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Post by suedehead on Aug 22, 2020 18:04:29 GMT 1
Time for another surprise now as I’m sure many people would have expected the song at number 34 to finish considerably lower. I can see why so many found Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls irritating. However, I was able to tolerate it although it didn’t exactly leave me desperate to hear a lot more from Kingston. The music-buying and streaming public were clearly equally unenthusiastic. It took him three years after his 2007 number one to get another top ten hit and even that required the pulling power of Justin Bieber.
Sean Kingston was just seventeen when Beautiful Girls entered the chart at the end of August 2007. It climbed to number one the following week, replacing Kanye West’s Stronger. Perhaps the latter fact helped me to look at the song more kindly than I might otherwise have done. It spent a month at the top before Sugababes’ best song About You Now took over. Kingston was educated in Ocho Rios, a stopping-off point for 10CC in their rather eccentric journey from Rochdale to Dorking.
There were, of course, better songs in my birthday chart than the song that by then was in its fourth and final week at the top. They included the glorious with Every Heartbeat by Robyn With Kleerup as well as Young Folks by Peter, Bjorn & John and Amy Winehouse’s Tears Dry On Their Own. Winehouse’s Mark Ronson-produced version of Valerie started its long chart run that week at number 41.
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Robbie
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Post by Robbie on Aug 22, 2020 23:07:32 GMT 1
I'm just catching up on this thread. Some of the more recent number 1s posted here I have little to no memory of!
'Beautiful Girls' by Sean Kingston is a decent track, helped by the fact that the song is based around 'Stand By Me' by Ben E King. The writers of the latter song get a joint writing credit along with Sean Kingston and his producers.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 23, 2020 10:53:56 GMT 1
I'd missed the writing credit related to Stand By Me. It would certainly help to explain why the song is better than some people seemed to think at the time. I was rather surprised when I started this that I had to reacquaint myself with more number ones from the last decade or so than from the first decade of my life!
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Post by suedehead on Aug 23, 2020 10:55:50 GMT 1
Back in 1972 Gavin and Ian Sutherland, performing as the Sutherland Brothers Band, released as a single a song they had composed called Sailing. It wasn't a hit but it did turn up on a compilation album I bought. Four years later, teamed up with Quiver, they finally had a deserved hit when Arms Of Mary reached the top ten.
By the time Arms Of Mary was a hit, Sailing had become rather better known. Rod Stewart recorded an anthemic version of it for his Atlantic Crossing album in 1975. The album went straight to number one and, the following week, Sailing followed it to the top to become Stewart’s third number one single and it is at number 33 in this list. Sailing’s ascent to the top meant Top of the Pops viewers were deprived of further chances to see the Stylistics perform Can’t Give You Anything But My Love on the top of a building as had happened for the previous two weeks while they were at number one.
Sailing was a hit again the following year after it was used as the theme tune for a BBC series, climbing all the way to number three. The Sutherland Brothers never had another major hit and their part in one of the biggest hits of the 1970s tends to be somewhat overlooked. Ian Sutherland died last year.
The chart announced three days before my fifteenth birthday saw Sailing get a fourth week at number one. It was to be its final week at the top as David Essex took over the following week with Hold Me Close. Among the songs in the top ten for my birthday was one that most people didn’t buy for the side that got the radio airplay. A then little-known comic called Jasper Carrott recorded a pretty awful song by the name of Funky Moped. On the other side was a number called Magic Roundabout which was considered unsuitable for radio and was definitely not aimed at the audience for the children’s programme of that name.
The chart in that week also included Procol Harum’s criminally overlooked song Pandora’s Box, Who Loves You by The Four Seasons and Bob Marley’s debut chart appearance with No Woman No Cry, a new entry at number 40. Unusually for the 1970s (but a rather more common occurrence in the 1950s) there were two songs with two different versions in the chart. Carl Malcolm and Diversions both had a version of Fattie Bum Bum while Una Paloma Blanca was a hit for both Jonathan King and the George Baker Selection, the latter version omitting Una from the title.
The reissue of Sailing in 1976 meant that, for a time, Rod Stewart had two songs in the top forty. The choice of the other song as a single was an unusual move at the time. The Killing Of Georgie Parts I and II, based on a true story about a friend of Stewart and fellow members of his former band The Faces, was about a homophobic attack on a gay man. In the mid-1970s it was almost unheard of for a mainstream (and definitely heterosexual) entertainer to make such a public stand against homophobia (not that the term itself was in use until much later).
