gooddelta

Giving it to Alanis. I love ATB, one of my favourite artists, but all he did to Killer was put his bendy synth on it - pointless cover.

Janet :o TikTok really can give anything random a boost. Show Me Love and Ordinary seem to be on every other video right now but not seen Janet yet. Pleased to see Ed rebounding and Miley return.

Ariana Grande ~ eternal sunshine deluxe: brighter days ahead Sabrina Carpenter – emails I can’t send fwd: The Lottery Winners – KOKO Elton John & Brandi Carlile – Who Believes In Angels? KAJ – Karar i arbeit N-Trance – Happy Hour Leony – Oldschool Love Jack J – Blue Desert Emma Sehested Høeg - I Know All The Words But I Can't Say Goodbye Selena Gomez & benny blanco – I Said I Love You First

As much as I admire the hustle and that the Girls of FHM managed to get a very mid-00s-esque top 10 hit out of a tacky cover, Stereophonics is easily the best here for me.

I actually do have something for this - one of my favourite songs of the decade so far fits the 'dreamy' description - so I'll give it a go.

Both great tracks but the best song did win this battle imo, although Rachel won the battle of opening Now 58 over Lola’s Theme, which is one of my favourite house tracks ever! But Me Plus One is so iconic for referencing poor Geri’s fate with Some Girls 😆

Doubt it’s going anytime soon but have to stick with The Killers.

Very easily Madonna, even though I bought the Music album the other day finally, inspired by Jim’s Bop Idol entry from the album. Love the other two.

I do like Tattoo but it’s definitely the least good here for me now.

Holding firm on a Sunday is a good sign. Hopefully Ed will get back up and it's just the usual new process of the public taking their time to latch on to new stuff.

Just finished Now 120, it certainly felt very brief, and there's a lot of censoring. Denial Is A River is almost unlistenable with all the (admittedly necessary) edits made. I like the clean version of Messy though. It did feel like there were more big hits than usual, thanks to the five No.1s I guess, and the fact that the current huge No.1 is here, albeit track 6 on Disc 2 as they had no idea how big it would become when putting this together. Of the non-charting additions, of which there are many, some songs pleasantly surprised me: Stereophonics - decent, Confidence Man - banger and intriguing choice for a filler as it's hardly Radio 2 aimed, Marshmello and Jonas Brothers - good and easily would have been a big hit in 2017/18, Elton and Brandi - love this, great album closer and a classic sounding duet. But some were really eh, like the Tina Turner song - I really like her music generally but don't like this track at all, and OneRepublic - not been keen on much they have done in recent years and this didn't warrant a place on here. Overall, the album flowed ok, but parts of each disc felt weak and skippable. I will take the majority of Disc 1 and a handful of songs from Disc 2 and run.

Girls@play, although it's not good. Didn't enjoy the Pepsi & Shirlie song much, must have been a reheated leftover from the 80s recorded around the same time as the original presumably.

Best in terms of results - 2011 - at this point it felt a bit like I could throw anything in and it would come top 10 (only two entries missed, one narrowly), and I had three wins in five contests, including a back-to-back win! Best in terms of entries I love - 2009 - I think this is when I really 'got' BJSC properly. I love everything I sent this year and I sent such a diverse set of genres compared to 2008/2010/2011 - electropop/dance/indie/rap/Scandipop. I have so many fond memories of this year generally musically, and in BJSC it threw up a winner and a couple of silver medallists for me. More recently, 2022/23 I really found my mojo properly for the first time again in a long time with four strong 2nd place entries, and some electronic and dance stuff I'm incredibly fond of still. Worst in terms of results - 2013 - after 42 straight qualifications, I achieved a triple DNQ in a pretty hopeless summer, despite one of those trio being one of my favourite songs ever. 2017 was even more hopless with four DNQs, including two right at the start of the year, although I still love all of those songs. Worst in terms of entry quality - 2015 for sure - most of those entries I never listen to at all now, apart from Fight For What's Right by The Rua, which finished bottom five in the final and is still glorious MOR pop, and Highland by One More Time, which is a 90s classic. Not really sure what happened that year, clearly I couldn't find much good stuff to send or my head was elsewhere, I don't remember it being a vintage year for music generally. It was another year with four DNQs for me and I can see why.

Well done Brer, what a great entry. Glad other people saw what I saw in it! Lovely to see Sylver 2nd too, they are always good, and Gigi safely top 10 <3 Thanks for hosting Severin, an interesting theme with some very unique covers. 14th isn't bad, thanks to all the voters, especially guest voter Wardy for the 12!

Either of those would be a great winner, Rachid Taha was my favourite discovery, such a riot to listen to!

Really enjoyed this one Cody! Made me smile.

Thanks for the votes so far. I know the West End Girls cover doesn't reinvent the wheel but it adds a nice Scandipop sheen. I've always been fond of this version and nearly sent it to BJSC in the very early days. West End Girls were a PSB tribute act, as the name suggests, from Sweden. I liked the addition of Magnus Carlson (the lead singer of indie band Weeping Willows) on this as it was cool to hear the male/female parts sung in the opposite way.

That version of The Riddle is one of the few covers I listen to as much as the original, I love it a lot, nice entry Dobbo! Didn't expect to see Sylver on top, but it's a really nice dance version.

1. KAJ - Bara Bada Bastu 2. Remember Monday - What The Hell Just Happened? 3. PUNCHBAG - f*** It 4. JADE - FUFN (f*** You For Now) 5. Chappell Roan - The Giver 6. Sumner - Stranded 7. Sugababes - Jungle 8. KT Tunstall - Clueless 9. Voe - Don't Talk To Me 10. Zoë Më - Voyage 11. Abor & Tynna - Baller 12. PUNCHBAG - I'm Not Your Punchbag 13. Lady Gaga - Abracadabra 14. Lady Gaga - Garden Of Eden 15. Go-Jo - Milkshake Man 16. N-Trance - The Mind Of The Machine 17. Mae Muller - Breakaway 18. Miriana Conte - Kant 19. Sabrina Carpenter - Bad for Business 20. Ariana Grande - twilight zone

Great list, thanks for compiling. Always crazy to me that Before He Cheats by Carrie Underwood didn't chart here at all despite several attempts to push it, but for it to go double platinum - wow! