I never saw the film. Maybe that's a good thing :lol:

 

watch it with the sound off - stylish to look at - and just play the soundtrack album over it :lol:

I said at the start that two British bands had two songs in the list. We have already had the two Police songs but the other band has not yet appeared at all. Given that there are still five songs from the 1960s to come, it is not hard to guess that the band in question are The Beatles.

 

The first of the two, at number nine, dates from 1963. According to the Official Charts Company, The Beatles had their first number one in May that year with From Me To You. Other charts compiled at the time put Please Please Me at number one at the start of the year. The next official single was She Loves You and that duly became the band’s second (or third) number one. It entered the chart in August and went to the top in its third week, replacing Bad To Me by another Liverpool band, Billy J Kramer and the Dakotas. It stayed at number one for four weeks meaning it was there for my third birthday.

 

The relevant chart also included two Phil Spector classics - Da Doo Ron Ron and Then He Kissed Me, both by The Crystals. The Shadows were in there with Shindig while two members of that band, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, had a hit of their own with Applejack. The Tremeloes (or Bryan Poole and The Tremeloes as they were at the time) had two songs in the top forty - Twist And Shout and Do You Love Me.

 

The latter Tremeloes song was the one that ended She Loves You’s run at the top. However, the fab four remained in the top three for the next seven weeks. By the end of that seven weeks, yet another Merseyside act, Gerry And The Pacemakers had spent four weeks at number one with You’ll Never Walk Alone. After that, She Loves You returned to the top for a further two weeks before The Beatles replaced themselves when I Want To Hold Your Hand went to number one and stayed there for five weeks. The seven weeks between two runs at number one in the same chart run remains a record.

 

For thirteen years, She Loves You was the best-selling single of all time in the UK. It lost that title in 1977 when the McCartney-penned Mull Of Kintyre / Girls’ School took his band Wings to the top of that long-term chart. That, in turn, gave way to the original Do They Know It’s Christrmas (McCartney was on the 12-inch version) before that gave way to the song at number 49 in this list.

 

As with so many Beatles songs, She Loves You has been recorded by many other artists. Among the more bizarre are The Chipmunks and six spoken word versions by Peter Sellers in various different accents.

 

She Loves You was part of a run of eleven successive number one singles for The Beatles from official releases. One of two unofficial releases that also charted in that run was a version of My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean (simply called My Bonnie on the single) recorded with Tony Sheridan. I first heard that song courtesy of the obscure compilation album that also included the original Sutherland Brothers version of Sailing.

 

Well this one was everywhere in 1963/64, hooooge! Not my fave Beatles track by a long chalk, though I obviously liked it at the time, everyone could sing the chorus. I'll be honest, much as I adore The Fab Four this would be much lower down for me :o

 

Phil Medley was the Twist & Shout writer I think (He wrote A Million To One which Donny Osmond covered, but The Beatles passed on that one :lol: ) but The Beatles link is even stronger, as Billy J's previous hit and Bad To Me were also Lennon/McCartney songs (Billy was a huge fave of mine by 1964's Little Children, part of the Merseyside music scene everyone in Liverpool knew when I lived there in 1965/66, as was Gerry & The Pacemakers who were touring with the Beatles round that time, and all 3 along with Cilla were all Brian Epstein-managed and George Martin-produced, an unheard domination of the singles chart!).

 

I might have been only 5 (nearly 6) but I remember all the big hits of the time as I was an avid viewer of Thank Your Lucky Stars, Jukebox Jury and music, (and British comics, Fireball XL5 and Dr Who) was among my passions. I have since grown out of Fireball XL5 and British comics. Much more mature now, I prefer Thunderbirds and American comics...... :D

Fifty-two songs in and the first major blunder :drama:

Fifty-two songs in and the first major blunder :drama:

 

not so much Major Blunder as Minor Importance! :lol: You could always order a fainting couch, though, I'd loan you mine but I need it more and more often these days. Today's was reading up on Punk Rock bands from a Q book I got given and getting mystifed why they didn't include Prime Time 1979 single in Television's list of singles. It was The Tubes, doh! Letter T faux pas. I swooned stylishly onto the couch :lol:

not so much Major Blunder as Minor Importance! :lol: You could always order a fainting couch, though, I'd loan you mine but I need it more and more often these days. Today's was reading up on Punk Rock bands from a Q book I got given and getting mystifed why they didn't include Prime Time 1979 single in Television's list of singles. It was The Tubes, doh! Letter T faux pas. I swooned stylishly onto the couch :lol:

Yes, but some (very old) people used to call the telly the tube :P

though I obviously liked it at the time, everyone could sing the chorus

 

Yes the chorus is a bit basic of She Loves You (but yes quite memorable though), the verses are more interesting. Good song anyway, and yes the real 60s sound seems to have started in 1963-4 with many of the bands that would have chart success through the rest of the decade debuting on the charts then.

 

 

 

I said at the start that I have tried to use a combination of my thoughts at the time and my later views when ranking these 60 songs. Can’t Get You Out Of My Head is an example of a song that rose a few places because I chose to reassess my original assessment. The next song has gained far more than just a few places.

 

I can’t say for certain when I first heard Freda Payne’s Band Of Gold. I’m not sure whether it was around the time of my tenth birthday, when it was at number one, or some time later. I do know that I didn’t particularly like it. My initial assessment was very wrong, meaning that I have placed the song at number eight. Ten-year-old me (or however old I was when I first heard it) would not have expected it to be the highest-placed song from the 1970s but it is.

 

Band Of Gold was written by one of the all-time great songwriting teams, Holland-Dozier-Holland. Among the songs they can include on their CV are Stop In The Name Of Love, Where Did Our Love Go, How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You and Reach Out I’ll Be There. Band Of Gold was initially published under the collective pseudonym Edythe Wayne as the three writers were involved in a legal dispute with Motown at the time. The musicians on the Freda Payne version of the song included Ray Parker Jr, now best known for the original Ghostbusters theme.

 

Band Of Gold entered the chart at the end of August, climbed thirty places in its second week and took over at number one in its third week. It replaced a Motown classic, Tears Of A Clown by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, a song with both Robinson and Stevie Wonder included in the writing credits. It was still number one the following week in the chart relevant to this thread.

 

Band Of Gold was not the only Holland-Dozier-Holland composition in the chart that week. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas were in there with Jimmy Mack. Also in the top forty were Elvis Presley’s The Wonder Of You, Lola by The Kinks and Dusty Springfield’s version of How Can I Be Sure, David Cassidy’s version of which was at number one just two years later. As it was my tenth birthday, it is worth noting that Ten Years After had a song in the chart.

 

For the last two if its six weeks at number one, Band Of Gold held Deep Purple off the top. Black Sabbath were also in the top five for those two weeks. Freda Payne’s run at number one was ended by Matthews Southern Comfort with their lovely version of the Joni Mitchell-penned Woodstock. After such a stunning start to her chart career, it is somewhat surprising that Payne never had another major hit and didn’t spend as much as a solitary week in the albums chart.

 

Band Of Gold is not a one-hit wonder but is sometimes referred to as one. Deeper and Deeper reached No. 33 at the end of 1970,

Edited September 19, 20204 yr by Crazy Chris

Band Of Gold is not a one-hit wonder but is sometimes referred to as one. Deeper and Deeper reached No. 33 at the end of 1970,

I didn't say it was a one-hit wonder. I said she never had another major hit, which is true.

I didn't say it was a one-hit wonder. I said she never had another major hit, which is true.

