I like a handful of his other songs, but this really is shit.

The fact it blocked 'Teenage Dream' is a travesty, but not as much as the other song that did.

This Olly Murs song is pleasant enough. Nothing special. I wouldn't switch it off if it played on the radio.

I was never a X Factor fan but Olly has to be one of the best singers to appear on it. He certainly had a lot of hits and stuck around for years.

Edited Saturday at 14:342 days by Charlielargepotatoes

That Olly debut is inoffensive but he had better to come imo. I might actually prefer Ambitions to this these days.

'Getting Over You' is a bit of a mess really. Don't dislike it though but far from being one of Guetta's best.

I quite like 'Please Don't Let Me Go' however. Don't hear it much outside the rare time which tbf I did a couple of months back. I do prefer his other #1's (not including ensembles) to it though by quite a long way.

Yeah I agree with most saying Please Don’t Let Me Go is one of my least favourite of Olly’s singles, but it’s generally inoffensive.

On 15/05/2026 at 15:09, shadow2009 said:

Catching up but WOW, it's really sad to see that such a talented group like JLS were releasing dirge like The Club Is Love. ☹️ I remember watching them as X-Factor contestants and genuinely being excited thinking about the potential they had and I imagined them releasing stuff like U Remind Me or Fill Me In or quality songs like those and now looking at their discography page on Wikipedia and just feeling so let down. They released utter garbage.

'Eyes Wide Shut' was a good song though!

Please dont let me good was a decent enough debut but he went on to have better 🙌

3 minutes ago, 777666jason said:

Please dont let me good was a decent enough debut but he went on to have better 🙌

Dear Darlin'

4 minutes ago, TheSnake said:

Dear Darlin'

Im a sucker for UP or unpredictable

23. Alexandra Burke – Start Without You (feat. Laza Morgan)

2 weeks at #1 (entered 12^th September): 01-01-05-10-19-27-37-47-53-60-80-76-x-84

Kept off #1: Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

EOY #82

Continuing the revenge for Teenage Dream section...

This era's trend to have producers put their names at the beginning of songs is often mocked, sometimes too often, but ‘Start Without You’ is unique, I’m not sure I can think of another one where the singer gives up and after the ‘RedOne’ just lazily sings ‘etc…’

Hold up, I’m just now being told that she can’t sing her own name.

I remember Alexandra Burke being around a lot with the songs from her first album Overcome, as Syco did the work to try and make her into a pop star on par with say, Gaga? No… Katy Perry? No… even as this song keeps Teenage Dream off the top spot for a second week. Cheryl Cole, kinda? I’m not sure what her direction was really. The unfortunate thing is that she was best at the big dramatic ballads, but that lane was already filled by one Leona Lewis. The resulting pop that got her a few hits around this time, though I certainly enjoyed it and played it a lot at the time, was ultimately just weak looking back. Weak for good uptempo pop at least.

Its sorta telling that one of the singles from Overcome before the re-release campaign started, ‘All Night Long’, still sold more than this 2-week #1, which completely exited the chart in a fashion far more befitting a one-week #1 that frontloads its sales. ‘All Night Long’ also had a much more worthwhile rent-a-rapper verse, because Pitbull is never wrong.  

All that said, and believe me, ‘Start Without You’ is a record plagued with issues, a generic, identity-less tune that feels like Burke on autopilot as she uncomfortably shuffles her way through being a dancefloor popstar, I still quite like it. I think it’s fun and energetic enough that I’ve never hated hearing it and if it were performed by a singer outside of the talent show network it’d be a lot easier to like as disposable fun, so I am just ranking it as disposable fun that I enjoy listening to when it comes on a fair bit, but not one I can say is a particularly great record either. Supposedly the Jamaican influences are her trying to tap into her heritage, for which, good on her, but it does feel more like the label box-ticking that type of song for her than a particular love or fit with her to the style. Some artists do cast their specialism nets a little too wide and come up with weak songs because of it, Burke is certainly one.

Part of why it didn’t stick around long was the weird decision to release it in September when such a reggae-influenced summery tune would have been perfect far earlier in the year. It was even leaked online much earlier so they had the perfect excuse – if it was too soon after the release of ‘All Night Long’ maybe they wanted to wait, and in the download era this may have been valid, but a bad decision looking back.

Burke’s career after this notably flatlined, after the far better ‘The Silence’ (to this day what I consider her best song) didn’t do so well in the charts in December after a very public performance on The Talent Show and a somewhat disastrous second album, this is the last time she reached #1 and while I do think it’s the best of her 3 #1s, it’s unfortunate that there wasn’t more competition for that slot. She would have been much better focusing on balladeering.

