Especially considering it's 2 superstars going on about being homesick

 

Although Ed Sheeran isn't actually from London unlike Stormzy, which makes it a bit weird when he is singing 'take me back to London' in the song.

Although Ed Sheeran isn't actually from London unlike Stormzy, which makes it a bit weird when he is singing 'take me back to London' in the song.

One of my successes in getting an entry in the Guardian's corrections column was when they suggested that Ed Sheeran was born and bred in Suffolk. He was born in Yorkshire.

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.

 

That was a goodie, well deserving of a top half draw.

 

Re Marley it's sobering to realise he's been dead longer than he was alive. This December we pass that mark for John Lennon too. That was a very bad few months for losing legends.

That was a goodie, well deserving of a top half draw.

 

Re Marley it's sobering to realise he's been dead longer than he was alive. This December we pass that mark for John Lennon too. That was a very bad few months for losing legends.

It's already happened for Elvis as well. Eek!

Closer isn't great, especially the instrumental 'drop' part with cheap sounding computer sounds after the verses.

 

Far from the best for both artists. Halsey's best song so far has been You Should be Sad. Chainsmokers best is Don't Let Me Down, really nice vocal in the verses, I didn't used to find the trap sound effects after the verses a bit jarring compared to the beauty of the rest of the song but now I don't mind it.

Edited August 29, 20205 yr by TheSnake

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.

 

Once punk came along, the market for that sort of song more or less disappeared.

 

 

And disco too of course eroded the market for that sort of song too.

 

Its a decent enough song anyway, it isn't boring at least like some of the other songs you have posted here, reminds me a bit of Sam Cooke I suppose in style of music, and has a good chorus.

 

You've Got A Friend is a good song too, its the type of country music that was apparently popular in the early 70s which again punk made less popular.

 

T Rex Get It On was one of the first glam rock hits certainly, before the main period for the genre from 1973-1975. I prefer their songs 'Children of The Revolution' and especially 'Metal Guru' (my favorite of their songs) but it is still good.

 

Diana Ross I'm Still Waiting is a very nice song.

Edited August 30, 20205 yr by TheSnake

And disco too of course eroded the market for that sort of song too.

 

Its a decent enough song anyway, it isn't boring at least like some of the other songs you have posted here, reminds me a bit of Sam Cooke I suppose in style of music, and has a good chorus.

 

You've Got A Friend is a good song too, its the type of country music that was apparently popular in the early 70s which again punk made less popular.

 

T Rex Get It On was one of the first glam rock hits certainly, before the main period for the genre from 1973-1975. I prefer their songs 'Children of The Revolution' and especially 'Metal Guru' (my favorite of their songs) but it is still good.

 

Diana Ross I'm Still Waiting is a very nice song.

I didn't choose what was going to be number one each year :lol:

Love this record. It was topping the chart when I saw my first Top Of The Pops after being starved of it for 2 years in Singapore. My Aunty Ann had also bought it (15 at the time) - teenage girls had a lot of buying power in those days, when chart position was based on people feeling strongly enough about a record to go out and spend a substantial part of pocket money (or all of it) to buy it, as opposed to let someone else decide what you'd listen to in the background while faffing about on your phone.

 

It's a scene us old gits see every time the grandkids or great-grand-kids come round. Nice to see you, see you again in 2 hours when we leave after youve finished chatting with the less-old-folks. Starts at about 2 years old, and there's no upper age limit :P

Love this record. It was topping the chart when I saw my first Top Of The Pops after being starved of it for 2 years in Singapore. My Aunty Ann had also bought it (15 at the time) - teenage girls had a lot of buying power in those days, when chart position was based on people feeling strongly enough about a record to go out and spend a substantial part of pocket money (or all of it) to buy it, as opposed to let someone else decide what you'd listen to in the background while faffing about on your phone.

 

It's a scene us old gits see every time the grandkids or great-grand-kids come round. Nice to see you, see you again in 2 hours when we leave after youve finished chatting with the less-old-folks. Starts at about 2 years old, and there's no upper age limit :P

We 'ad to trudge to t' record shop in t' snow, even in t' summer, and if t' record shop didn't have what we wanted, that were too bad. We just 'ad to trudge back 'ome in t' snow wi'out it.

We 'ad to trudge to t' record shop in t' snow, even in t' summer, and if t' record shop didn't have what we wanted, that were too bad. We just 'ad to trudge back 'ome in t' snow wi'out it.

 

...an' you were lucky if t'record hadn't warped from t' freezin' cold arctic winds bah time you'd got 'om.

 

(Note: Actually happened to me once :lol: )

...an' you were lucky if t'record hadn't warped from t' freezin' cold arctic winds bah time you'd got 'om.

 

(Note: Actually happened to me once :lol: )

:(

Thirty-five songs down and there’s only been one from the 1960s. At number 25 we finally get the second and it takes us all the way back to my first birthday in 1961. Relatively few Welsh acts have ever had a UK number one single and Shirley Bassey is the only one to have topped the chart at the right time of year to make this list. She became the first Welsh artist to top the chart with As I Love You in February 1959 and got her second chart-topper with Reach For The Stars / Climb Ev’ry Mountain in September 1961, overturning John Leyton’s Johnny Remember Me. The John Leyton song was one of the “death records” which were rather popular at the time. Bassey spent just a week at the top before Leyton’s record returned to the summit.

