Sam started with a brilliant bang, La La La was an all-time classic and I had huge expectations (When people said who do you think will be big next year, I said "Sam Smith") but while that came to pass, the product wasn't to my taste and I'd say your fair analysis of the "mediocre" end of Smith singles outweighs the "reasonably good", not least because the vocals are always so whiny.

 

I don't like this track much and it failed to chart for me, so that makes it easily bottom 5 in this rundown for me so far - at least ones that annoy me now had previously charted :D I think you need an "always" between 'cannot' and 'simply', though, in that middle para....!

 

One ballad following another, like Sailing, Too Good At Goodbyes is a bit slow and ponderous for my tastes. One positive though about it; its better than Jess Glynne's charting ballads though imo.

 

Some of Sam Smith's songs after Too Good At Goodbyes I found more interesting, Promises and Dancing With A stranger were good. I could do without hearing Sam's version of I Feel Love again though.

I never really saw the point of Sam Smith's version of I Feel Love. It just seemed like an inferior version of the Jimmy Somerville and Marc Almond version (mashed up with Johnny Remember Me). The Donna Summer original and the Somerville/Almond versions were both great. The Sam Smith one was just "there".

At number 31 we have yet another song that suffers from having been overplayed. When Kings Of Leon went to number one with Sex On Fire in 2008 it could be seen as a nice change to see a rock song at the top of the chart, even if it was some way short of being a classic. When the song that had been at number one on my 48th birthday was back in the top twenty in time for my 49th, it had clearly outstayed its welcome.

 

Kings Of Leon had already notched up a few top forty hits in the few years before 2008 (including the far superior On Call) but Sex On Fire is now destined to be the first song people think of whenever they hear the band’s name. The second song will almost certainly be the follow-up Use Somebody which stalled at number two but also had a very long chart run.

 

Sex On Fire replaced Katy Perry’s debut hit I Kissed A Girl at the top of the chart and stayed there for three weeks before giving way to Pink’s So What. The top three in Sex On Fire’s first week at the summit was completed by Cliff Richard’s Thank You For A Lifetime which remains his last top ten hit. In my birthday chart there was a good run of songs at the lower end of the top thirty with The Verve’s Love Is Noise, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida and 5 Years Time by Noah & The Whale. Unfortunately a Ne-Yo song rather broke the spell by barging in between Coldplay and Noah & The Whale.

 

Not for the first time, Elbow’s One Day Like This was in the top 100. It had been in the top forty the week before and returned there the following week. Further down the chart, MGMT’s brilliant Kids was making its way up towards the top forty. It got there two weeks later and eventually reached the top twenty the following January. I went to see MGMT in Boscombe on my 50th birthday.

 

On we go, then, into the top half, starting with the number 30. If anyone had told me on my thirtieth birthday in 1990 that the number one on that day, Maria McKee’s Show Me Heaven, would end up as my second favourite birthday number one of the 1990s, I would have prepared myself for a pretty grim decade of music. In the event, the 1990s became possibly my favourite decade for music. It’s just that the songs I loved didn’t spend 24 September (or, in most cases, any other day) at number one.

 

The song that Show Me Heaven replaced at number one had set a new chart record when it climbed to the top two weeks earlier. The Joker had been a number one single for the Steve Miller Band when it was released in 1974. In the UK, it got nowhere. Indeed, the band didn’t have a hit in the UK until two years later when Rock ‘n’ Me just missed the top ten. It was another six years before hit number two, Abracadabra. Another eight years passed before The Joker was used in a television advert for jeans and it went all the way to number one to set a new record time between a song topping the chart in the US and doing so in the UK. Had it stayed at the top for another week, it would probably have been somewhere in the top twenty in this list.

 

While Show Me Heaven was a reasonable song as power ballads go, there were plenty of better songs in the chart that week. They included The Farm’s Groovy Train, Never Enough by The Cure, Depeche Mode’s World In My Eyes and, best of the lot, Fool’s Gold by Stone Roses.

