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Post by Earl Purple on Nov 5, 2018 17:42:58 GMT 1
Maybe Barry Gibb provided the instrumentation?
I made a wild guess as to what week it reached number one and entered 16 March 2009 in the Official Charts date. I got it right. I wasn't even sure 2009 was the correct year but placed it around the time Jade Goody died because I somehow connected the events.
Anyway this was the top 10:
1(-) Jenkins/West/Jones/Gibb - (Barry) Islands In The Stream 2(1) Flo Rida ft Kesha - Right Round 3(2) Saturdays - Just Can't Get Enough 4(3) Lady Gaga - Poker Face 5(5) Taylor Swift - Love Story 6(4) Kelly Clarkson - My Life Would Suck Without You 7(6) TI Ft Justin Timberlake - Dead And Gone 8(11) Kings Of Leon - Use Somebody 9(13) Akon ft Kardinal Offishall & Colby O'Donis - Beautiful 10(-) Oasis - Falling Down
The charts had generally slowed down by then. In spite of going down this week, Poker Face would climb to #1 next week.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Nov 5, 2018 18:19:49 GMT 1
42 (Barry) Islands In The Stream by Vanessa Jenkins & Bryn West featuring Sir Tom Jones & Barry Gibb
Comic Relief was founded in 1985 by comedy writer Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry. The aim was to use comedy to raise money for charitable causes, particularly for victims of famine. It was an immediate success, with the first ever Red Nose Day in 1986 supported by a charity single from Cliff Richard & the Young Ones. To date this remains the one and only time throughout his incredibly lengthy career that Sir Cliff has shown any sign whatsoever of a sense of humour. Bit unfair on Cliff. He was on Tiswas a couple of times, sending himself up, and was one of Dame Edna's inter-victims. Anyone who remembers his "Delilah" on ISIHAC will testify to that. He had to sing it in Pick Up Song, i.e. accompanying the original, then the needle is lifted, and you have to continue until the needle goes back, and see how close you are.
He was utterly dead on in both tune and timing. The standing ovation was so raucous it took about three minutes to continue the programme.
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Post by paulgilb on Nov 6, 2018 0:00:47 GMT 1
Both Wikipedia (which has a picture of the single cover) and Polyhex say that it is Robin Gibb, not Barry Gibb, who features on the song.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 12, 2018 13:25:29 GMT 1
41 – Loca People by Sak Noel In 1987, two singles shook the music industry establishment to its foundations when they reached the top of the charts. These records ignored all of the established conventions about how to have a hit single, with no promotion of the artists and no attempt to gain airplay on mainstream radio, and yet they charged ahead of everything else nonetheless. The first was Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley’s Chicago house classic Jack Your Body, and the second was M/A/R/R/S with the sample laden, bassline heavy Pump Up The Volume. Dance music had arrived.
These early, pioneering chart toppers, appealing to the public via clubs and leaving radio stations to catch up later, paved the way for decades of anonymous dance acts to sell millions of singles without anyone actually knowing who they were. In the 21st Century there have been number one singles by Chicane, Fragma, Madison Avenue, Black Legend, Modjo, Spiller, Rui Da Silva, DJ Sammy, Room 5, Tomcraft, LMC, Shapeshifters, Fedde Le Grand, Yolanda Be Cool, Sam and the Womp, Bingo Players, Duke Dumont, Storm Queen, Mr. Probz, SecondCity, David Zowie, KDA, the list is endless. You’ve heard them in the clubs, you’ve heard them on the radio, but you may even have sat next to them on the bus and you wouldn’t have a clue who they were.
Some of these records have been quite good, most are predictable but not terrible, but none are quite as bad as Loca People. Sak Noel is, for the record and also for the purpose of naming and shaming, a Spanish DJ known to his mother as Isaac Mahmood Noell. As is usually the case the track has an anonymous female vocalist, who simply talks the lyrics over an incredibly dull, throbbing, repetitive beat. Her first task is to repeat the words “All day, all night” eight times, by the end of which we’re only less than a minute in and it already feels like the song will never end. After that though, she does throw in a surprise, and a challenge to daytime radio programmers, by asking “What the f***?”. What indeed.