 

This double a-sided single for Shirley Bassey had an Austrian theme. Reach For The Stars was co-written by an Austrian and Climb Ev’ry Mountain, of course, comes from the musical The Sound Of Music which is set in Austria. The song is sung by the Mother Abbess. In the film, released in 1965, that role is played by Peggy Wood but this song is performed by someone else as Wood was unable to reach the high notes.

 

The chart that week included two versions of Michael Row The Boat Ashore, one by Lonnie Donegan (who was at number one with Gamblin’ Man / Putting On The Style on the day my parents got married) and another (simply called Michael) by The Highwaymen. Also in the chart were Sam Cooke’s Cupid, Billy Fury’s Halfway To Paradise and Ricky Nelson’s rendition of Hello Mary Lou.

 

 

 

You wait ages for a sixties song and then two come along at once with the number 24 from that decade as well. Fast forward to 1967 and, in the year of flower power and all that, Englebert Humperdinck was at number one with The Last Waltz. Forty-five years before he became the bizarre choice to represent the UK at Eurovision he started his career with five successive top three singles. The Last Waltz was the third of these and the second number one after Release Me.

 

The Last Waltz entered the chart in August and took just three weeks to climb to the top. It replaced the more typically 1967 song San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair) by Scott McKenzie. On a similar theme, The Flowerpot Men were in the top five two weeks later in time for my birthday chart.

 

Now, how about this for an “also in the chart line-up? The number two song was Excerpt From ‘A Teenage Opera’ by Keith West, better known as Grocer Jack. We also had the first complete song played on Radio 1, Flowers In The Rain by The Move and The Small Faces’ Itchycoo Park. All of those songs were in the top ten. Outside the top ten we had Massachusetts by the Bee Gees, The Beach Boys’ Heroes And Villains and The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. For the record, both of Englebert Humperdinck’s previous singles were still in the top forty.

 

The Last Waltz spent five weeks at the top before the Bee Gees took over to get their first (of five) number one single. Massachusetts was the last of an extraordinary six-month run of number one singles of which The Last Waltz was probably the weakest. As well as Scott McKenzie’s floral classic, the run also comprised Silence Is Golden by The Tremeloes, Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale and All You Need Is Love.

 

well here's a surprise! My dad had Shirley Bassey albums in the house in the 60's, but no Engelbert though we adored his A Man Without Love. Never would have had these down as being top 30 for you :o :lol:

 

I love the Sound Of Music version of Climb Every Mountain, bit of a showstopper from a film spoilt with great songs, not so much Shirl's version, and Engelbert's is not bad - it reached the dizzy heights of 26 in my weekly retro top 75 charts that I did for 1967 3 years back (but not published here due to assumed lack of interest :lol: ) though of course that means there were at least 25 better tracks during it's chart run that should have topped the chart instead :P

 

 

I quite like Call on Me as a dance song but the video is a little bit too much :lol: I first heard Distant Drums a year or so ago when I was randomly selecting #1s of the past for a playlist, it was decent enough but never fully grabbed me. I liked Closer when it came out but it definitely suffered from being overplayed (and existing in the year of the stagnant chart).

After two songs from the 1960s, it’s back to the 2010s for the song at number 23. It is the highest-placed song by a Canadian in this list and the fourth highest-placed song from the 2010s. Yes, it’s Justin Bieber who was at number one in 2015 with What Do You Mean.

 

Bieber’s career has been, let’s face it, rather a strange one. His early hits were throwaway pop songs such as Baby and Eenie Meenie. Many of us hoped that his appeal would decline once his voice had broken and we could forget he ever existed. However, as boy Bieber gave way to young man Bieber, there was a massive improvement in his musical output.

 

The first big clue that he was developing as a musician came with Where Are U Know on which he was the featured artist with Skrillex and Diplo. After the shock of Bieber putting out a decent song, along came another. What Do You Mean went straight to the top of the chart at the beginning of September, replacing Rachel Platten’s Fight Song. Bieber’s first number one single stayed at the summit for just a week before Sigala’s Easy Love took over. However, the following week it was back at the top and that is the relevant chart here.

 

Among the other songs in the chart that week were The Weeknd’s Can’t Feel My Face, Walk The Moon’s Shut Up And Dance and Shine by Years & Years. What Do You Mean’s second spell at the top lasted a fortnight before Sam Smith toppled him with Writing’s On The Wall. After another week, What Do You Mean became one of very few songs to get a third spell at number one in the same chart run. Its final two-week run was ended by KDA’s Turn The Music Louder which featured Tinie Tempah and Katy B. Later that year Bieber became the first artist in chart history to occupy the top three places in the singles chart and also pulled off the rare feat of replacing himself at number one.

 

A middling track, on a par with The Last Waltz, so that's fair, but neither of them would be in the top half of the draw for me (I expect :lol: give or take some hypothetical terrible terrible shock results still to come, which I'm not expecting)

What Do You Mean is one of Beiber's best songs, much preferable to 'Sorry' which was also a hit during that Beiber era. Its better than the other #1s you mention around at the time; Fight Song and Easy Love (the latter rather like the aforementioned Eric Prydz - Call On Me being a remix of an old song but not as good as Call On Me imo). Turn The Music Louder was also not very good, all three artists on that song have much better songs - Katy B - basically all her debut album, Tinie Tempah - Written In The Stars (one of the best #1s of the 10s I think) and KDA - Human Stone and Just Say.

Edited September 1, 20205 yr by TheSnake