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[BillyH]

The glorious, scorching summer of 2006. A time of big transition in music, technology and telly - legal mp3 downloads were rapidly gaining pace in what was still a predominantly physical CD chart, 'Top of the Pops' was creaking towards its last few episodes and Apple's iPod was selling bucketloads by the season as people upgraded in droves from their old Walkmans to thousands of songs in their pocket. The Sudoku craze filled up most of people's spare time in Britain's newspapers, Myspace looked on course for online and possibly world domination, David Tennant was in his first season as Doctor Who, 'Deal or No Deal' was the unlikely cult gameshow hit of the year and 'The Da Vinci Code' raked it in at the movie box-office. And I was a skinny, socially-awkward seventeen year old a world away from the skinny, socially-awkward twenty-seven year old I am today.

The chart announced on Sunday 11th June sees a whole host of mid-noughties classics intermingling with forgotten one-hit wonders, TV tie-ins and a ton of novelty tracks that have barely been heard since, and despite being only a decade ago I might have trouble tracking some of them down to hear them as Youtube was only a few months old at the time. But let's crack on with the first lot of the chart and positions 40 to 11...

40: Orson - NO TOMORROW

Kicking off with a track that probably needs no introduction as the former #1 from March was still just in the top 40, infamous for being the lowest-selling weekly #1 to this day but ultimately selling pretty well for the time, 200k and the 12th biggest-seller of the year. It's really not deserving of its weekly statistic as this is an absolute noughties anthem in my mind, hugely evocative of my late teens and I feel that when the big Noughties Revival starts in a few years this is gonna get way more love and airplay than it currently does. To listen to their full album 'Bright Idea', go into your nearest charity shop where you'll almost certainly see it for 50p or so on the shelf - seriously, this one's as common as the back catalogue of the Sugababes.

39: Hope of the States - SING IT OUT

Hope of the Who?! Two tracks in and already we reach a song I'm unfamiliar with, turns out they were an indie group who had few hits in the mid-noughties, their highest-charter being #15. This was their last top 40 appearance as they split a few months later, and it's typical indie of the era really although there's some nice moments in it. Feels like a grower.

38: The Kooks - NAIVE

I didn't know this one was theirs! Big radio hit that peaked at #5 and I've heard this plenty of times since, a huge chart run that saw it in the top 75 for months and two weeks after this chart it was back in the top 30. It's alright although 'She Moves In Her Own Way' is my fave of theirs, the follow-up to this that peaked at #7.

37: talkSPORT Allstarts - WE'RE ENGLAND (TOM HARK)

Sigh. This isn't the only one of these we're gonna hear, just to warn you - 2006 was the year the 'football song' reached saturation point, virtually everyone and their frog being dragged into the studio to attempt to record a new Three Lions or World In Motion. It was the World Cup in Germany and hopes, as ever, were high that all the years of hurt - 40 by now - would be over and England would lift the trophy once more. And indeed this was the last time England performed well in a world cup, reaching the quarter finals which they didn't come near to in 2010 or 2014 and that might be a reason why football songs, other than the established classics, died a death after this. But in '06 absolutely everyone had a go and this was radio station's talkSPORT's effort, a rewrite of 'Tom Hark' with "We're En-ger-land! All stand up!" and other vaguely football-related lyrics shouted over the top. It's painful, but there is a certain charm that something like this could actually reach the UK top 40. The video's on youtube for added cringe factor.

36: Shayne Ward - NO PROMISES

The 2005 X-Factor winner with the first follow-up to winners song That's My Goal, not just peaking at #2 here but an unexpectedly big hit overseas - top 5 in Sweden, top 20 in Norway and massive on Brazilian and Lebanese radio. The sixteenth biggest seller of the year, I barely remember it from the time and while it's not too offensive a listen it's not great.