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 23, 2020 11:02:48 GMT 1
"Funky Moped" is a great tune. But the Carrott single sold on the b-side. He did an entire routine on the single; that he got a grand to record it, was delighted to make £300 on that alone, but forgot about the b-side, so stuck a live routine about the kids' TV programme that was on a demo album he had doing the rounds.
And that, after a humiliating TOTP appearance ("they had to turn on the fake applause"), they decided to do a video. Which never got finished because the only person willing to play his mom in the clip had come over on the Windrush.
It was off the back of that that he did An Audience With... - the first in the series, albeit it was done over a regular 6 parter at the time.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 24, 2020 17:31:20 GMT 1
Next up, at number 32 is Sam Smith’s 2017 number one Too Good At Goodbyes. Smith’s output, for me, has generally varied between the reasonably good and the mediocre. This one falls somewhere around the middle of that range.
Smith has come in for a lot of ridicule for his struggles with his sexuality and his gender identity, not least when he claimed to be the first gay man to win an Oscar. However, it should be remembered that when Latch was a hit, Smith was only 20. We can now see that their struggles with identity went beyond the relatively simple issue of sexuality.
Thankfully, attitudes towards sexuality have changed over the years. While many people do still have difficulties in coming out to their family, there are now far fewer fathers who react in the same way as Georgie’s father in the song referred to above “Pa said ‘There must be a mistake, how can my son not be straight after all I’ve said and done for him?’”. There is now a widespread acceptance that a person’s sexuality cannot simply be described as gay or straight. We still have some way to go before there is a general understanding that a person’s gender identity is not simply a matter of ticking one of two boxes.
Anyway, time to come off the soapbox. Too Good At Goodbyes went straight to the top of the chart, replacing Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do. It was still there the following week in the chart that qualifies for this list. The top ten included two good songs by artists whose output doesn’t always appeal to me - Pink’s What About Us and Little Mix’s Reggaeton Lento, the latter with help from CNCO - as well as Dua Lipa’s New Rules. The rest of the top forty was not exactly a vintage chart.
Too Good At Goodbyes got a third and final week at number one before being toppled by Post Malone’s Rockstar.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 25, 2020 15:53:25 GMT 1
At number 31 we have yet another song that suffers from having been overplayed. When Kings Of Leon went to number one with Sex On Fire in 2008 it could be seen as a nice change to see a rock song at the top of the chart, even if it was some way short of being a classic. When the song that had been at number one on my 48th birthday was back in the top twenty in time for my 49th, it had clearly outstayed its welcome.
Kings Of Leon had already notched up a few top forty hits in the few years before 2008 (including the far superior On Call) but Sex On Fire is now destined to be the first song people think of whenever they hear the band’s name. The second song will almost certainly be the follow-up Use Somebody which stalled at number two but also had a very long chart run.
Sex On Fire replaced Katy Perry’s debut hit I Kissed A Girl at the top of the chart and stayed there for three weeks before giving way to Pink’s So What. The top three in Sex On Fire’s first week at the summit was completed by Cliff Richard’s Thank You For A Lifetime which remains his last top ten hit. In my birthday chart there was a good run of songs at the lower end of the top thirty with The Verve’s Love Is Noise, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and 5 Years Time by Noah & The Whale. Unfortunately a Ne-Yo song rather broke the spell by barging in between Coldplay and Noah & The Whale.
Not for the first time, Elbow’s One Day Like This was in the top 100. It had been in the top forty the week before and returned there the following week. Further down the chart, MGMT’s brilliant Kids was making its way up towards the top forty. It got there two weeks later and eventually reached the top twenty the following January. I went to see MGMT in Boscombe on my 50th birthday.
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Post by greendemon on Aug 25, 2020 16:19:18 GMT 1
I was really into 'Sex On Fire' when it came out but I loved 'Use Somebody' which got me to buy the album. Later I checked out their older stuff which I think on balance I now prefer.
