You should still do it just for fun though!

 

I am considering doing a birthday #1s rundown too but given I have an early February birthday you will all be fearing the 2008 entry will be top of mine!

 

I am tempted cos I'm curious just how bad I'm imagining it will be vs the reality :lol:

 

I may nick Suedey's idea when he's finished his rundown, then he can share in the love for Mr Blobby, and so on :lol:

Distant Drums was a huge family favourite at the time, my grandparents loved Jim Reeves, my parents loved Jim Reeves, and I loved Distant Drums, gentle and warm but also very very sad that he was dead, it had a tinge of pathos that is lost on anyone too young at the time, (like you, you youngster!) but the mood was very much "it's like Jim knew he was about to die suddenly". How popular he was can be seen by the sheer number of posthumous hits he had right through to 1973, almost a decade after he died.

 

Of course he started the trend set by Buddy Holly, where spending time dead was a successful career move in the music biz, and most recently taken up by a seemingly endless list of rappers looking for inventive ways to boost their profile before they hit 25. If that seems unsympathetic, I'd suggest to the current crop of upcoming youngsters that they don't do: drugs, guns, fights, alcohol, prescription drugs, overwork, light aircraft, and try the old-fashioned way to music success, by continuing to release good music over a lifetime and avoiding all that shit.

 

 

Distant Drums was a huge family favourite at the time, my grandparents loved Jim Reeves, my parents loved Jim Reeves, and I loved Distant Drums, gentle and warm but also very very sad that he was dead, it had a tinge of pathos that is lost on anyone too young at the time, (like you, you youngster!) but the mood was very much "it's like Jim knew he was about to die suddenly". How popular he was can be seen by the sheer number of posthumous hits he had right through to 1973, almost a decade after he died.

 

Of course he started the trend set by Buddy Holly, where spending time dead was a successful career move in the music biz, and most recently taken up by a seemingly endless list of rappers looking for inventive ways to boost their profile before they hit 25. If that seems unsympathetic, I'd suggest to the current crop of upcoming youngsters that they don't do: drugs, guns, fights, alcohol, prescription drugs, overwork, light aircraft, and try the old-fashioned way to music success, by continuing to release good music over a lifetime and avoiding all that shit.

Or, like Hotblack Desiato, you could spend a year dead for tax reasons.

It depends on the treatment, I'm not against cover versions as such, just banal ones :lol: (I'm afraid I don;t recall the covers of Out Of Touch or Falling Stars, I'll just look up in my A to Z... :lol: Out Of Touch Hall & Oates peaked at 2, Uniting nations peaked at 73, oops! :D Falling Stars, the original was top 10, the cover hit 60. At least I'm consistent! :lol:

 

Indeed. There were two remixes of Falling Stars making the charts in 2005 plus also Mylo In My arms which also sampled the orginals onmg (together with the melody from Bette Davis Eyes).

 

Speaking of 00s dance covers I'm guessing Heaven by DJ Samuel _{(he should have used this more sensible name!)}was a flop in your chart too? :unsure:

Edited August 21, 20205 yr by Flopiday

Or, like Hotblack Desiato, you could spend a year dead for tax reasons.

 

Yes :) Though if they were to revisit the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe these days it would be populated entirely by a solar system of artificial planets full of Doctor Who's showing off the end of everything to their new assistants, now it's been re-written as a billion-year run of The Doctor's since Gallifreyians were made near-immortal by the Other-Universe Child aka as The Doctor. :lol:

Indeed. There were two remixes of Falling Stars making the charts in 2005 plus also Mylo In My arms which also sampled the orginals onmg (together with the melody from Bette Davis Eyes).

 

Speaking of 00s dance covers I'm guessing Heaven by DJ Samuel _{(he should have used this more sensible name!)}was a flop in your chart too? :unsure:

 

I liked Mylo's stuff, Need You Tonite hit 3, Doctor Pressure 10, In My Arms 47. DJ Sammy did quite well at 24 in my charts, Boys Of Summer 19 :)

Yes :) Though if they were to revisit the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe these days it would be populated entirely by a solar system of artificial planets full of Doctor Who's showing off the end of everything to their new assistants, now it's been re-written as a billion-year run of The Doctor's since Gallifreyians were made near-immortal by the Other-Universe Child aka as The Doctor. :lol:

Well the fifth Doctor was on the menu at said restaurant :P

Well the fifth Doctor was on the menu at said restaurant :P

 

So he was! I'd forgotten that.... :D

So he was! I'd forgotten that.... :D

And, of course. the fifth Doctor's ex-wife was in it too.

And, of course. the fifth Doctor's ex-wife was in it too.

 

I always had a soft spot for Sandra Dickinson, so likeable :)

Time for another surprise now as I’m sure many people would have expected the song at number 34 to finish considerably lower. I can see why so many found Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls irritating. However, I was able to tolerate it although it didn’t exactly leave me desperate to hear a lot more from Kingston. The music-buying and streaming public were clearly equally unenthusiastic. It took him three years after his 2007 number one to get another top ten hit and even that required the pulling power of Justin Bieber.

 

Sean Kingston was just seventeen when Beautiful Girls entered the chart at the end of August 2007. It climbed to number one the following week, replacing Kanye West’s Stronger. Perhaps the latter fact helped me to look at the song more kindly than I might otherwise have done. It spent a month at the top before Sugababes’ best song About You Now took over. Kingston was educated in Ocho Rios, a stopping-off point for 10CC in their rather eccentric journey from Rochdale to Dorking.

 

There were, of course, better songs in my birthday chart than the song that by then was in its fourth and final week at the top. They included the glorious with Every Heartbeat by Robyn With Kleerup as well as Young Folks by Peter, Bjorn & John and Amy Winehouse’s Tears Dry On Their Own. Winehouse’s Mark Ronson-produced version of Valerie started its long chart run that week at number 41.

 

Beautiful Girls is OK, had a bit of a retro 80s or 90s vibe as reggae pop was more popular then than in the 00s, Eenie Meenie is cheesy like much of early era Justin Bieber, Fire Burning is quite good. Sean Kingston's reggae pop vocals do have a charm to them, but despite this Party All Night (Sleep All Night) is a bit of a racket, that EDM sound didn't really suit him.

Edited August 22, 20205 yr by Flopiday

I liked Beautiful Girls, had a naive charm to it :)

 

From Rochdale To Ocho Rios should have been the follow-up to Dreadlock Holiday, total missed opportunity. Bloody Tourists! 10CC often failed to release obvious singles and their albums are jam-packed with Couldabeen Hits...

Back in 1972 Gavin and Ian Sutherland, performing as the Sutherland Brothers Band, released as a single a song they had composed called Sailing. It wasn't a hit but it did turn up on a compilation album I bought. Four years later, teamed up with Quiver, they finally had a deserved hit when Arms Of Mary reached the top ten.

 

By the time Arms Of Mary was a hit, Sailing had become rather better known. Rod Stewart recorded an anthemic version of it for his Atlantic Crossing album in 1975. The album went straight to number one and, the following week, Sailing followed it to the top to become Stewart’s third number one single and it is at number 33 in this list. Sailing’s ascent to the top meant Top of the Pops viewers were deprived of further chances to see the Stylistics perform Can’t Give You Anything But My Love on the top of a building as had happened for the previous two weeks while they were at number one.

 

Sailing was a hit again the following year after it was used as the theme tune for a BBC series, climbing all the way to number three. The Sutherland Brothers never had another major hit and their part in one of the biggest hits of the 1970s tends to be somewhat overlooked. Ian Sutherland died last year.

 

The chart announced three days before my fifteenth birthday saw Sailing get a fourth week at number one. It was to be its final week at the top as David Essex took over the following week with Hold Me Close. Among the songs in the top ten for my birthday was one that most people didn’t buy for the side that got the radio airplay. A then little-known comic called Jasper Carrott recorded a pretty awful song by the name of Funky Moped. On the other side was a number called Magic Roundabout which was considered unsuitable for radio and was definitely not aimed at the audience for the children’s programme of that name.

 

The chart in that week also included Procol Harum’s criminally overlooked song Pandora’s Box, Who Loves You by The Four Seasons and Bob Marley’s debut chart appearance with No Woman No Cry, a new entry at number 40. Unusually for the 1970s (but a rather more common occurrence in the 1950s) there were two songs with two different versions in the chart. Carl Malcolm and Diversions both had a version of Fattie Bum Bum while Una Paloma Blanca was a hit for both Jonathan King and the George Baker Selection, the latter version omitting Una from the title.

 

The reissue of Sailing in 1976 meant that, for a time, Rod Stewart had two songs in the top forty. The choice of the other song as a single was an unusual move at the time. The Killing Of Georgie Parts I and II, based on a true story about a friend of Stewart and fellow members of his former band The Faces, was about a homophobic attack on a gay man. In the mid-1970s it was almost unheard of for a mainstream (and definitely heterosexual) entertainer to make such a public stand against homophobia (not that the term itself was in use until much later).

 

Bit of an overplayed anthem this one. I was happy it was a hit for the sake of the Sutherland Brothers bank account, but it wasn't a patch on the original, which was much more upbeat rather than funereal. I also bought it on a compilation album, one of those K-Tel albums with a yellow cover and 22 hits tinnily packed onto vinyl :D The single before Sailing (The Pie) was even better, and Arms Of Mary lovely. I hadnt heard Ian Sutherland had died, sadly, so will be belatedly charting those tracks, about time they got some love.