35: Duncan James - SOONER OR LATER

As in that bloke from Blue. He'd started off quite well with duet 'I Believe My Heart' reaching #2 in late 2004, so with this being the lead release from his debut album you could be forgiven for thinking this was gonna do well. #35 was the best it got, and that does seem a bit unfair - yeah it's a little anonymous but it didn't deserve to flop that badly. Particularly as, like Shayne above, Europe absolutely loved it - a big hit in various parts of the continent, but the UK turned up its noses. Oh well, Eurovision was only five years away...

34: Michael Jackson - EARTH SONG

Yep, that one. Re-issued as part of a CD re-release campaign like Elvis the year before, at about the former King of Pop's lowest point where his career was all but over after damaging - and bankrupting - court cases. In these early download days, most of the re-releases did quite well and made top 20, 'Billie Jean' even getting #10, but by now we were reaching the end of them and this was one of the lowest re-issue peakers, the massive #1 of Christmas 1995 so many probably already owned it. Overblown as it is, I've always liked this one and I listened to it a lot after his 2009 death when it did feel quite poignant.

33: Orson - BRIGHT IDEA

They're back with single #2! And this one I don't remember - it peaked at #11. Nowhere near the instant-hit sound of No Tomorrow, this is a little more leftfield and leaves me cold unfortunately. They did well though, two more top 30 hits would follow before they quietly split.

32: Sugababes - FOLLOW ME HOME

I thought the OCC had made a mistake for a second as I hadn't heard of this one at all, but it did exist and was their lowest-charting single, peaking here on its first week. The single mix was re-recorded from the original album version, replacing the vocals of departed Mutya Buena with new Sugababe Amelle. Didn't get great reviews and I can kinda hear why, bogstandard album track with some ok moments but not really single material.

31: Christina Milian/Young Jeezy - SAY I

I'd forgotten she was still having hits this late, it continued her unbroken top 10 run by peaking at #4 although this is the last worldwide hit she had - s collaboration with some Australian DJs took her top 5 in that country in 2013. Some of her songs are great - 'When You Look At Me' and 'Dip It Low' especially are early noughties R&B classics - but this is really run of the mill stuff, coming and going without leaving much of an impression on me.

30: Trinidad & Tobago Tartan Army - SCOTLAND SCOTLAND JASON SCOTLAND

Yeah, this needs some explanation. Jason Scotland was part of the Trinidad & Tobago World Cup team, but played, amusingly, for a Scottish football team - and with Scotland the country out of the World Cup, but Scotland the player in, a Scottish radio station made a comedy-reggae song hailing him as Scotland's "representative" in the Cup - it's as wacky as it sounds, but I can't really knock it as it struck so much of a chord with people that, in the Scottish Singles Chart, THIS WAS THE NUMBER ONE SINGLE THAT WEEK - beating every other song we're about to see!! It sold enough to just make top 30 in the UK despite, I imagine, almost no one buying this south of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Fair play and it's kinda fun that something this mad was a UK top 30 hit - it's actually rather catchy, much more effort put into it than most of the other football songs that year that just rewrote an old song.

29: Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Dani California

Back to normality with, finally, one I actually remember from the time! A memorable video showing the 'Peppers performing in different 'eras' of time, from 1950s rockabilly to present day, and being the first single from their new album it went top 10 virtually everywhere, #2 in the UK. Not up there with the best of Chilli singles but many a time did I blast this out in the hot summer weather that year, so lots of nostalgia points for this.

28: Beatfreakz - SOMEBODY'S WATCHING ME

The '80s looped house' dance craze was still very much at its peak, to the horror of all wanting something more to bop to than a three-second sample repeated over a generic house beat over and over again, but this was one of the better ones, a big radio and top 10 hit and another hot summer memory. The original Rockwell hit this was taken from famously featured Michael Jackson singing the chorus, the same section that's used here - so either they got a impersonator to re-record it or had to pay a hell of a lot of money to the MJ estate, I can't work out whether it's the original sample or not but they sound very similar.

27: Mariah Carey feat. Snoop Dogg - SAY SOMETHIN'

Two stars who'd enjoyed a major commercial comeback in the last year or two unite here, although by now the Neptunes-produced track was well over a year old as the final single release from Mariah's The Emancipation of Mimi album, hence it's low chart peak as surely everyone had the album by now. Usual R&B falling in the Average pile, and joins the million other 'Say Something' songs I often get confused by over who sings what - Karen Harding's song playing on Spotify for me straight after this.

