That Mel B track is indeed rubbish. I’d rank that last out of everything you’ve revealed so far

The next song, at number 50, is responsible for coining the phrase Stevie Wonder Syndrome where a talented singer-songwriter achieves his greatest chart success with some utter dross. The man born Stevland Judkins has given the world classics such as Isn’t She Lovely, Sir Duke and Signed, Sealed Delivered I’m Yours (as well as Pastime Paradise on which Gangsta’s Paradise was based) but his only solo number one in the UK was I Just Called To Say I Love You in 1984.

 

In my early days as a music fan I had heard songs like Uptight (Everything’s Alright) and For Once In My Life. They were later joined by Superstition and You Are The Sunshine Of My Life, all classic songs. Nevertheless, I was a contrary so-and-so as a teenager which meant that the hype surrounding the release of Songs In The Key Of Life in 1976 (his first album for two years) made me determined not to like it. The more of it I heard, the more I had to accept that it was worthy of the hype.

 

He released a number of sub-standard singles in the 1980s but nothing prepared the world for the horror that was I Just Called To Say I Love You. Many of us looked on aghast as it entered the chart at number three in August before climbing one place in each of the next two weeks and settling in for six weeks at number one. It replaced George Michael’s Careless Whisper but Michael eventually got his revenge as Wham’s Freedom was the song that finally rid us of this embarrassment to Stevie Wonder’s career.

 

If it had been released by an unknown, it might just about have been seen as “pleasant, if a little dull”. Had it somehow got to number one, it might even have featured slightly higher in this list. However, I can’t help but mark it down because of how it compares to so much of Wonder’s back catalogue.

 

Among the other songs in the chart in my birthday week were Ray Parker Jr’s Ghostbusters (at number two), Depeche Mode’s Master And Servant and Giorgio Moroder and Phil Oakey’s Together In Electric Dreams.

 

I've decided that I'm going to periodically rank your birthday number ones also! So far, my favourite is your least favourite :lol:

 

Black Box - Ride On Time

Fugees - Ready Or Not

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up

Simply Red - Fairground

Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Boom! Shake The Room

Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha

Whigfield - Saturday Night

JT & ONJ - Summer Nights

Stevie Wonder - I Just Called To Say I Loved You

Mariah Carey & Westlife - Against All Odds

Mel B - I Want You Back

I've decided that I'm going to periodically rank your birthday number ones also! So far, my favourite is your least favourite :lol:

 

Black Box - Ride On Time

Fugees - Ready Or Not

Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up

Simply Red - Fairground

Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince - Boom! Shake The Room

Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha

Whigfield - Saturday Night

JT & ONJ - Summer Nights

Stevie Wonder - I Just Called To Say I Loved You

Mariah Carey & Westlife - Against All Odds

Mel B - I Want You Back

I'm sure that will change :D

The Mel B/Missy Elliott song isn't great. Mel C - I Turn To You (Hex Hector remix) was the best of the solo Spice Girls songs in my opinion. Perfect 10 I remember a lot from when I was younger on the radio, although thankfully 6 year old me didn't realise that some of the lyrics were rude in it at the time.

 

Yes I Just Called is nice enough but yes a bit boring, the video of Steve Wonder holding a telephone the whole way through the song while singing it is iconic though.

Edited August 5, 20204 yr by Hissjack

A big Stevie Wonder fan, I was one of the million or so people deliberately annoying you by buying I Just Called... :lol: We did it on purpose!

 

I can't speak for everyone else but a solo number one was long overdue, and this was at least better than Ebony & Ivory (for which he wasnt to blame), so it was kind of gratifying to see him there and it was pretty catchy and tuneful for the first few weeks. And then it wouldnt go away and has become an ever-present minor annoyance. Another one of those songs I don't choose to play. My Aunty still loves it though, did her a CD of Stevie's Greatest Hits last year, putting this one track 1 :D

 

If I were rating them all, ahead of Mel B, Westlife & Pussycat Dolls, and behind the rest, so not too far from dandy's rating list :D

It took Stevie Wonder sixteen years from his debut hit to get his first solo number one. It took the next act even longer. There was a full nineteen-and-a-half years between Elton John’s first hit in 1971 and his first solo chart-topping single in 1990. That song, though, is not the one that finishes at number 49 here. It is the one that topped the chart another seven years later, in 1997. Yes, it’s Candle In The Wind.

 

Officially, Candle In The Wind was a double a-side with Something About The Way You Look Tonight but it’s fairly clear which song people were actually buying so I have judged this number one purely on that song.