It’s immediately clear Mr. Noell is not aiming for a song-writing Ivor Novello, but it does get worse, much worse. “When I came to Spain, and I saw people party, I told to myself, what the f***?”. Yes, it must have been quite a shock. So much so in fact that she sought counsel from back home. “I couldn't believe what I was living, so I called my friend Johnny, and I said to him “Johnny, la gente esta muy loca, what the f***?”". She doesn’t mention where she came to Spain from, but she’s clearly taken the decision to learn the language beforehand, as indeed must her friend Johnny. Either that or he was thinking “what the f***?” when he received the call. Incidentally, “la gente esta muy loca” translates as “people are very crazy”, which, considering the fact that this garbage sold enough to reach number one, is the one aspect of Loca People’s lyrics that entirely rings true.
Of course, dance music is not meant to be judged by the lyrics, no one in a sweaty Balearic nightclub at 2am on a Sunday morning ever refused to hit the dance floor because the tune that’s coming in doesn’t contain acceptable prose to justify the appreciation. Loca People could always have been instrumental though, but absence of the the stupid, pan-European, Spanglish vocals would only expose the absolute nothingness of the music. Forgotten almost as soon as it topped the charts, Loca People is the very definition of 21st century singles which absolutely never deserved the place in history it accidentally achieved.When you consider the many classic singles which stopped at number 2 in the charts it makes you want to cry. Or shout "What the f***?".
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 12, 2018 13:26:42 GMT 1
Both Wikipedia (which has a picture of the single cover) and Polyhex say that it is Robin Gibb, not Barry Gibb, who features on the song. You're absolutely right, thanks for pointing that out! I don't know where I got the idea it was Barry from. I will edit the post (and more importantly, my hard copy!)
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 12, 2018 16:16:50 GMT 1
42 (Barry) Islands In The Stream by Vanessa Jenkins & Bryn West featuring Sir Tom Jones & Barry Gibb
Comic Relief was founded in 1985 by comedy writer Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry. The aim was to use comedy to raise money for charitable causes, particularly for victims of famine. It was an immediate success, with the first ever Red Nose Day in 1986 supported by a charity single from Cliff Richard & the Young Ones. To date this remains the one and only time throughout his incredibly lengthy career that Sir Cliff has shown any sign whatsoever of a sense of humour. Bit unfair on Cliff. He was on Tiswas a couple of times, sending himself up, and was one of Dame Edna's inter-victims.
I didn't know that. I'm quite comfortable with the idea of being a bit unfair on Cliff though
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 19, 2018 11:50:08 GMT 1
40 – Come On You Reds by Manchester United Football Squad It is an anomaly of the UK singles chart that the incredibly long running, enduring and largely unfathomable popularity of Status Quo is in no way reflected by their chart glory, a single week at number one in January 1975 with Down Down. In fact, as the creative force behind this single which spent two weeks at the top in May 1994, this could have been their biggest ever hit, but they perhaps wisely decided not to be given a credit. Quality wise, this must have been a step to far even for them.
To suggest there was any creative input at all behind Come On You Reds is probably too generous though. The song is simply Burning Bridges (On And Off And On Again), a top 10 hit for Quo in the late 80s, with the words changed so they refer to Manchester United’s 1994 FA Cup Squad, and sung by said footballers in a collective bellow. What in God’s name this parochial nonsense was doing at the top of the national singles charts is anyone’s guess.
The reason apparently relates to the nationwide reach of United’s fanbase, at the time they were seen as the team most supported by people who lived in areas without major teams of their own. So it was that the people of Cornwall, Shropshire and North Yorkshire, unable to show the strength of character it would take to support their local teams in the knowledge they would never achieve anything, were also unable to demonstrate any musical taste and therefore bought this abomination. One can’t help but wonder how the people of Liverpool felt when they saw this single on the number 1 shelf in Woolworths.
It wasn’t the first time a league football team had made the top 10 of course, but it was the first and, mercifully, to date, only time one got to number 1. Football and music have coexisted in British popular culture throughout the ages, especially in the form of terrace chants, but there was nothing chantable about this racket. Burning Bridges is quite simply too fast paced for thousands of people to sing in time together, the rabble on this record can hardly manage it and there’s only a few of them. Plus, in the bridge they simply sing their own names – “Schmeichel, Parker, Pallister / Irwin, Bruce, Sharpe and Ince / Hughes, McClair, Keane and Cantona / Robson, Kanchelskis and Giggs”. As far as catching on in the terraces is concerned, it’s not exactly Glory Glory Man United.
