SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 18, 2020 16:07:03 GMT 1
631 - Uptown Girl by Westlife No. 1 in 2001
I said at the start of this thread I wasn't going to enforce many rules, but it would be nice if we didn't get ahead of ourselves too much and discuss songs we haven't got to yet. I'm going to have to contradict myself here though, because it's impossible to consider this track without first thinking about the original, which is number 445.
Uptown Girl was written, recorded and taken to number 1 in 1983 by Billy Joel. It was conceived as a tribute to Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, recorded very much in their happy, uptempo soul style as opposed to the thoughful, multi-layered, meaningful piano led ballads that Joel was famous for. As such a lot of his ardent fans seemed to dislike it, but its simple, cheery nature certainly caught on with the public at large, and it was a worldwide hit. Personally, I think its a great record, and considering it in the context of his previous work just helps to demonstrate his versatility. Pop doesn't have to be serious, and in fact sometimes it's great when it isn't.
Westlife's version is rather astonishing, in that it is an exact, note for note, precise replica of the original. There really is nothing different here at all, it's identical. You may well ask what on earth the point was, but I would expand that question to include their entire career, they really are one of the most risible acts in chart history.
Their manager Louis Walsh's was obsessed with getting them to number one in the UK charts. He managed it 14 times between 1999 and 2006, through a combination of hyping their releases to achieve disproportionate first week sales and sometimes even moving release dates at the last minute if he was worried something might outsell them. This helped undermine the whole concept of the charts. Number one singles had previously been the ultimate proof a song had reached a broad audience, now we were faced with chart toppers that virtually nobody cared about or even knew. Westlife are only 3 behind The Beatles in terms of total number ones, but the statistic is meaningless. Many Beatles songs have remained in the public conciousness for over 50 years, most Westlife songs never even entered it.
As a result, of Westlife's 14 chart toppers, a grand sum of 1 - this one - appear on the Millionaires list. I would suggest that's for 2 reasons. Firstly, it was a charity release benefitting Comic Relief, and secondly it is, as mentioned, actually a great song. An utterly pointless recording though, and its presence here is more of a compliment to Billy Joel than anything else.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 18, 2020 15:27:08 GMT 1
Loads of great Whats, these are the ones I have...
What A Waster - The Libertines What A Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong What Became Of The Likely Lads? - The Libertines What Do I Do Now? - Sleeper What Have I Done To Deserve This - Pet Shop Boys & Dusty Springfield What Kind Of Man - Florence & the Machine What Would You Do? - City High What You Know - Two Door Cinema Club
Meanwhile, the exclusion of What's is bad news for Marvin Gaye, Blink 182, REM and Dre Dre featuring Eminem & Xzibit. Today my absolute favourite comes from The Stone Roses though, with a song descibed to some extent by its own title
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 18, 2020 0:54:37 GMT 1
632 - Lullaby by Sigala featuring Paloma Faith No. 6 in 2018
A song with a deceptive title, this is not going to assist anyone trying to get to sleep.
For the second time on this thread, I’m contemplating the fact that Paloma Faith, an artist I really like, evidently feels the need to step outside her usual area of expertise and make dance music I don’t like in order to remain a viable proposition for the music industry. I don’t know this for sure of course, maybe she loves her dance hits and appreciates the chance to do something different, she does have an endearing tendency to look on the bright side of everything. I’m not keen though.
Sigala is actually DJ and producer Bruce Fielder from Norwich. He’s had 8 top 10 hits with a wide variety of vocalists, but only his 2015 debut Easy Love, credited to him alone, has reached number one. Lullaby is a slightly surprising (and relatively dull) entry on the millionaires list because it didn’t have a spectacularly long chart run and was less that two and a half years old when the list was compiled so it won’t have long term low level sales. The power of streaming I guess, this list will probably be absolutely enormous a few years from now.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 17, 2020 9:57:35 GMT 1
Another word I didn't realise so many great songs began with until you drew my attention to it.
Completely agree regarding Amy McDonald, Sparks, Woody Guthrie, Inspiral Carpets, The Smiths & Sisters Of Mercy. Other great ones...
