination of the upper reaches of the chart by punk artists as the genre was embraced by Peel and his listeners, though other genres were represented further down the list, and the continuing presence in the list of "Stairway to Heaven" until 1979 showed that the older generation of Peel listeners had not completely abandoned the show.

In 1982 the shift to a strictly annual chart was made.