Start without you is such a bop id have it 10 places higher at least yeah bad boys is superior and The silence is probably the best thing on overcome (shame it charted so low) but this is still a fun bop 🙌

Shame her career nosedived from here

Start Without You to me always sounded like the Playdays theme songs as interpreted by Alexandra.

Start Without You is the worst thing Alexandra put out there! Impressive that there was still good will around her in 2010 for her to get a multi week #1 but what happened after that was pretty shocking.

Looking back from where I last commented I don’t think I’ve actively set out to hear any song on this list. I mildly enjoyed some at the time though.

22. Roll Deep – Green Light

1 week at #1 (entered 22^nd August): 01-04-06-13-16-24-29-40-54-57-69

Kept off #1: Eminem – Love The Way You Lie (feat. Rihanna)

EOY #95

Now we get to the good stuff. There’s a number of #1s left in this year that sell euphoric joy very very well, and ‘Green Light’ is the first of those, though of course the second #1 and single from the grime collective’s album Winner Stays On. A third, just as good single in my eyes, ‘Take Control’ with Alesha Dixon would follow after this to far less commercial success.

Roll Deep were having a good year and they have always been a pleasant oddity in 2010’s #1s, you don’t often see a big super group (or collective, or crew) like this go on to achieve chart success in its own right, other grime collectives never really had huge chart hits and the only other one in the hip-hop world I can think of at least in the 21^st century is D12, Eminem’s crew - and Young Money with 'Bedrock' but well, we can forget that one. Wiley did well for himself at this very specific point in time, particularly if you compare other collectives with famous members like Boy Better Know (Skepta) and Ruff Sqwad (Tinchy) whose musical output was far more restricted to mixtapes or just promoting the individual members. It’s not entirely clear to me how and why they shot into commercial relevance with the Winner Stays On album but ‘Green Light’ getting to #1 makes it clear that this wasn’t a one-off either. A two-off.

It is a very nice way to do a song that is explicitly about consent – not something that is easily woven into dancefloor songs, and it sounds pretty great while doing so. Its biggest weakness is its inability to escape from the inevitable comparisons to the previous single, on most of which it comes up short. Had it gone down a slightly different track, it wouldn’t, but then it’s also not a song that’s after any critical appreciation. The vocalist Tania Foster, friend of Jodie Connor, gives a great effort and is probably the best part of the song here, lifting up with a really powerful chorus that sticks in the mind. The rap verses don’t, really, and I know Roll Deep and Wiley can make rap verses stick in the mind, so that's a black mark against this.

Some of them don’t get too much better if you do focus on them, ‘check out the skirt on that’ for example,  though ‘green cross code’ and ‘she flashed, red, amber, green’ make up for it, at least they are attempting to make, through the lyrics, a song that stands on its own two feet, it's unfortunate that has limited success. Though a very enjoyable song, it doesn’t stick in the memory very well and while I’m sure I heard this in bars/parties/clubs or on the radio at points in 2010, I remember many of its competitors far more, this is very much a fade into the background sort of song – there will be 3 more songs that directly kept year-end top seller ‘Love The Way You Lie’ off the top spot, but this would be the one I’d replace if I could, the third of them and nearly the closest they came (3300 off here, 2900 off for the song the week before this). The Eminem/Rihanna collab was brilliant and very clearly culturally relevant, and obviously memorable enough to achieve that EOY feat, just stuck in the summer behind a wave of high-selling one-week wonders.

Obviously

higher-ranked #1

Good Times

will get its due later and so I’ve intentionally avoided mentioning it by name but while I do really enjoy this, I can’t help listening to it but think of how much better that previous single was and that unfortunately dominates most of my thoughts about it, a fun if transient club track. Feels a bit rude to use the term re-hash but this is just the same (similar) song again, and weaker.

Please Don't Let Me Go not bad for the singer who won £10 on Deal Or No Deal.

'Start Without You' - didn't mind it initially but didn't hold up for long, is pretty lame tbh.

'Green Light' is an enjoyable tune. Think I preferred it to the other one to come but both are good.

Olly’s debut single is just a bit bland.

I never noticed the etc at the start of Start Without You. Hilarious!

Roll Deep screams non number 1.

I didn't know Roll Deep had 2 number 1 singles.

I completely forgot about this one until I clicked on the link above.

Edited yesterday at 16:411 day by Charlielargepotatoes

Green light is decent enough the other one was better though

A couple of #1s that were memorable for being by X Factor alumni and not much else. Well done Alexandra for getting a second week at #1, I suppose - I also thought 'The Silence' was her best song, but it was apparent that Simon and co. didn't want her to be seen in the same lane as Leona.

Never liked 'Green Light' but I can find some ironic appreciation for the green cross code shoutout. I think 'Love The Way You Lie' was actually ahead of it in the midweeks, which makes it being one of that song's four different blockers more galling.