26: Ordinary Boys/Lady Sovereign - NINE2FIVE

After appearing on January's Celebrity Big Brother series, Preston and his band The Ordinary Boys were suddenly hot news after most had gone "Who?" on his entry to the house. A re-issued 'Boys Will Be Boys' had peaked at #3, while this was a 2005 solo Lady Sovereign song remixed to feature Preston and the 'Boys and continued their chart success by reaching #6. Both songs are great, although god knows what Miss Sovereign is actually rapping about with one of the few clear lines referring to Katie Price's breasts. The Ordinary Boys could have carried on at least another couple years, but Preston screwed it up early in '07 by storming off the set of BBC's 'Never Mind the Buzzcocks' after Simon Amstell said some jokes. Obscurity followed almost immediately, and a lesson to all emerging popstars that, for the love of god, don't lose your sense of humour when you're heading to the top.

25: Lordi - HARD ROCK HALLELUJAH

It's one of those "Where were you when" moments. VE Day. The fall of the Berlin Wall. And Lordi appear on the Eurovision Song Contest. The Finnish heavy metal group decked out in monster costumes caused a sensation when they spectacularly won the contest with the maddest song in the show's history, a rock stomper unlike any Eurovision song before and gave Finland, finally, their first ever win. The UK took to it enough for it to chart top 30, a fantastic achievement for the time and the first Eurovision winner to go top 40 in the UK since 1999. The Eurovision "renaissance" (Rybak, Loreen etc) was still a few years away at the time so big credit to Lordi for standing out from the crowd and giving everyone one hell of a classic Eurovision moment.

24: Rihanna: SOS

Mad to think now that this was only her third big hit, and in these pre-'Umbrella' days I don't think many expected her to end up one of the biggest stars of both that decade and the next. Charting at #2, it used the melody of Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love' cover but in a way that worked really well, a song that stood proudly on its own and evoking both it's 80s-throwback past while also sounding nicely current. A gleaming 2006 pop gem.

23: Nerina Pallot - EVERYBODY'S GONE TO WAR

Singer-songwriter who had a couple of hits but this was by far the biggest, peaking at #14. An anti-war protest song written at the peak of the Iraq War, it's ok. Standard fare for the genre.

22: LL Cool J ft Jennifer Lopez - CONTROL MYSELF

God I was obsessed with this one, I wasn't a huge R&B fan but this completely won me over and I played it tons over that summer. It's all about that bubbling, twitchy backing track which fits the stop-start nature of the song and sounded glorious in the hot weather, and then there's that infamous "Zizizizizi! Zizizi! Zizizizizizizi!" lyric section which sounds like Mr J just gave up writing lyrics for the last bit of the song and starts improvising, J-Lo going along with it. Noughties R&B at its weirdest best.

21: Ronan Keating & Kate Rusby - ALL OVER AGAIN

Ronan was having hits this late? Turns out this was his last top 10 in this country (#6) and his penultimate top 40 ("Iris" went #15 just after this), helped by being the lead single from his new album. Usual textbook ballad fare, but I do like Kate Rusby's voice - her only top 100 singles chart appearance but plenty of albums.

20: The Streets - NEVER WENT TO CHURCH

Back when half-talking half-singing in a vaguely cockney accent was chart gold, Mike Skinner was briefly one of the biggest musicians in the country when 'Fit But You Know It' and 'Dry Your Eyes' were two massive singles of summer 2004. By '06 he was on his third album, another UK #1 but single success faded quickly and while lead release 'When You Wasn't Famous' hit #8, this one only just scraped top 20. He's made some fantastic tracks over the years, especially on the (brilliant!) Original Pirate Material album, this one's a tribute to his deceased father and goes for the Dry Your Eyes approach of strings and singalong choruses. I prefer the more dancey, less chart-friendly stuff.