My partner and I started dating around the time I got the album so I have a special fondness for it, even though I don't actually play it all that often nowadays.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 25, 2020 18:36:25 GMT 1
On we go, then, into the top half, starting with the number 30. If anyone had told me on my thirtieth birthday in 1990 that the number one on that day, Maria McKee’s Show Me Heaven, would end up as my second favourite birthday number one of the 1990s, I would have prepared myself for a pretty grim decade of music. In the event, the 1990s became possibly my favourite decade for music. It’s just that the songs I loved didn’t spend 24 September (or, in most cases, any other day) at number one.
The song that Show Me Heaven replaced at number one had set a new chart record when it climbed to the top two weeks earlier. The Joker had been a number one single for the Steve Miller Band when it was released in 1974. In the UK, it got nowhere. Indeed, the band didn’t have a hit in the UK until two years later when Rock ‘n’ Me just missed the top ten. It was another six years before hit number two, Abracadabra. Another eight years passed before The Joker was used in a television advert for jeans and it went all the way to number one to set a new record time between a song topping the chart in the US and doing so in the UK. Had it stayed at the top for another week, it would probably have been somewhere in the top twenty in this list.
While Show Me Heaven was a reasonable song as power ballads go, there were plenty of better songs in the chart that week. They included The Farm’s Groovy Train, Never Enough by The Cure, Depeche Mode’s World In My Eyes and, best of the lot, Fool’s Gold by Stone Roses.
Show Me Heaven spent four weeks at number one and was replaced by A Little Time by Beautiful South. Maria McKee had just one more top forty hit, I'm Gonna Soothe You in 1993.
Just one more 1990s number one to go.
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Roo.
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Post by Roo. on Aug 25, 2020 22:55:02 GMT 1
A couple of decent enough songs in Sam Smith and Kings Of Leon, however I really love Show Me Heaven. I am a sucker for a ballad, especially a power ballad, and it ticks all the right boxes for me!
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Post by greendemon on Aug 26, 2020 14:53:45 GMT 1
Ooh, I remember 'Show Me Heaven', think it was on one of the cassettes my parents had that got a lot of airplay on long trips. Good song, maybe a little too drippy for my tastes.
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Post by Whitneyfan on Aug 26, 2020 14:58:33 GMT 1
I love 'Show me heaven'.
Maria McKee wrote another #1 too - 'A good heart' for Feargal Sharkey, which she eventually recorded herself, several years later.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 26, 2020 17:17:14 GMT 1
I'd missed the bit about A Good Heart until someone pointed it out on Buzzjack.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 26, 2020 17:29:54 GMT 1
At number 29 we have a singer who has gradually gone up in my estimation over the years. I was not much of a fan of the early singles of Alecia Moore, better known as Pink or even P!nk. Her career hit a definite low when she got her first number one, alongside Christina Aguilera and others, with one of the worst songs ever written, Lady Marmalade.
After two more top ten hits, she finally got a number one all of her very own with Just Like A Pill in September 2002. Once I was able to banish all memories of Lady Marmalade, I was able to accept that Just Like A Pill is actually a decent pop song and so it finishes higher than it might otherwise have done - certainly 30 or so places higher than Lady Marmalade would have done. Pink is, of course, still a fairly regular visitor to the singles charts, Her next top ten single (assuming she gets one) will stretch her top ten singles career to over twenty years.
Just Like A Pill thankfully saved me from having to endure Atomic Kitten’s diabolical version of The Tide Is High (a much better number one for Blondie in 1980 although originally written in the 1930s and released as a single by The Paragons in 1967) as my “Douglas Adams” birthday chart-topper. Pink had just seven days to enjoy the view from the top of the chart before Pop Idols alumni Will Young and Gareth Gates took over with their version of The Long And Winding Road.
Among the 13 other new entries in the top forty that week were Aqualung’s Strange And Beautiful, Grace by Supergrass and Suede’s Positivity.
We have now had nine of the ten number ones in the 2000s.
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Post by onehitwonder on Aug 27, 2020 7:38:53 GMT 1
Just like a pill is brilliant, I sing it often in karaoke just to take off some pressure. Saw her live twice, unbelievable energy.