 

 

I know you didn't but others have. :)

Classic chart-topper no quibbles from me. I didn't get to hear it properly until 1975-ish, most likely, as part of the 5-Years-ago chart rundowns Radio1 did in those days with THAT bloke hosting. I liked it, but it wasn't an absolute fave initially. I think it's an adult song, and ahead of it's time, the poor dear marrying a man who can't get it up presumably due to being a previously-confirmed bachelor. Like you, it's grown in stature for me with time. Brilliant track!

After the highest placed song of the 1970s, it’s time for the last song from the 1990s. At number seven it is a full 23 places ahead of the second highest song from that decade. The song comes from 1992, the year I went to Pride for the first time. It was the first festival to be designated Europride and was, at the time, a free event.

 

The main act at that Pride event were The Shamen. They weren’t particularly well-known at the time although, by the time the festival came round, they had had a top ten hit with the brilliant Move Any Mountain. They just happened to have a new single to promote and LSI (Love Sex Intelligence) gave them a second top ten hit. It was, though, something of a surprise when their next single, Ebeneezer Goode went to number one in mid-September, toppling Snap’s Rhythm Is A Dancer. It was also a relief as it kept a godawful cover of Baker Street off the top.

 

The following week it held on. Had it not done so, Dr Alban’s It’s My Life would have topped the chart which would have meant no 1990s number one came anywhere near the top 20 in this list. It proved to be yet another birthday chart with a Bob Marley song in it; Iron Lion Zion was in the top ten. Also in the chart were the Manic Street Preachers’ version of the Theme from MASH (a track from a brilliant collection of covers of number one singles to mark the fortieth anniversary of the NME), Suede’s Metal Mickey (their first top forty hit) and Peter Gabriel’s Digging In The Dirt.

 

Ebenezer Goode’s four-week run at the top was probably helped by the publicity generated by the all-too-predictable howls of outrage from certain sections of the press. In particular, they suggested that the line “Ezer Goode, Ezer Goode, Ebenezer Goode” might not just have been about using a shortened form of the name Ebenezer. I don’t know what the fuss was about. Of course Es are good. Writtn Nglish would look rathr odd without thm.

 

The Shamen’s energetic form of dance music that appealed to indie fans was replaced by the soporific Sleeping Satellite by Tasmin Archer.

 

The Shamen were a classic example of a band whose star shone fairly briefly. LSI and Ebenzer Goode were taken from their fifth album, Boss Drum. Only two of the previous four albums reached the top forty and each of them spent just a week there. Boss Drum spent a total of nine weeks in the top ten, peaking at number three, and spawned two further top ten singles. Their remaining three studio albums managed just a single week in the top forty between them.

 

Oh yes! This is a real dance classic :wub:

LOVE Ebeneezer Goode (came out a few months before I was born!), one of the best dance songs of the 90s. Pretty obvious drug references looking back, but eh, you can't deny a song that sounds as big as that whatever it's about.

The remaining six songs, then include four from the 1960s and two from the 1980s. Even anyone who knew nothing of my taste in music before reading this thread will have guessed that the current number one, WAP by Cardi B featuring Meghan Thee Stallion, would not have been challenging the stranglehold of those two decades at the top of this list. The only decision to make would be exactly where in the bottom three to place it.

 

Oh yes! This is a real dance classic :wub:

 

 

LOVE Ebeneezer Goode (came out a few months before I was born!), one of the best dance songs of the 90s. Pretty obvious drug references looking back, but eh, you can't deny a song that sounds as big as that whatever it's about.

Good to see people share the love for Ebenezer Goode :wub:

You have my sympathies with WAP as a Birthday number 1, can't think of a song this year I'd like to have as my birthday number 1 less than that!

Ebeneezer Goode!!!! :wub: I think that is my favourite to feature so far, it’s so addictive! :kink:

Famously number 1 during the BBC's Drug Awareness Week!

 

The lyrics from a previous Top 10 hit “Move Any Mountain” (essentially a Beatmasters remix of 1990 single “Pro›gen”) were used in the wedding vows of Super Hans on Peep Show...