Printable version of thread

Posted by: fiesta 16th March 2017, 03:25 PM

With Steps looking likely to chart on Friday with their first new hit since 2001. How many artists can we find who have had a chart comeback with a new recording after at least approx. 10 years away from the singles chart?

Posted by: Knightr634 16th March 2017, 03:34 PM

Take That are obvious ones to think of when they came back with Patience in 2006 which made #1 10 years after How Deep Is Your Love made #1 in 1996.

Posted by: Bjork 16th March 2017, 03:35 PM

Craig David

Posted by: Tinasha 16th March 2017, 04:23 PM

I wouldn't say Steps is that much of a hit, they'll barely scrape the top 40 and it'll peak there.

Posted by: M4NG0 16th March 2017, 04:45 PM

Blondie came back with a #1 single in 1999 after releasing nothing for 17 years!

Arguably you could also count The Beatles who made a "comeback" after more than 20 years in 1995 with two Top 10 hits. Technically they were new recordings.

Posted by: Mart!n 16th March 2017, 05:19 PM

In that case you could count the Hollies 'He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother'

Posted by: gooddelta 16th March 2017, 05:27 PM

Robyn had a gap of 9 years between her initial hits as a teenager in 1998 and With Every Heartbeat in 2007.

Train's 9 year gap between Drops Of Jupiter in 2001 and Hey Soul Sister in 2010 was another recent-ish one.

And Boyzone had 9 years between Everyday I Love You in 1999 and Love You Anyway in 2008.

Posted by: Peenus Fly Trap 16th March 2017, 05:28 PM

The Spice Girls came back *almost* ten years later eith one of their best ever songs and biggest ever smashes, Headlines (Loud and True)

Posted by: Rob Spears 16th March 2017, 05:30 PM

Christina Aguilera.

Posted by: Dircadirca 16th March 2017, 05:32 PM

Not very high charting but Disturbed's two top 40 hits are 12 years apart.

Posted by: n4yr 16th March 2017, 10:09 PM

Santana's last chart hit before Smooth was 20 years beforehand.

Posted by: M4NG0 16th March 2017, 10:27 PM

And by biggest ever smashes, you mean lowest charting single, right?

Posted by: timjimlee 16th March 2017, 10:29 PM

As the thread is about Singles comebacks I guess one of the most impressive was Pink Floyd in 1979 with "Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)", got to number 1 after about 12 years of not releasing Singles!

Posted by: Suedehead2 16th March 2017, 10:59 PM

Cher had hits as a solo artist and as half of Sonny and Cher from 1965-74. She was then absent from the chart until 1987 when she returned and continued to have hits until 2001. Her next (and, so far, final) hit was in 2013.

Posted by: gooddelta 16th March 2017, 11:07 PM

I Hope You Find It <3 I love the fact that that went top 30 here. The 'sales era' could still pull off some surprises even as late as 2013. She ought to have been credited on Meatloaf's 1981 hit Dead Ringer For Love in that huge gap between 1974-1987.

I feel like this Steps song is very much a last gasp from the sales era actually, possibly the last ever song to go top 40 that deduces as much as 90% of its sales from paid for purchases. Streaming is just too big to overcome now. When an iTunes #1 of this ilk can only scrape the top 40 officially it's a sign that this is unlikely to happen again for any future sales-dominant hits.

Unless of course Taylor is still abandoning Spotify with her new era, but seeing as she'll never have another major hit again if she does that, it seems highly unlikely!

Posted by: Peenus Fly Trap 16th March 2017, 11:12 PM

It was a turntable hit!

Posted by: paulgilb 16th March 2017, 11:34 PM

Boris Gardiner charted in 1970 with the instrumental Elizabethan Reggae then did not chart again for another 16 years, when he reached #1 with I Want To Wake Up With You.

Posted by: The Hit Parade 17th March 2017, 12:04 AM

The difference is that that was a re-release of a single that had previously been a hit. Whereas the Beatles T40 comeback 'Baby It's You' had not previously been a single, although it was of course recorded in the 1960s.

Kate Bush returned to the chart in 2005 for the first time since 1994.
David Bowie's comeback hit 'Where Are We Now?' in 2013 was his first Top 40 since 2002.
His old mate Lou Reed did it twice: from 'Walk On The Wild Side' to that version of 'Soul Man' with Sam Moore in 1987, and then from that to the remix of 'Satellite Of Love' in 2004... and both those solo hits originated from the same album too.