 

Show Me Heaven spent four weeks at number one and was replaced by A Little Time by Beautiful South. Maria McKee had just one more top forty hit, I'm Gonna Soothe You in 1993.

 

Just one more 1990s number one to go.

 

Oh, into the good stuff now! Sex On Fire was huge, but I still am not sick of it, unlike Use Somebody which I never rated as much. At the very least, as the last ever Rock chart-topper (not including oldies, or anthemic rock), I'd give it points for keeping rock out of the commercial grave a bit longer :)

 

I love that Maria Muldaur track, bittersweet because a workmate, wannabe professional drummer and friend killed himself around that time at only 27, and this and the Beautiful South are burned into association with that shock. It wasn't of course, her only chart-topper: Feargal Sharkey's A Good Heart was her first, and fab it was too. She wrote it about her ex, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Benmont Tench, and Feargal cheekily followed it with Tench's song You Little Thief.

 

 

Sex On Fire was great at the start and a pleasant surprise that it made #1 but yes it was overplayed sadly. Show Me Heaven is a lovely song, quite nostalgic sounding now, although maybe it was a bit dated for the time though as it sounds more 80s than 90s. There was apparently a dance cover of it which made top 40 in 2003 too by someone called The Saint, nowhere near as heavenly as you would expect from that artist name, a bit cheap sounding and very cheesy but I am of the opinion that those eurotrance covers were so bad they are good!

Edited August 25, 20204 yr by TheSnake

Oh, into the good stuff now! Sex On Fire was huge, but I still am not sick of it, unlike Use Somebody which I never rated as much. At the very least, as the last ever Rock chart-topper (not including oldies, or anthemic rock), I'd give it points for keeping rock out of the commercial grave a bit longer :)

 

I love that Maria Muldaur track, bittersweet because a workmate, wannabe professional drummer and friend killed himself around that time at only 27, and this and the Beautiful South are burned into association with that shock. It wasn't of course, her only chart-topper: Feargal Sharkey's A Good Heart was her first, and fab it was too. She wrote it about her ex, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers Benmont Tench, and Feargal cheekily followed it with Tench's song You Little Thief.

I'd completely missed the fact that she wrote A Good Heart :o

For Steve Miller Band, the very catchy Abracadabra I much prefer to The Joker. It was a very close chart battle between The Joker and Deee-lite's Groove Is In The Heart.

 

Not for the first time, Elbow’s One Day Like This was in the top 100. It had been in the top forty the week before and returned there the following week. Further down the chart, MGMT’s brilliant Kids was making its way up towards the top forty.

 

MGMT's Time To Pretend is my favourite song from them (the radio edit though as I don't condone the drug references and the song doesn't need them in my opinion). In a way Time To Pretend actually does remind me of Elbow's One Day Like This in being an epic that builds throughout the song.

Edited August 25, 20204 yr by TheSnake

Time To Pretend is another fabulous song :wub:

At number 29 we have a singer who has gradually gone up in my estimation over the years. I was not much of a fan of the early singles of Alecia Moore, better known as Pink or even P!nk. Her career hit a definite low when she got her first number one, alongside Christina Aguilera and others, with one of the worst songs ever written, Lady Marmalade.

 

After two more top ten hits, she finally got a number one all of her very own with Just Like A Pill in September 2002. Once I was able to banish all memories of Lady Marmalade, I was able to accept that Just Like A Pill is actually a decent pop song and so it finishes higher than it might otherwise have done - certainly 30 or so places higher than Lady Marmalade would have done. Pink is, of course, still a fairly regular visitor to the singles charts, Her next top ten single (assuming she gets one) will stretch her top ten singles career to over twenty years.

 

Just Like A Pill thankfully saved me from having to endure Atomic Kitten’s diabolical version of The Tide Is High (a much better number one for Blondie in 1980 although originally written in the 1930s and released as a single by The Paragons in 1967) as my “Douglas Adams” birthday chart-topper. Pink had just seven days to enjoy the view from the top of the chart before Pop Idols alumni Will Young and Gareth Gates took over with their version of The Long And Winding Road.

