I prefer Victims to Karma Chameleon but including that wasn't an option :lol:

 

 

Such a great album. Black Money, Miss Me Blind, Changing Every Day.

 

Must dig my CD out tomorrow as haven't spun it in years.

Edited September 7, 20204 yr by Crazy Chris

Love scissor sisters love comfortably numb, it challenged the dance song format by adapting a track totally unsuited to be given that treatment, at least on paper. I like music that does something different and by way of bonus it pissed off Pink Floyd fans :lol: the band were heavily 70s in references musical and made it acceptable to give some love to talents that had fallen out of fashion in the ever trendy music biz slagging off and reacting against what had gone before.

 

This track is so obviously elton john in style, ironically better than any of his own largely morose work since he sobered up and forgot about having musical fun. As with karma chameleon its also not the best track on their fab 2nd album, a varied, wondrous and touching thing.

I have no problem with cover versions that are very different from the original. Most of my favourite cover versions fall into that category. Nevertheless, Scissor Sisters' version of Comfortably Numb is awful. Thankfully, most of songs on their first two albums were much better than that.

 

I Don't Feel Like Dancing is certainly more fun than just about anything Elton John has written for himself in a very long time.

I loved Comfortably Numb also, still do! I Don't Feel Like Dancing is probably my favourite of the lot so far, loved it at the time and I still find myself jigging along to it whenever I hear it.

Karma Chameleon is a little bit over rated I think, maybe because I see it as one of these songs in 1983 that kind of marks when new romantic kind of lost its identity and became pure pop. Having said that it is still a good song. 'It's A Miracle' is easily my favourite song from Culture Club.

 

I didn't know Red Red Wine was written by Neil Diamond. It's a sad song on the subject of alcoholism (at least thats how I interpret it) and definitely one of UB40s best singles as they did have some rather cheesy songs later on.

 

Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancing has been overplayed but it is still good. Only The Horses is their best song I think, great song, interesting how its completely different to their earlier hits, they seemed to have gone in a Swedish House Mafia - Save The World style direction for it.

 

When You Were Young by The Killers is very good. Another good track in the top 20 in September 2006 you forgot to mention was David Guetta and The Egg - Love Don't Let Me Go, the futuristic style instrumental of the chorus was in a car advert for a while before I heard the song and I was surprised when I heard it actually form part of an actual song. Cascada were also still top 20 with their debut single although I assume your failure to mention them may have been deliberate :lol:

Edited September 7, 20204 yr by TheSnake

Karma Chameleon is a little bit over rated I think, maybe because I see it as one of these songs in 1983 that kind of marks when new romantic kind of lost its identity and became pure pop. Having said that it is still a good song. 'It's A Miracle' is easily my favourite song from Culture Club.

 

I didn't know Red Red Wine was written by Neil Diamond. It's a sad song on the subject of alcoholism (at least thats how I interpret it) and definitely one of UB40s best singles as they did have some rather cheesy songs later on.

 

Scissor Sisters I Don't Feel Like Dancing has been overplayed but it is still good. Only The Horses is their best song I think, great song, interesting how its completely different to their earlier hits, they seemed to have gone in a Swedish House Mafia - Save The World style direction for it.

 

When You Were Young by The Killers is very good. Another good track in the top 20 in September 2006 you forgot to mention was David Guetta and The Egg - Love Don't Let Me Go, the futuristic style instrumental of the chorus was in a car advert for a while before I heard the song and I was surprised when I heard it actually form part of an actual song. Cascada were also top 20 with their debut single although I assume your failure to mention them may have been deliberate :lol:

The Cascada song was OK, but not as good as the songs I did mention :lol:

Just three acts - The Beatles, Spice Girls and, erm, Ladbaby - have topped the Christmas chart in successive years. The first two had three successive number ones. Ladbaby may yet join them this year. For an act to have a number one single on my birthday in successive years is even more of a rarity. There has been just one occasion when exactly the same act has done this.

