71. WINGS- Birdy (879,000)

 

 

PEAK POSITION: 8

YEAR: 2013

 

Birdy’s first album had consisted almost entirely of covers but she tried her hand at songs for album two “Fire Within” with this as the lead single, she explained it was “about having a really wonderful time with your friends. It's about having that memory and wishing that you were there. So it is melancholy, but it is a happy memory”. She had some help here from OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, but it only made No 16 first out but was used in a Lloyds Bank commercial in 2015 which resulted in a re-issue and a top 10 placing!

 

 

'Wings' is sublime!

Wow at Birdy.

 

Wings is sublime I just had no idea it was on sales of that much here wow.

 

Also a big fan of Thursday :wub:

 

I’m a fan of many of these songs. Where Have You Been remains my favourite TTT era track by Rihanna, Sax was a BOP at the time. Teenage Dream is one of Katy’s best and Ciao Adios is also pretty great.

 

 

I really resented Birdy's first era for reappropriating so many great indie songs into boring ballad versions but 'Wings' was a pleasant surprise as a first original song from her, lovely stuff. (Doesn't quite make up for the crimes of her debut tho xx)

Echoing what everyone else has said really, 'Wings' is a beautiful song.

70. RUDE BOY- Rihanna (884,000)

 

 

PEAK POSITION: 2

YEAR: 2010

 

This is rather a naughty one from RiRi, not that it mattered as it was during her golden era where everything was a massive hit for her. She explained "When we wrote the song, it was kind of a freestyle ... I liked the West Indian influence that the music had, and, I just went in the booth, they were already jotting down some ideas and, that came to me, I just ran in there with them, one of the writers, and started coming up with this in the studio and now when people read it back to me like that, 'Come here rude boy, is you big enough'?, it does sound so disgusting!"

 

 

69. NEVER ENOUGH- Loren Allred (897,000)

 

 

PEAK POSITION: 24

YEAR: 2018

 

Allred had an unusual climb to fame, starting out by posting her videos onto youtube she caught the eye of Ne-Yo who helped her get signed to defjam which ultimately came to nothing. She then tried her hand on “The Voice” in the US making the live play-offs in the 2012 season and assisted her getting involved in the “Greatest Showman” soundtrack where she was the singing voice for Rebecca Ferguson’s character and from which this song became a hit.

 

Lol ~

68. WRECKING BALL- Miley Cyrus (899,000)

 

 

PEAK POSITION: 1

YEAR: 2013

 

Cyrus’ first No 1 in the US it quickly became her second chart topper in a row here, and it’s the third of 28 number ones on the survey. Penned with Beyonce in mind, Cyrus snapped it up for her “Bangerz” album and debuted at No 1 in the same week as the album did the same. It opened with 21k less sales than “We Can’t Stop” but ended up beating it in total sales maybe it was the mildly controversial video that helped? At any rate Cyrus regrets the promo now “Swinging around naked on a wrecking ball lives forever, once you do that it’s forever, I’m never living that down I will always be the naked girl on a wrecking ball…I should’ve thought [about] how long that was going to follow me around. That’s my worst nightmare”

 

 

Wrecking Ball :wub:

 

And I love love Never Enough, my fave out of that movie :kink:

67. ROYALS- Lorde (907,000)

 

http://i.imgur.com/PYMeHrf.png

 

PEAK POSITION: 1

YEAR: 2013

 

Written in 30 minutes apparently by Lorde, this spent 9 weeks at No 1 in the US becoming the youngest female act (at just 16) to make No 1 there since Tiffany in 1987, here it also debuted at No 1 (where she was the youngest female act since Billie in 1998) to do so.

 

Lorde explained about the song “Everyone is so obsessed with how everything looks, how the party will look through a lens the next day. We all have Tumblr and we all have Instagram and everything. People care so much about it because, now, any random can be famous on the internet if their world looks good on Tumblr. And so everyone at high school strives for this kind of aesthetic correctness. I do it as well, you know. I curate my life in a way. It’s always playing on my mind, kind of a love-hate relationship. I’m not one of those people who’s, like, ‘I wish Facebook wasn’t around,’ because, you know, it is what it is.”

 

 

Lorde our quen and saviour :cheeseblock:

 

I am surprised 'Wrecking Ball' isn't further ahead of 'We Can't Stop'!

Never Enough being right next to Wrecking Ball just feels wrong somehow. The latter felt huge where as the former didn’t feel like it made much of a dent in the charts at all

A lot of the potential chart run of 'Never Enough' was cut off because of the 3 track rule being applied to the Greatest Showman soundtrack while it was only the 4th most popular song from the soundtrack - not that that makes it less weird for it to be this high, just that its chart run was better than it appears.

Wrecking Ball is still my favourite Miley song :wub:

I get Miley regretting the Wrecking Ball video but at the same time, in the era of WAP we're currently in, it all seems remarkably tame and everyone losing their minds over it feels like an overreaction. Also the song itself is nothing special so I don't think it would have done as well without it.

 

Never Enough is memorable to me only because of the hilarious meta-narrative in The Greatest Showman that Ferguson is meant to be wowing them with a stunning opera performance when all we hear is essentially a forgettable Mariah album track.

 

Royals, in hindsight, really set the tone of pop music for the rest of the decade. Not a song I love as much as one I appreciate. A crying shame Green Light won't be popping up here, one of the best songs of the decade.

Wrecking Ball and Royals were nearly back-to-back #1s (separated only by a one-week return to #1 for Counting Stars) so it's quite the coincidence that they've finished back-to-back on here!

Royals <3

It's crazy how Lorde was only 15 when she wrote Royals!

66. CRAZY IN LOVE- Beyonce (910,000)

 

 

PEAK POSITION: N/A (in 2010’s)

YEAR: 2003

 

Whoooo……what? Yes Beyonce’s 2003 No 1 hit almost sold another million in the 2010’s? All true it seems with total sales now over 1.3 million, and yes it is a solo credit (certainly at the time) which OCC sometimes get it right and sometimes credit Jay Z on it but I included it on the 00s list so it seems accurate to include it in this rundown! It outsold everything else she put out in the 2010’s despite never charting once in the decade!