I think quite a few acts have done it with Christmas songs.

Posted by: King Rollo 17th March 2017, 12:16 AM

Sia had a top 10 hit in 2000 with Taken For Granted. Nothing else until Chandelier in 2014. Even if you include being a featured singer,there's still a gap of 10 years between Destiny in 2001 and Titanium in 2011.

Posted by: King Rollo 17th March 2017, 12:22 AM

I've just noticed on the same page as Sia in my book of hit singles,Paul Simon had a gap of nine years from 1977 to 1986 and then a gap of 16 years from 1990 to 2006.

Posted by: zenon 17th March 2017, 12:44 AM

Sparks had a gap of 15 years in the top 40 from Beat The Clock in 1979 to When Do I Get To Sing My Way in 1994.

Posted by: Bjork 17th March 2017, 07:13 AM

Rick Astley in albums
1991-2016

Posted by: The Hit Parade 17th March 2017, 05:10 PM

I realised last night that my second-favourite band ever, XTC, just about did this with 'Senses Working Overtime' in early 1982 and 'The Disappointed' in 1992.

Also, the Stone Roses had that comeback hit last year which was their first Top 40 since the 1999 remix of 'Fool's Gold' or if you don't count that, since 'Begging You' in 1995.

Posted by: Dannyboy 17th March 2017, 05:48 PM

Kylie and spinning around surely

Posted by: The Hit Parade 17th March 2017, 05:51 PM

No, Kylie had hits in 1998 (and most other years in the 90s).

Posted by: M4NG0 17th March 2017, 05:58 PM

How's that even close to a 10 year gap? It was just over 2 years after her last era! (although the media were hyping it up as a big "comeback" single, I'll give you that)

Posted by: Dannyboy 17th March 2017, 06:00 PM

To be fair I didn't read it properly 😂 I just assumed we were talking about comebacks in general and kylies was huge considering where her career was

Posted by: The Hit Parade 17th March 2017, 10:41 PM

The Verve had over ten years between 'Lucky Man' in late 1997 and 'Love Is Noise' in 2008.
Tom Jones had 10 years between 'Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow' in 1977 and 'A Boy From Nowhere' in 1987 - in fact they entered exactly ten years apart so the gap between their T40 runs might have been slightly less, you'd have to check the chart runs.

Posted by: girl_from_oz 17th March 2017, 11:06 PM

Train have had 4 top 40 hits and huge gaps between them, Drops of Jupiter in 2001, Hey Soul Sister in 2009, Drive By in 2012 and now Play That Song in 2017

Posted by: paulgilb 17th March 2017, 11:36 PM

This week Stargate have hit the top 75 for the first time as artists since Easier Said Than Done in 2002 (although they have produced numerous hits in the meantime).

Posted by: Robbie 18th March 2017, 01:08 AM

Some of the acts listed above split up in the period between their singles being hits.

Other acts:

Sham 69 had a number of hits between 1978 and 1980 then nothing until 'Hurry Up England - The People's Anthem' (credited with The Special Assembly) in 2006.

Shaggy had a 10 year gap between his hit in 2005 (and even longer, almost 13 years from his last top 40 hit in 2002) until he made number 38 in 2015 along with Mohombi, Faydee And Costi

Busted had a 12 year gap between their last hit in 2004 and their comeback hit in 2016. Admittedly the comeback hit only reached number 60.

Posted by: The Hit Parade 18th March 2017, 01:20 PM

As did Steps of course.


Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers had two Top 40 hits in 1977, then a third in 1992. Tom Petty had a solo hit in 1989 but of course even that's a gap of more than ten years.
In fact the Travelling Wilburys is almost like a club for people with long gaps: George Harrison had 'When We Was Fab' in 1988 but nothing until the re-release of 'My Sweet Lord' in 2002, and in terms of new tracks, not until 'Any Road' in 2003. Roy Orbison had almost 20 years between 'Penny Arcade' in 1969 and 'You Got It' in 1989. Even Bob Dylan's last two solo hits were in 1978 and 1995 (he also had a Number 41 single in 2010).
Johnny Cash (whose first hit was a Bob Dylan song) had 27 years between 'One Piece At A Time' (1976) and 'Hurt' (2003)

The Kinks had a gap between 'Supersonic Rocket Ship' in 1972 and 'Come Dancing' in 1983.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Elvis had a gap between 'I Can Help' in 1983 and 'Twelfth Of Never' in 1995, though he had several T75 hits in the meantime.