 

We have already seen (at number 21) that The Police topped the chart as I entered the final year of my teens. Twelve months later, as I entered my twenties, they were there again with Don’t Stand So Close To Me which finishes at number eighteen here.. The song harks back to Sting’s days as a teacher and the perils of a teacher falling for one of his pupils. Perhaps a rewritten 2020 version would be a hymn to social distancing.

 

By entering at number one on 21 September, The Police did me a double favour. First, they knocked Kelly Marie’s Feels Like I’m In Love off the top. Second, they stopped Randy Crawford warbling her way to the summit with One Day I’ll Fly Away. Feels Like I’m In Love was written by Ray Dorset (of Mungo Jerry) with the intention of offering it to Elvis Presley. Presley’s death put paid to that idea. However, three years after his death Presley was still having posthumous hits. He was in the top ten that week with It’s Only Love / Beyond The Reef. Bob Marey was also in the top ten with what was to become his last hit before his death the following year, No Woman No Cry. Three Little Birds gave Marley a second top forty hit that week.

 

This was another chart with an embarrassment of highlights. Other songs in the top ten included Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust, Baggy Trousers by Madness and Hazel O’Connor’s Eighth Day. Below that in the top forty were Start by The Jam, David Bowie’s Ashes To Ashes, The Clash’s Bankrobber, Stereotype by The Specials and Ian Dury’s I Want To Be Straight. The title of that last one might raise a few eyebrows today. It could certainly have been misconstrued if it had been recorded by either of the bands responsible for the last two songs.

 

Another great police track, it was my fave hit of theirs to date st the time but these days id opt for cant stand losing you, message in a bottle, and especially invisible sun, wrapped around your finger, every breath you take.

Invisible Sun was a really good song. Recognisably by The Police (thanks to Sting's vocals) but also something a bit different.

The song at number seventeen owes its high position largely to sentiment. The very first single I ever bought with my own money was Years may Come, Years May Go by Herman’s Hermits. That song reached number seven in early 1970 so fails to qualify for this list on two counts. The song that does qualify is their only number one, I’m Into Something Good.

 

I’m Into Something Good, written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin (Mr Carole King at the time), was Herman’s Hermits’ debut single. It entered the chart in August 1964 and took six weeks to climb to the top. It got there on my fourth birthday, not that I noticed as I knew nothing of the charts at such a tender age. It replaced The Kinks’ You Really Got Me which had spent the previous two weeks at number one. Had it held on for a third week, it would probably have been in my top ten - and without any sentimental reasons giving it a boost.

 

You Really Got Me dropped all the way to number five that week. It is interesting to note that the three other songs in the top five are all familiar to me now - The Four Seasons’ Rag Doll, Have I The Right by Honeycombs and The Supremes with Where Did Our Love Go. Roy Orbison’s Oh, Pretty Woman and Marianne Faithful’s As Tears Go By were both in the top ten. There was some good stuff elsewhere in the top forty too, including songs from The Beatles (A Hard Day’s Night), the Rolling Stones (It’s All Over Now) and the Beach Boys (I Get Around). Manfred Mann’s Do Wah Diddy Diddy and The Zombies’ original version of She’s Not There (brilliantly covered by Santana in the 1970s) were in the top twenty.

 

Herman’s Hermits went on to have a string of hit singles including Sunshine Girl, Something’s Happening, My Sentimental Friend and There’s A Kind Of Hush which The Carpenters covered successfully. Singer Peter Noone (blue eyes, cheeky grin, wonky teeth and just sixteen at the time of I’m Into Something Good) left in 1971 but the band still exists with drummer Barry Whitwam the only ever-present. I’m Into Something Good spent a fortnight at number one before Oh, Pretty Woman replaced it to give Roy Orbison his second chart-topper of the year.

 

I only knew this song 'I’m Into Something Good' thanks to any Jive Bunny and The Mastermixers song. :lol: It sounds really nice. Their haircut seem very appropriate for 1964 too. ^_^

It is indeed a very 1960s look!