 

Among the 13 other new entries in the top forty that week were Aqualung’s Strange And Beautiful, Grace by Supergrass and Suede’s Positivity.

 

We have now had nine of the ten number ones in the 2000s.

 

well it's better than the video you posted anyway... :lol:

 

 

There's not enough sympathy for older folk suddenly having a momentary lapse (see my earlier Maria Muldaur/Maria Mckee blunder) :lol:

 

Have to say not amongst my top 20 Pink tracks - Get The Party Started, There You Go both better earlier tracks, and her best are much later: Leave Me Alone, So What, Raise Your Glass, Perfect, True Love.... so this would be a bottom 15 or so track so far.

Oops!

I was too kind to point out the Maria Muddle :D

I was too kind to point out the Maria Muddle :D

 

I knew you were being kind :) Some of the conversations I have with friends of a similar vintage end up like a Two Ronnies sketch these days when it comes to names

 

"Oh he was great in that film, what's the name of that film, ooh you know, the one that had what's-his-name after he won the Oscar for thingummy"

 

"Oh yes I know who you mean, he was married to that model. Did a James Bond film. Played a megalomaniac.."

 

and so on for 5 minutes till we use wikipedia... :lol:

I knew you were being kind :) Some of the conversations I have with friends of a similar vintage end up like a Two Ronnies sketch these days when it comes to names

 

"Oh he was great in that film, what's the name of that film, ooh you know, the one that had what's-his-name after he won the Oscar for thingummy"

 

"Oh yes I know who you mean, he was married to that model. Did a James Bond film. Played a megalomaniac.."

 

and so on for 5 minutes till we use wikipedia... :lol:

Don’t you mean a Two Wossnames sketch? You know, the little bloke and the other one. Used to be in that programme about a prison.

Don’t you mean a Two Wossnames sketch? You know, the little bloke and the other one. Used to be in that programme about a prison.

 

Ooh yes, Semolina, remember it well!

 

:lol:

Just Like A Pill I quite liked at the time. My favourite song from her was Family Portrait. Many of her recent songs have been rather boring and middle of the road in my opinion compared to her 00s songs.

With a total of 41 weeks at number one, it was almost inevitable that Ed Sheeran would appear somewhere on this list and here he is at number 28. The song in question is the Stromzy-featuring Take Me Back To London from last year. There is no doubting Sheeran’s talent as a musician; it’s just that a lot of his songs can be a little on the dull side and, in many cases, get played to death. With a relatively short (by his standards) top forty run of 17 weeks, Take Me Back To London was not as over-exposed as many of his eight other chart-topping singles.

 

Take Me Back To London entered the chart at number three in July but dropped straight back out again the following week. The release of the album meant that, for one week only, it was not one of Ed Sheeran’s top three songs so it was booted out. It returned the following week and three weeks later it was number one. It replaced Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello’s Senorita which fell foul of the ACR rule that week. After five weeks at the top, Take Me Back To London became another victim of ACR, allowing Tones & I’s Dance Monkey to start its marathon run at the top.

 

The chart that qualifies for this exercise was Take Me Back To London’s fourth week at the top by which time Dance Monkey was on its way up. It has, of course, only recently left the top forty. Also in the top forty were Kygo’s remix of Whitney Houston’s version of Higher Love# and Dermot Kennedy’s Outnumbered.

 

I didn't chart this one, being as Ed Sheeran on overdose radio is a thing guaranteed to make me try not to like it. I succesfully managed to avoid hearing this more than twice, and playing it now it's actually not bad. Especially considering it's 2 superstars going on about being homesick, essentially, having to trudge and sell themselves, winning awards and all that shit, when all they want is to go out clubbing in London...boys you can! Stop making records and it's all yours! Problem solved, you're welcome. Honestly, we won't mind, take a break. Oh, you have.....ahhh of course, Covid. Not so much clubbing then. Moral: be careful what you wish for :o