 

I would have much preferred Killing Of Georgie to be the chart-topper, much better record, never liked Rod's covers as a rule, his own songs were so much better. I fondly recall that Stylistics video on TOTP during the long hot spring & summer of '75 as it gave way to the cool late summer of Rod Stewart Sailing (at least in Gloucester it did). I once played Magic Roundabout at a college disco for a laugh (I'd taken control of the turntable) and was suitably rewarded with Boos until it came time to turf everyone out who wouldn't leave, when I suddenly got requests to play it again. Worked a treat!

 

Pandora's Box is fab, Who Loves You Fab, No Woman No Cry classic. My upper personal chart that week had Mike Batt on top with Summertime City (TV show theme) :lol: I was also into Nitty Gritty Dirt Band cover of All I Have To Do Is Dream, Harpo's Movie Star a year before it became a hit (with the Abba girls on tow), Pilot's Just A Smile, Lesley Gore's Immortality and Mike Post's Rockford Files theme. Yes, I'd parted ways with the singles chart quite a bit in 74/75 :)

I didn't realise Ian Sutherland had died until I was researching this :( It's really sad that the death of someone responsible for one of the best-known songs of the seventies should go unnoticed. Sailing has been somewhat overplayed which is why it is (just) in the bottom half. The Killing Of Georgie, OTOH, is probably my favourite Rod Stewart song. I've never been much of a fan of the self-proclaimed Scot but The Killing Of Georgie is a really good song.

 

I noticed Summertime City was in the chart then - a decent enough song but not quite good enough to make my "also in the chart" list. I shall have to seek out the Abba cover you mention. Meanwhile, perhaps I should ask whether 74-75 made your chart :lol:

I didn't realise Ian Sutherland had died until I was researching this :( It's really sad that the death of someone responsible for one of the best-known songs of the seventies should go unnoticed. Sailing has been somewhat overplayed which is why it is (just) in the bottom half. The Killing Of Georgie, OTOH, is probably my favourite Rod Stewart song. I've never been much of a fan of the self-proclaimed Scot but The Killing Of Georgie is a really good song.

 

I noticed Summertime City was in the chart then - a decent enough song but not quite good enough to make my "also in the chart" list. I shall have to seek out the Abba cover you mention. Meanwhile, perhaps I should ask whether 74-75 made your chart :lol:

 

Harpo was Swedish, so it wasn't too difficult for him to draft in Frida & Agnetha on back-up vocals - though not an Abba song as such, you can tell it's them singing :) 74-75 was a big hit in my charts, and it was pure nostalgic joy for me having my teen years immortalised in song... :D

 

Ooh just recalled another Sutherland Bros track I charted in late 73 early 74, Dream Kid, great track.

Harpo was Swedish, so it wasn't too difficult for him to draft in Frida & Agnetha on back-up vocals - though not an Abba song as such, you can tell it's them singing :) 74-75 was a big hit in my charts, and it was pure nostalgic joy for me having my teen years immortalised in song... :D

 

Ooh just recalled another Sutherland Bros track I charted in late 73 early 74, Dream Kid, great track.

Oops, I misread the Abba bit. I remember Movie Star very well :D I prefer Suede's Filmstar though!

'Sailing' certainly drags on a bit and is a bit slow and ponderous, its not up there with the best of Rod Stewart's discography (Young Turks is my favourite song by him). That Halifax advert cover in the 00s made it annoying though, and I am sure many people following the chart in late 1992 were irritated also by the 'We Are Raving' cover.

 

 

Next up, at number 32 is Sam Smith’s 2017 number one Too Good At Goodbyes. Smith’s output, for me, has generally varied between the reasonably good and the mediocre. This one falls somewhere around the middle of that range.

 

Smith has come in for a lot of ridicule for his struggles with his sexuality and his gender identity, not least when he claimed to be the first gay man to win an Oscar. However, it should be remembered that when Latch was a hit, Smith was only 20. We can now see that their struggles with identity went beyond the relatively simple issue of sexuality.

 

Thankfully, attitudes towards sexuality have changed over the years. While many people do still have difficulties in coming out to their family, there are now far fewer fathers who react in the same way as Georgie’s father in the song referred to above “Pa said ‘There must be a mistake, how can my son not be straight after all I’ve said and done for him?’”. There is now a widespread acceptance that a person’s sexuality cannot simply be described as gay or straight. We still have some way to go before there is a general understanding that a person’s gender identity is not simply a matter of ticking one of two boxes.

 

Anyway, time to come off the soapbox. Too Good At Goodbyes went straight to the top of the chart, replacing Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do. It was still there the following week in the chart that qualifies for this list. The top ten included two good songs by artists whose output doesn’t always appeal to me - Pink’s What About Us and Little Mix’s Reggaeton Lento, the latter with help from CNCO - as well as Dua Lipa’s New Rules. The rest of the top forty was not exactly a vintage chart.

 

Too Good At Goodbyes got a third and final week at number one before being toppled by Post Malone’s Rockstar.