I like this game.

Posted by: 360Jupiter 18th March 2017, 04:36 PM

Maroon 5 surely? Career rejuvenation with their new sound post-Moves Like Jagger.

Also Sean Paul in the UK twice - Got 2 Luv U (#11) followed by She Doesn't Mind (#2), his first top 10 in 2011 since 2005's We Be Burnin', and then Rockabye, Cheap Thrills, and No Lie since that.

A couple of DJ-producers as well - Martin Solveig's two UK hits are 5 years apart, Benny Benassi's UK hits are Satisfaction (2002), Cinema (2011) and Beautiful People (2011), and even David Guetta's first chart hit (Just A Little More Love, 2001) wasn't followed-up until 2006 (Love Don't Let Me Go).

Posted by: Lenny 18th March 2017, 04:46 PM

Just A Little More Love was a hit in the UK in 2003

Posted by: King Rollo 18th March 2017, 07:53 PM

Duane Eddy - 12 years between Lonely Boy Lonely Guitar (1963) and Play Me Like You Play Your Guitar (1975) and then another 11 years to Peter Gunn (1986),a re-recording with the Art Of Noise.

10cc - 17 years between Dreadlock Holiday (1978) and a re-recording of I'm Not In Love (1995).

Posted by: Suedehead2 18th March 2017, 10:29 PM

It has just been announced that Chuck Berry has died

He had a gap of well over seven years between Promised Land (Jan 1965) and the embarrassing My Ding-A-Ling (Oct 1972).

Posted by: Suedehead2 18th March 2017, 10:30 PM

That cost 10CC their place on the very short list of acts with several hits whose final hit topped the chart.

Posted by: The Hit Parade 19th March 2017, 04:56 PM

Maroon 5 never stopped having hits though did they? They've been T40 every year since 2004, except 2006 and 2009.

A couple more big names: Guns N Roses (from Sympathy For The Devil in 1995 to Chinese Democracy in 2008)
Neil Young (his *only* UK Top 40 singles were Heart Of Gold in 1971 and Harvest Moon in 1993)

And a name people might not be so keen to mention these days, but Rolf Harris had an even longer gap between Two Little Boys in 1969-70 and Stairway To Heaven. In fact Led Zep's two T40 hits were 10 years apart in 1997 and 2007, but they weren't new songs.

Oh, and Mike Berry from Are You Being Served? also counts, having had hits in the 60s and then in 1980.

Posted by: Bjork 20th March 2017, 06:28 AM

yes Maroon 5 never went away, they're more of an example of a band that was very popular, lost it, then regained popularity again, which is not easy task either...

Posted by: fiesta 21st March 2017, 01:30 PM

Some good replies to this, thanks.

As a matter of interest, I think the biggest gap between hits goes to Eartha Kitt 1955-1983 (28 years)

Posted by: paulgilb 21st March 2017, 11:09 PM

Terry Wogan had a gap of nearly 31 years between The Floral Dance in January 1978 and Little Drummer Boy/Peace On Earth (as part of BandAged) in December 2008. In 2009 he (along with Aled Jones) was individually credited on the follow-up hit Silver Bells/Me And My Teddy Bear.

Posted by: Suedehead2 22nd March 2017, 09:17 AM

In that case we should also mention that Aled Jones' previous appearance in the top forty was in 1985/6.

Posted by: Rated_F 22nd March 2017, 09:27 AM

J-Lo for sure.

Posted by: gooddelta 22nd March 2017, 09:50 AM

Bobby Helms' Jingle Bell Rock finally charted at Xmas (#71), his first hit since 1958 (58 years!)

Also, the Ronettes charted at #68 with Sleigh Ride at Xmas...their first hit since Do I Love You in 1964 (52 years).

Posted by: fiesta 22nd March 2017, 02:35 PM

Bobby Helm was an old recording of his from 1957 that had failed to chart in UK, and Ronettes recording was originally released by them in 1963.

Posted by: Scene 22nd March 2017, 03:30 PM

Not a massive gap but All Saints made a comeback after 5 years with the top 3 hit Rock Steady.

Justin Timberlake had a 7 year gap between albums.

Posted by: jay727 22nd March 2017, 04:35 PM

Followed by another #1 with Shine, the million selling Rule the World and a near 3 million selling comeback album.