This Girl by Kungs & Cookin' On 3 Burners (against my instincts, but it's just such a catchy tune) This Is A Call by Foo Fighters This Is A Low by Blur This Life by Vampire Weekend This Year's Love by David Gray This Wheel's On Fire by Brian Auger & The Trinity with Julie Driscoll (a Bob Dylan song of course, he keeps cropping up)
But I'll go with one that's brilliant and not very well known, from the perpective of a family caught up in the riots and looting in London in summer 2011, This Is My Home by The King Blues
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 16, 2020 17:47:04 GMT 1
633 - Royals by Lorde No. 1 in 2013
Every now and then a song comes along that makes you immediately sit up and pay attention, and this was absolutely one of those moments for me. As soon as I heard this record I just thought it was awesome, I've just been having another listen and wondering if the intervening 7 years have done anything to dim that ability. It's a song that I can have on in the background now and not pay much attention to, but still if I give it the attention it deserves its brilliance shines through.
Lorde is actually Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, from Takapuna, a suburb of Aukland, New Zealand. She was was 16 when this song was released, she co-wrote it and it's about the gap between her lifestyle as a teenage girl in a far flung part of the world and that of the pop stars and other celebrities people like her idolise. It's said to have taken her half an hour to write, but it really is lyrically brilliant, she has an incredible gift for describing her life in a way that's incredibly relatable, even to me, and I'm 20 years older than her and live on the other side of the world.
Musically the track is pop with a strong hip hop influence, which works incredibly well, maybe in part because it's the last thing you'd expect. For me this is one of the best singles of the last decade, distinctive, iconic, stylish, it has it all.
Royals must have had good pre-release publicity because it entered the charts at number 1. It only managed 1 week there, but had a very slow descent. Lorde has released some more excellent stuff since, in fact the next 2 singles, Team and Tennis Court, were both great songs, but she's never go close to a return to the top 10. I guess the brilliance of this one has so far overshadowed the rest of her output.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 16, 2020 17:18:38 GMT 1
Terrible list. How is Beyoncé up there with her worst album at #32, I'll never know. I absolutely love that album. It's the only Beyonce record I've ever bought though, so maybe I need to check out the others!
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 16, 2020 17:14:24 GMT 1
There are two versions of No Woman No Cry, the original "reggae" studio version, and the live version that is far more well known (and I don't really consider to be reggae even though it's by Bob Marley) Having posted today on here what I consider to be my all time favourite heavy metal track, my retro chart (1976) is about to see what is possibly my all-time favourite reggae song enter this week. There's an interesting discussion to be had there (probably in a different place) about how artists get labelled with a genre tag, when really that's silly, only their music can belong to a genre. I'm not sure what genre you'd consider No Woman No Cry to be, but one of my absolute favourites of Bob Marley's, Redemption Song, is clearly folk music.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 16, 2020 17:00:35 GMT 1
Wow, there are absolutely loads of brilliant Nos, it's hard to know where to start. People suggesting No Surprises by Radiohead are spot on, but mustn't overlook No Big Sizes by The Shirehorses, a work of genius I reckon.
Tempted to post No Church In The Wild by Jay-Z & Kanye West, it often feels like they are not very popular artists on Haven to the point where they tend to be outright ignored, but that is an ethereal, atmospheric work of scary beauty, brilliant.
No Woman No Cry, No Diggity, No More Heroes and No More "I Love You"s are all fantastic and all so famous they don't need the artists listing. No Hope and No One Knows are brilliant but probably do, they are by The Vaccines and Queens of the Stone Age.
My absolute favourite No though has to be by Blur, I sometimes wonder if it's my favourite Blur song of all, althought it's impossible to choose. Heartbreakingly beautiful, just maybe the saddest ever break up song, even the totle makes me want to cry. I give you No Distance Left To Run
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 16, 2020 15:20:45 GMT 1
I'm behind again, sorry!
Just Buggin' by Whistle sometimes gets billed as (Nothin' Serious) Just Buggin', so I'm not sure if it should be here or not. Great example of 80s rap music making the pop charts though, I know a lot of people found it annoying but I love it. Some brilliant ones by Depeche Mode, Double Trouble & the Rebel MC, Bob Dylan, The Jesus & Mary Chain, John Lennon and The Levellers that others have already mentioned.
Interestingly I only have 2 P!nk songs that I really like, and they both begin with Just, Just Give Me A Reason (with Nate Reuss) and Just Like A Pill. There's loads of Charlatans songs I really like, and 2 of those are Justs as well. Just Looking and this excellent song, Just When You're Thinking Things Over.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 15, 2020 8:54:19 GMT 1
Well, for me, it has to be...
That sent me down an internet wormhole discovering The Pipettes via Wikipedia, YouTube, Apple Music and Google Images. They’re fantastic, thank you!