You could be forgiven for assuming that, bearing in mind how bad this all is, Status Quo must be die-hard United fans to have anything to do with it. You’d be wrong, the only thing Francis Rossi and co are die-hard fans of is cash. Oh, and Brentford FC apparently, but they must have been able to overlook that when the opportunity to make the cash presented itself. Thoroughly a record without any worth whatsoever.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 19, 2018 12:41:13 GMT 1
Ever hopeful and far more convinced of my writing ability than the evidence suggests I should be, I sent the e-mail below to a marketing guy at the OCC a week ago. No reply yet... "Hello [man's name] I am currently writing a book, mostly because I'm enjoying it but also in the back of my mind is the thought of how cool it would be if I could get it published in some way. Provisionally, the title is 'What Were We Thinking? - The UK's 50 Worst Number 1 Singles' My idea is a slight change to a well worn theme - it's a few hundred words on each entry, counting down from 50 to 1 the all time worst chart toppers, based on nothing more scientific than what appear to me to be genuinely bad records. I mean no malice at all of course - I approach this with an absolute love of the UK charts, which have been something of an obsession for me since I was about 8 (I'm 41 now and probably should have moved on at some point, I guess everyone needs a hobby...) I have 2 reasons for contacting you - firstly, I wanted to check that the OCC are OK with the concept and aren't going to get upset about it at any point. It's meant to be a partly humorous, partly serious look at what it says about popular culture over the years that an act like, say, the Outhere Brothers can (twice!) top the charts. I appreciate the charts themselves though, which I will be referring to lots but obviously not reproducing, are your copywritten material, so is it OK that I'm doing this? Secondly, if you're alright with it, do you have any advice you can offer about the best way to publish? I imagine in my head a lovely, glossy, fully illustrated book on the counter at Waterstones in time for Christmas 2019, but does anyone read books any more? Would anyone even want to publish it? Am I better setting up a Facebook page and trying to drum up interest by posting there? I figured that although my idea is somewhat negative in a comic way, underlying it all is a love of the UK charts, and, I guess, a way to promote them and continue to keep them relevant in the minds of the public. Any suggestions or thoughts from you or the OCC in general would be much appreciated, I can provide you with some copy if you're interested Kind regards [My name]"
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Post by Robin on Nov 21, 2018 19:21:06 GMT 1
You probably bamboozled him with too many questions. You should have just gone in with simply asking permission then when he replied you could have followed up with the second question.
By the way, I’d definitely read your book!
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Post by Earl Purple on Nov 22, 2018 17:30:04 GMT 1
I know that Manchester United had their #1 in 1994 knocking Stiltskin off the top after just one week. I'd rather Stiltskin had been able to hang on a couple of more weeks - it was rather strange for an unknown band with the promotion of their song being used on a commercial got to #1 so fast then also fell so fast at the time.
With regards to Sak Noel I would have to look up when it actually got to #1 as I have never heard of it.
I don't think Come On You Reds is that bad among football club songs, and it's been done before, doing them over other songs but not quite in the same way. "Good Old Arsenal" in 1971 was just the tune of Rule Britannia and repeated again and again and totally awful. Between then and 1994, only Liverpool in 1986 did a league and cup double and they managed it without any hit single. "Blue Is The Colour" is one of the best football club songs ever, regardless of what you think of Chelsea as a team, and "Spurs Are On The Way To Wembley" is an enjoyable song albeit too focused on one player and does borrow a bit from another tune. Prior to this, they were, possibly quite rightly, the two biggest club song hits, both peaking at #5.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 26, 2018 13:13:06 GMT 1
I know that Manchester United had their #1 in 1994 knocking Stiltskin off the top after just one week. I'd rather Stiltskin had been able to hang on a couple of more weeks - it was rather strange for an unknown band with the promotion of their song being used on a commercial got to #1 so fast then also fell so fast at the time. With regards to Sak Noel I would have to look up when it actually got to #1 as I have never heard of it. I don't think Come On You Reds is that bad among football club songs, and it's been done before, doing them over other songs but not quite in the same way. "Good Old Arsenal" in 1971 was just the tune of Rule Britannia and repeated again and again and totally awful. Between then and 1994, only Liverpool in 1986 did a league and cup double and they managed it without any hit single. "Blue Is The Colour" is one of the best football club songs ever, regardless of what you think of Chelsea as a team, and "Spurs Are On The Way To Wembley" is an enjoyable song albeit too focused on one player and does borrow a bit from another tune. Prior to this, they were, possibly quite rightly, the two biggest club song hits, both peaking at #5. Loca People by Sak Noel was no. 1 for 1 week in October 2011. It was one of a lot of singles which kept Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5 at number 2, so it did at least do the UK that one favour. Regarding football songs, I think you're forgetting 'Anfield Rap (Red Machine In Full Effect)', which was no. 3 for Liverpool FC in 1988. In many ways it was a terrible record, but I've always felt slightly guilty about the fact that I quite like the bassline. I assume it is sampled from somewhere although I never worked out where. A decent, chart friendly, late 80s style rap record could have been made with that bassline, in the hands of someone like, say, Double Trouble & the Rebel MC. Instead it has a load of unfunny crap about football over the top of it.