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SheriffFatman
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Post by SheriffFatman on Aug 27, 2020 12:41:12 GMT 1
I like Just Like A Pill, great song. I have always just been a little concerned about the line “instead of making me better you keep making me ill”. She should probably have a medication review with her GP.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 27, 2020 18:43:37 GMT 1
With a total of 41 weeks at number one, it was almost inevitable that Ed Sheeran would appear somewhere on this list and here he is at number 28. The song in question is the Stromzy-featuring Take Me Back To London from last year. There is no doubting Sheeran’s talent as a musician; it’s just that a lot of his songs can be a little on the dull side and, in many cases, get played to death. With a relatively short (by his standards) top forty run of 17 weeks, Take Me Back To London was not as over-exposed as many of his eight other chart-topping singles.
Take Me Back To London entered the chart at number three in July but dropped straight back out again the following week. The release of the album meant that, for one week only, it was not one of Ed Sheeran’s top three songs so it was booted out. It returned the following week and three weeks later it was number one. It replaced Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s Senorita which fell foul of the ACR rule that week. After five weeks at the top, Take Me Back To London became another victim of ACR, allowing Tones & I’s Dance Monkey to start its marathon run at the top.
The chart that qualifies for this exercise was Take Me Back To London’s fourth week at the top by which time Dance Monkey was on its way up. It has, of course, only recently left the top forty. Also in the top forty were Kygo’s remix of Whitney Houston’s version of Higher Love# and Dermot Kennedy’s Outnumbered.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 29, 2020 17:22:08 GMT 1
Following on from Ed Sheeran there’s another 2010s number one at number 27. It’s the turn of the 2016 number one Closer by Chainsmokers featuring Halsey. It remains Chainsmokers’ only number one. For Halsey it was the first of two so far although Eastside (her second chart-topper) was not exactly a classic.
Closer climbed to the top of the chart, ending the five-week run of Major Lazer, Justin Bieber and Mo’s Cold Water. By the time my birthday came round it was in its fourth and final week at the top before it was replaced by the surprise return to chart glory of James Arthur with Say You Won’t Let Go.
Much of the top forty that week was mediocre at best but the chart include Bastille’s Good Grief, Justin Timberlake’s best single (by far) Can’t Stop The Feeling and a remix of Bob Marley’s Is This Love. For someone who has been dead for nearly two-thirds of my life, he has turned up rather a lot. One of the songs to drop out of the top forty that week was the utterly brilliant Tilted by Christine & The Queens.
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Post by suedehead on Aug 30, 2020 20:06:42 GMT 1
After two songs from the 2010s, it’s back to the ‘70s for the one at number 26. We’ve had five of the ten songs from that decade so far and the sixth (or fifth best) dates from 1971. Lots of number one songs are very much “of their time” but not many fit that description as well as Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me by The Tams. It really could only date from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. Once punk came along, the market for that sort of song more or less disappeared. We still had groups dressing identically with coordinated dance moves (think Westlife) but the style of music changed.
Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me was originally released in 1964 but performed modestly in their native USA and didn’t trouble the charts here at all. Indeed, The Tams didn’t reach the UK charts at all until 1970. Hey Girl Don’t Bother Me belatedly entered the UK charts in July 1971, just about the time I left primary school. About a week after I started secondary school, it climbed to number one. It replaced the song that had spent most of that transitional summer holiday at the top of the chart, Diana Ross’s I’m Still Waiting. It stayed there the following week, meaning it was at number one for my eleventh birthday.
Also in the chart that week were James Taylor’s You’ve Got A Friend. That song was written by Carole King who had a double a-sided hit of her own with It’s Too Late / I Feel The Earth Move. There was also room in the chart for Cat Stevens with Moon Shadow and T Rex with Get It On. T Rex’s Marc Bolan died exactly a month after Elvis Presley in 1977. Presley was also in the chart that week with a reissue of Heartbreak Hotel and Hound Dog.
The Tams stayed at number one for a third week before Rod Stewart’s Maggie May took over. They had just one more top forty hit in the UK but a version of the band (with one original member) still exists.
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vastar iner
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Post by vastar iner on Aug 30, 2020 20:31:43 GMT 1
"Hey Girl Don't Bother Me" was one of a number of hits second time around thanks to the extra airplay generated by the Northern Soul scene. Bit surprising as it's not that strong a track. There were other NS hits that merited a chart-topping more, e.g. "Pillow Talk" by Sylvia Robinson or "These Things Will Keep Me Loving You" by The Velvelettes. R Dean Taylor came damn close though.
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