As I am SO much older than you I do remember this ftom the time and still love it. Hermans Hermits were one of my fave pop bands in the 60s and i loved all the listed songs, though you omit the naughty playground version of Sunshine Girl. :lol:

 

Oddly your first single purchase was one I missed being out of the country in 1970, though I know it now I have zero nostalgiac attachment to it, and enjoy it for the jolly jaunty pop romp it is :)

 

My first record was Tommy Roe's Dizzy. I saw Peter Noone at an outdoor lunchtime concert at Epcot Florida in the 90s, still happily jauntily singing his hits. I videod much of it, though he concentrated on his American monster hits, invluding the godawful im henry the 8th, and other tudor themed drivel, and did no uk hits after 1967 that I recall. By that time the USA had moved on....

I'm Henry the 8th was certainly not a highlight of his career!

In 1976 I took my O Levels at the start of the long hot summer which was to become the long hot summer against which all subsequent ones were to be measured. The number one for almost all of the school holidays was Elton John and Kiki Dee’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart. It was Elton John’s seventeenth top forty single (including the original version of Candle In The Wind) but the first to top the chart. At the beginning of September, just as I started A Levels, Abba took over with their third number one of the year with Dancing Queen and that song - number one on my sixteenth birthday - finishes at number sixteen here.

 

Dancing Queen was Abba’s third number one of the year and they all replaced long-running chart-toppers. In January Mama Mia had replaced Bohemian Rhapsody at the top and a great quiz question was born - the lyrics of which number one single did not contain its title but did include the name of the next number one? In May, the former Eurovision winners replaced that year’s winners at number one as Fernando finally toppled Brotherhood Of Man’s Save Your Kisses For Me after six weeks. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart had also spent six weeks at the top.

 

By the time my birthday came round, Dancing Queen was in its third week at the top. Manfred Mann’s brilliant version of Bruce Springsteen’s Blinded By The Light was also in the chart as was Rod Stewart’s The Killing Of Georgie (Sailing was also back for its second go) and Can’s I Want More.

 

Dancing Queen went on to enjoy six weeks at number one, making it Abba’s longest-running chart-topper. It was replaced by Mississippi by Dutch group Pussycat. Dancing Queen was back in the chart sixteen years and was still in the top forty on my 32nd birthday. Will it keep up that progression by being there for my 64th? The famous piano bit at the beginning of the song inspired the introduction to Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army.

 

well, top track to date, that will be hard to beat as my fave of all your birthday chart-toppers, I wont wax lyrical about it as I;ve done it before and I can reveal it's in the all-time top 10 of my Top 800 "Sales" chart-toppers. Shock horror! :o

 

Around about your birthday I was on a geography A level field trip to the Lake District for a few days. I took some awesome black & white photos of the landscape, and fellow classmates, learnt a bit about roche moutonees, drumlins and the like, watched Abba in the hotel lounge as they topped the TOTP chart, and had my bed moved into the middle of my room by the cool lads when my bast*rd room-mate let them in after I'd fallen asleep. Dancing Queen topped my personal chart, and Blinded By The Light was at 2....

Dancing Queen is a great pop song but it's not my favourite Abba number one. It is, though, the only one that qualifies here.

I first heard "I'm Into Something Good" when it was used in a montage in one of my favourite films, The Naked Gun. A nice little pop song that's still a nice listen, even if it is very much of its time.

 

"Dancing Queen" is of course a pop classic. I recently learned that MGMT hid a sample of the song in their song "Time To Pretend", only revealing last year that it was there. Thankfully Benny & Bjorn haven't sued, presumably because they have all the money.

I have to say that in all the times I have heard Time To Pretend (and that's a lot) I haven't spotted Dancing Queen. Of course, a song sampling Time To Pretend will be in the top forty on Friday :lol:

I somehow thought you'd hate ABBA but I'm pleased to be proved wrong! Probably my favourite one so far *.