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Post by Earl Purple on Nov 26, 2018 13:46:58 GMT 1
Yes I forgot that the Anfield Rap had come before that, I know Manchester United had a much better song out musically in 1996 which peaked lower than Liverpool's song that year but was better than it.
I always feel I have to judge football club songs on their musical merit and not on what I think of the team. There was a great ska song out that threw in a mention of my rival club and featured them in the video although the song wasn't exclusively about them. It didn't stop the song peaking at #3 in my chart on its merit as a song.
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Post by davyboyb on Jul 25, 2019 12:04:58 GMT 1
SheriffFatman Your post on the 1994 thread got me looking for this again and reading some of the ones I missed. How are your efforts to get this published going? I would definitely buy it, just the sort of thing you'd expect there to be a market for at Christmas. Did the OCC ever reply to your e-mail, and have you approached any publishers directly?
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Jul 28, 2019 8:32:54 GMT 1
SheriffFatman Your post on the 1994 thread got me looking for this again and reading some of the ones I missed. How are your efforts to get this published going? I would definitely buy it, just the sort of thing you'd expect there to be a market for at Christmas. Did the OCC ever reply to your e-mail, and have you approached any publishers directly? I have carried on writing, but no, I haven’t done much about being published. I did e-mail a publisher of several music books I own and they replied saying they thought it was a good idea but didn’t have space in their schedule. I don’t really have any idea how to do it. Do I send sample chapters? The whole thing? An outline of the idea? And who to?
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Post by suedehead on Jul 28, 2019 9:24:34 GMT 1
I’ve never tried to get a book published, but I would guess that sending a couple sample chapters would be a good idea. It gives would-be publishers an idea of what you’re asking them to support. Perhaps a two-pronged approach, writing both to publishers of music books and publishers of “novelty” books would be best.
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Post by Earl Purple on Jul 28, 2019 10:07:45 GMT 1
I really haven't followed the charts in the last decade or so. If I put in all the worst number ones up to 1997 then much of what followed in the 22 years of charts after that would make all of those sound not so bad, even Teletubbies and St Winifred's School Choir had some appeal albeit not to me.
There's an enormous difference between Jack Your Body and Pump Up The Volume. The former was dull boring beat repeated, presumably that you could dance to but without any real enjoyment of the song. The latter was a carefully crafted medley of sounds producing something that was unique at the time but also great.
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Post by davyboyb on Jul 29, 2019 9:04:23 GMT 1
I’ve never tried to get a book published, but I would guess that sending a couple sample chapters would be a good idea. It gives would-be publishers an idea of what you’re asking them to support. Perhaps a two-pronged approach, writing both to publishers of music books and publishers of “novelty” books would be best. This sounds like a good idea. There's a great turn of phrase and British humour coming through in the pieces which would surely sell it. Maybe worth getting in touch with some literary agents as well.
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Post by Wanderlust on Jul 29, 2019 10:02:29 GMT 1
Agree that there were a dance artists who seem to come out of the blue and land number one singles, often with their debut single. Chicane however had actually notched up several chart hits and had a pretty successful album before Don't Give Up went in at number one.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Sept 27, 2019 14:57:02 GMT 1
Did a Google search this morning on UK publishers of books about music and fired off a load of e-mails with the full contents list and some sample chapters.
So far one has said they only publish books about medieval music, so weren't terribly interested. Fingers crossed re the others. If this doesn't work I might have to try to find out what a blog is and post them in one of them instead...
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Post by greendemon on Sept 27, 2019 23:10:22 GMT 1
You could look at self-publishing as another option, if you'd like to see it in book form? I'm not really sure what's involved if I'm honest and it's probably a fair bit of work but could be something to consider.
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