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 14, 2020 20:59:26 GMT 1
634 - Oh Pretty Woman by Roy Orbison No. 1 in 1964
Mercy!
When they think of the charts in the 60s most people probably think of groups and Elvis. Roy Orbison is not one of the names that springs immediately to mind, but then when you look at his chart history it becomes clear that in that decade he was actually quite a sensation.
In black clothes, with dyed black hair and sunglasses, he was arguably one of the first pop stars to recognise a consistent, recognisable image could be as important as good music. Sometimes crooning dark, brooding ballads and sometimes, as here, taking the tempo up a notch for pop songs, he pretty much always had both.
Orbison was also a brilliant singer, and while this song might not stretch him much his vocals nevertheless up there with the brilliant guitar hook as one of the best things about it.
In an unusual chart run, Oh Pretty Woman spent 2 weeks at number 1, then 3 weeks at number 2 behind Sandie Shaw’s (There’s) Always Something There To Remind Me, before going back to the top for a third week. All of that must have added up to a lot of sales, and I guess a few more in the digital era have tipped it onto this list. Quite right too.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 14, 2020 20:31:02 GMT 1
It only charted at #69 in 1995 - the #12 peak was a re-mix in 2014. And I had no idea how young he was when he originally released the track! You’re right, I missed that! It does seem barely believable that he was 15 when it first charted, but Wikipedia is very specific about his date of birth, August 3rd 1979.
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 14, 2020 19:03:56 GMT 1
Just because nobody has mentioned it yet: Controversial - on Apple Music that’s We’ve
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 14, 2020 18:29:14 GMT 1
I’ve got loads of favourite We’s, didn’t realise there were so many...
We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together - Taylor Swift We Are The People - Empire Of The Sun We Are Young - Fun featuring Janelle Monae We Are Your Friends - Justice & Simeon We Built This City - Starship We Can Work It Out - The Beatles We Didn’t Start The Fire - Billy Joes We Have All The Time In The World - Louis Armstrong We Shall Overcome - Pete Seeger (him again) We Will Rock You - Queen
...but tonight I’m posting this brilliance, straight from my Halloween playlist. I think it was in a TV advert this year too, although I don’t remember what for:
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 13, 2020 16:39:34 GMT 1
635 - 17 by MK No. 7 in 2018 (first charted in 2017)
The idea of either an artist or a song having only 2 characters in its name seems quite odd, here we have both on the same track, just 4 characters in total. You would think the internet era would make something like that even less likely, conventional wisdom being that to be successful these days you need to be searchable, Googleable in fact. Nevertheless, despite these obstacles 17 by MK is a million seller. So what on earth is it?
Well the first thing that surprised me is that MK (US DJ Marc Kinchen) is a genuine chart veteran. His debut UK hit came in 1995 when he was just 15 years old, when Always (featuring Alana) reached number 12. Nope, I have absolutely no memory of it either, but the OCC's website never lies. He had a couple more minor hits, one in '95 and one in '97, before disappearing altogether for 19 years. I'd be tempted to assume he was an entirely different MK, but in fact Wikipedia confirms it is all the same guy.
The second big surprise for me came when I listened to 17 a few times and realised I quite like it. It's not exactly my kind of thing, and I'm sure it's soundtracked millions of workouts since 2017. I've not been in a nightclub for about 10 years, not been in a gym since it was raining at break time at school, and I'm quite happy about both of those facts, but I can see the appeal. It's a track with two layers, for an in your face dance record the song is quite subtle.
To date this is the peak of MK's UK chart career, his only top 10 appearance in fact, although he did make the top 20 again in 2018 alongside Jonas Blue and Becky Hill on Back And Forth. Maybe he's going to leave it another 19 years before trying again.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 13, 2020 15:13:58 GMT 1
You have to get to this thread early in the morning to be first in with the best ones! I echo thoughts about Little songs by George Baker Selection, Fleetwood Mac, Mumford & Sons, Prince and Of Monsters And Men, all brilliant. If anyone mentioned...
A Little Respect by Erasure Little Britain by Dreadzone Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb
...then I missed that but they're all brilliant. Today though I'm going with a song I've sang to all three of my children at bedtime to get them to sleep, still do with the youngest. A satire on the development of surburbia, I guess it's not exactly Twinkle Twinkle Little Star but it does the job. Absolutely stacks of people have recorded it, including Elvis Costello, Linkin Park, The Polyphonic Spree and Englebert Humperdink, but I'm posting the version by the master of socialist nursery rhymes and one of my all time heroes, Pete Seeger.