19: Busta Rhymes - TOUCH IT

The best type of US R&B - the "What the hell?!" weird stuff - that manages to be completely mental and disjointed but irresistible to listen to, I prefer the original that inspired this (Daft Punk's 'Technologic') but this was a deserved megahit for Busta.

18: Depeche Mode - JOHN THE REVELATOR/LILIAN

Still guaranteed top 20 hits as recently as a decade ago, more of the same dark synthpop for the Mode men in this double A-side. 'John the Revelator' is the more obviously commercial single, 'Lilian's a little more experimental - both feel kinda albumy and neither megahit potential.

17: Primal Scream - COUNTRY GIRL

Another legacy act doing well in the late CD age in a way that would be much tricker in the download/streaming age (I dunno though, the Stone Roses aren't doing too badly), I quite like this country-themed track - not something I'd have noticed as a seventeen year old as I'd have had no idea who they were. But really it's Screamadelica these guys are gonna be remembered for, 'Rocks' at a push.

16: The Feeling - FILL MY LITTLE WORLD

Whereas THIS rocked my - indeed - world at the time, a band I do feel sorry for as they only seemed to be sneered at these days for what's seen as bland, overly-commercial indie-pop, but everything they released was GOLD in my book and this is absolutely their pinnacle, a wonderful pop track that, again, conjures up hot summer mid-noughties days and will be up there with Orson's 'No Tomorrow' when the noughties revival kicks off. Seeing them live at V Festival 2012 was a brilliant moment - they may have been buried away in the early afternoon, causing them to make self-depreciating jokes about becoming "old gits" as they performed to a criminally small audience, but I sang along with every word of every hit.

15: Stan Boardman - STAN'S WORLD CUP SONG

Oh christ. 70s comedian Stan Boardman sings some nonsense about the Germans "bombing our chippy" and "singing Ai Ai Ippi Ippi Ippi Ai" and charts ridiculously high. Just think, this outsold every song that week in this thread so far. Amazingly it's available on Spotify, as is a 2010 remake which I can't bring myself to listen to.

14: Morrissey - THE YOUNGEST WAS THE MOST LOVED

Smiths frontman with another solo hit, two years after releasing one of the best songs of the decade with 'First Of The Gang'. More melodic sing-along pop of what you'd expect from him, just not as good.

13: Tonedef Allstars - WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE KIDDING JURGEN KLINSMANN?

Another (bloody) football song, this was The Sun's "contribution" and features Frank Bruno ("Watch out, we're gonna knock you out!") and some old geezers covering the theme from Dad's Army with rewritten lyrics. The original of course, is about "Mr Hitler". This is about a German footballer. THEY REWROTE A SONG ABOUT HITLER TO BE ABOUT A FOOTBALLER. Jurgen himself was, understandably, pissed off. This actually happened. This existed.

12: Oakenfold feat. Brittany Murphy - FASTER KILL PUSSYCAT

Yeah I really didn't like this back then, I was kinda horrified tbh as DJ Paul Oakenfold had done what I now call a "Tiesto 2014" and switched from incredible euphoric dance anthems to mainstream pop nonsense like this. But listening again now, maybe that's a little unfair, it's great to hear a mid-noughties dance track that isn't looped 80s house for once. And poor Brittany, she was beautiful and could have had a whole pop career ahead of her with the right material, but three years later she died at the age of 32. Still sad to think about.

11: Crazy Frog - WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS (DING A DANG DONG)

The Crazy Frog is simply one of those things we're gonna have to accept happened, but what's often forgotten is that they kept up the hype for a whole year and a half - 'Axel F' was over 12 months old and the frog was still getting big hits that would continue until Christmas. Again the World Cup's to blame here, a Europop remake of - oh jesus no - Queen's 'We Are The Champions' with the frog ding-dang-a-donging over the top throughout. THIS HAPPENED. THIS EXISTED. It's so offensive it does actually become weirdly awesome to listen to, especially when THE RAP STARTS OH MY ACTUAL WHAT.