 

The original version of Candle In The Wind, about Marilyn Monroe, reached number eleven in 1974 and a live version got to number five in 1988. It was, though, the version rewritten for the funeral of Princess Diana in 1997 that topped the chart for five weeks and became the best-selling single of all time in the UK. In a sense, we got off lightly, It spent fourteen weeks at number one in the USA and a mind-boggling 46 weeks in Canada.

 

The original version is a decent song but the re-written one was horribly saccharine and massively over-played. That’s why it only just scrapes into the top 50. It replaced The Verve’s The Drugs Don’t Work at the top and was replaced by The Spice Girls’ Spice Up Your Life which didn’t really represent much of an improvement.

 

If the driver of that car in Paris had been rather more careful, the top three in my birthday week would potentially have been exceptionally good. Number two that week, missing out on a deserved number one, was Dario G’s Sunchyme, Chumbawamba's Tubthumping was at three and The Drugs Don’t Work was at four. Sunchyme would have been in, or very close to, the top ten.

 

I love Elton. This peaked at 17 in my charts. For Something About The Way You Looked Tonight. OK, hands up, I can't stand this song. I bought the single, for a good cause, the country was all emotional at the shock of Diana dying so suddenly, and I felt for Elton when he sang it, & her boys at the funeral. But I don't ever want to hear it again. I marginally liked the original version in 1974, it was a mildly touching album track tribute to Marilyn Monroe, but I was aggrieved that we in the UK had to put up with Elton's worst-ever single by a country mile at that point, worse than Honky Cat and Step Into Christmas, while the USA got the sublime B side Bennie & The Jets and took it to the very top. I bought it that time too - for the B side.

 

I'd just about got over that to not be annoyed by the live version being a hit all over again, and quite liking it until it this version came out and it was the final nail in the errr coffin for any version of the song. I'd rather hear the Mariah/Westlife song, at least you can laugh at how bad it is. Last place!

We move on, then, to number 48 and it is the most recent song in the list so far. It comes from the man whose latest number one happened just last month - Mr Jason Derulo. Derulo reached number one in 2010 with In My Head in 2010 and topped the chart again three years later with Don’t Wanna Go Home. The one pertinent to this list, though, is Talk Dirty which went straight to number one in September 2013. As well as being Derulo’s third number one, it was a first (and, so far, only) chart-topper for featured artist 2 Chainz.

 

Talk Dirty took over from Katy Perry’s Roar at the top of the chart. As it is one of Perry’s better songs, it would have finished significantly higher than number 48 if it had managed to hold on for a third week at the top. The top ten that week included two Avicii songs including the brilliant Wake Me Up and Macklemore’s Same Love. Further down the top forty we had Arctic Monkeys’ Do I Wanna Know and Why D’You Only Call Me When You’re High, Bastille’s Things We Lost In The Fire, Daft Punk’s Get Lucky and Chvrches’ The Mother We Share.. Overall, it was a decent top forty. It’s just a shame about the song at the top.

 

After two weeks at number one, Talk Dirty was replaced by OneRepublic’s Counting Stars which had taken nine weeks to climb to the summit.

 

I had to play this one to be reminded of it, I didn't chart it, yet ol Jase has still managed to muster enough entries in my charts to qualify for the Greatest Hits (12 of 13), though it's been a decade since he had a top 10 (and managed that only once). It's still instantly forgettable, not worthy of hate, not worth buying. Third worst so far.

Now there's one I was following the charts for! Pretty dreadful song indeed, like most of his material. Though there were some great songs in that top 40 indeed.

 

So far, I like/kinda like most of these, though I do agree with you on Against All Odds (woeful) and Candle in the Wind (I like the original, but this is so overly-sentimental and cheesy, I was very young at the time so I never quite appreciated the sentiment).

I had to play this one to be reminded of it, I didn't chart it, yet ol Jase has still managed to muster enough entries in my charts to qualify for the Greatest Hits (12 of 13), though it's been a decade since he had a top 10 (and managed that only once). It's still instantly forgettable, not worthy of hate, not worth buying. Third worst so far.

It's one of the songs I had to listen to again as a reminder. I didn't make it to the end :(

Yes the original Candle In The Wind is better I think. Rewriting of songs for new scenarios rarely work as well as the original. Sunchyme by Dario G and Stay by Sash! and Le Trec are both great dance songs that were kept off the #1 by Candle In The Wind 1997.

 

Talk Dirty isn't great. I would say that Ridin' Solo is a better song from Jason Derulo.

Edited August 6, 20204 yr by Hissjack

Talk Dirty's no classic but it is my fave of this most recent bunch.