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 12, 2020 12:34:45 GMT 1
636 - You Can Call Me Al by Paul Simon No. 4 in 1986
The first single from Paul Simon's Graceland album put him back in the top 10 as a solo artist for the first time in 14 years. The political context in which the album was released is complicated and contraversial for a wide range of reasons - did collaborating with South African artists break the boycott of the apartheid era nation or did it break new ground by show the world that black and white artists could successfully collaborate together? Was bringing African sounds to a global audience cultural appropriatrion for financial gain or a leg-up for musicians who were struggling to gain an audience? - but what was sometimes missed was that the music itself was largely apolitical, and in the case of You Can Call Me Al it was simply wonderful, innovative, catchy pop music.
Maybe it was the simple brilliance of You Can Call Me Al as a radio friendly, globally focussed pop song that enabled it to become a hit despite the controversy. On the other hand, it sounds to me like something that you would expect to spend several weeks at number 1, maybe the protests led by the likes of Billy Bragg, Jerry Dammers and Paul Weller (all of whom I have massive respect for both as musicians and for their political views) were the reason it didn't do better. On the week this song peaked at number 4, the top 3 was freakishly, arguably even historically weak, with, from 3 to 1, Rain Or Shine by Five Star, True Blue by Madonna (which allegedly she didn't even like herself) and Every Loser Wins by Nick Berry. Quality rise, in that top 4, You Can Call Me Al certainly stands out.
Over time I guess the controversy has faded into history, but the brilliance of this song hasn't. It must be shifting plenty in the digital era to now be a million seller because it's original sales wouldn't have been all that high. Interestingly it popped back into the charts for a week at 96 in 2011, I have no idea what sparked that particular sales spike but you can only assume it's selling fairly consistently these days. Always more of an albums artist, Paul Simon himself has never returned to the top 10, and hasn't charted anything new at all since 2006. He did a worldwide tour in 2018 billed as his farewell tour, and considering he's now 79 that seems fair enough.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 12, 2020 10:28:57 GMT 1
Yeah, I've experienced air turbulence. Worst I remember was flying home from Aberdeen, the plane was only a 30 seater or so, most of the flight was fine but as we came into Manchester it was blowing a gale and we were buffeted all over the place. I wasn't worried really, there's not much you can do about it, but the guy next to me was gripping the seat like his life depended on it.
Have you ever come up against prejudice?
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 12, 2020 10:19:27 GMT 1
I've always wondered if Good Enough by Dodgy was a deliberate attempt to make a song where the title is also an accurate review. It's good enough, but no better.
Great songs that I have listed beginning with the word good are...
Good Life by Inner City Good Morning Britain by Aztec Camera The Good, The Bad And The Ugly by Hugo Montenegro & His Orchestra Good Tradition by Tanita Tikarum Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys
...but I think my favourite is Good Riddance (Time Of My Life). Since everyone already knows Green Day's original I thought I'd post this fantastic cover by Glen Campbell
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Post by SheriffFatman on Nov 11, 2020 18:03:40 GMT 1
637 - I Hear You Knocking by Dave Edmunds No. 1 in 1970
When I saw this one on the list I was immediately familiar with the song, it's one of those I can't remember a time when I didn't know it, but a sudden question occurred to me for the first time - who even is Dave Edmunds? Odd that this has remained a mystery I've never thought to look into until today.
Well, David William Edmunds is a singer songwriter who was born in Cardiff in 1944. He was in a band called Love Sculpture who split up soon after having a decidedly odd top 5 hit in 1968 with a song called Sabre Dance. I Hear You Knocking was his first solo single, a rock cover of an old blues song that was originally a hit in the US in 1955 for someone called Smiley Lewis. It was an instant success, or instand for those days anyway, entering the charts at 16 before climbing straight to number one and staying there for 6 weeks. In the process it became the Christmas number one for 1970, at a time when the concept was not yet widely recognised but no doubt the sales were still higher than at the rest of the year. When it did eventually give up the top spot its successor was Grandad by Clive Dunn.
I may be wrong, but I don't get the feeling that I Hear You Knocking is still widely remembered. I imagine its on this list because its original sales took it close to a million anyway, and there it sat for several decades until the digital era when a few people looking up the hits of the early 70s on streaming services caused it to tip onto this list. Given the scale of its original success, it has every right to be here.
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