For a song that's supposedly the biggest of all time, I haven't actually heard Candle in the Wind a lot [and having only been a few weeks old when that version came out, I didn't hear it at the time] and it's mostly been the original that I hear too. not complaining though, I'm not a fan either.

Back in 1974, Kung Fu films (some of them starring Bruce Lee) were very popular. Their popularity led to an American television programme, Kung Fu, which was also shown in the UK. Early teenage me wasn’t at all interested in any of it. That meant that a song called Kung Fu Fighting was not likely to appeal to me either. It didn’t.

 

The song was written and performed by Jamaican singer Carl Douglas and it was a big hit in much of the Anglophone world. As well as being a UK number one, it also topped the chart in the USA, Canada and Australia. Wikipedia claims it popularised disco music which is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch. It comes in at number 47 in this list.

 

It went to number one in mid-September, replacing the Osmonds’ slushy Love Me For A Reason, and stayed there for three weeks (my birthday week being the second of those) before being toppled by Annie’s Song by John Denver.

 

Also in the top forty that week were Jimmy Ruffin’s What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted, Silly Love by 10CC and David Bowie’s version of Knock On Wood. The chart was littered with songs with a distinctly seventies sound. Among others we had The Stylistics’ You MAke Me Feel Brand New, Sweet Sensation’s Sad Sweet Dreamer and You Little Trustmaker by Tymes.

 

Carl Douglas had two other top forty hits, including Dance The Kung Fu, and then returned to the chart in 1998 with a new version of Kung Fu Fighting.

 

Awww poor Carl! :D It's not the greatest chart-topper in the world, but a bit of a party anthem anyway. Happily I rather loved kung-fu-related product, having spent 2 years in Singapore, and Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon was on my bedroom wall for a few years, popularising tight trackies and posing topless - I'd also liked him in The Green Hornet. I bought the David Carradine series one boxset about 10 years back and only managed to get a few episodes in - not that it's bad (it's well-made) but it's just so ponderous by today's standards :lol: Carl had a much better hit with Run Back, a Billy Ocean-styled Motown-wannabe pop song. He just didn't look the same without that bandana though. He didn't invent disco though, that's rubbish. There were disco records around in the late 60's, and you could argue all Sound Of Philadelphia hits were disco, and not least Barry White or The O'Jays. As a movement though, it's generally accepted the cornerstone was George McCrae's Rock Your Baby, which topped the UK chart during a period when Top Of The Pops was off-air and disco started to become a big thing, and before Biddu had a go at the British version of disco via this record and Tina Charles hits. So that's KC & his Sunshine Band then (who WAS Rock Your Baby), closely followed by Gloria Gaynor as the original Queen of Disco.

 

Your birthday chart-topper in my personal chart was The Tango's Over by Mick Robertson. Yes, the Magpie presenter. (Magpie was a kids show aimed at nicking Blue Peter's audience, but a bit cooler). Still got the picture sleeve single, take a listen - preferable to Kung Fu Fighting? :lol: That was replaced at the top of my charts by Tubular Bells (the whole album, which qualified because it was one long track).

 

 

On, then, to number 46. Black Eyed Peas’ first two albums yielded a grand total of zero big hit singles between them. With their third album, Elephunk, they had a change in fortune. They, no doubt, felt that the change was for the better; I begged to differ. The lead single, Where Is The Love went to number one in the UK (and elsewhere), becoming the first of five number ones. The ego that is will.i.am has had a further five chart-toppers as a solo artist.

 

Where Is The Love went to number one in early September 2003 and was in its third (of six) weeks at the top by the time my birthday came round. The song knocked Elton John’s Are You Ready For Love from the summit, preventing Dido’s White Flag entering at number one. Where Is The Love was eventually toppled in mid-October by Sugababes’ Hole In The Head.

 

The chart in my birthday week was not exactly brimming with top tunes. White Flag was at number three and was easily the best song in the top ten that week. Outside the top ten we had Chemical Brothers and Flaming Lips with the wonderful The Golden Path, Placebo’s Special Needs and White Stripes’ version of the Dusty Springfield hit I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself. Also in the chart was the Rolling Stones’ Sympathy For The Devil which had become their first top twenty hit for eight years.

 

Another one I like. I Gotta Feeling that any of the Black Eyed Peas chart-toppers would make you go Boom Boom Pow! Meet Me Halfway and agree that Had The Time Of My Life thing was not an improvement on Bill Medley & Jennifer Warnes? :P

 

 

I'm afraid I've never got the appeal of Black Eyed Peas.

I really dislike Where Is The Love also, happy to see it out early. I can see their appeal, it’s just one that I find appealing myself!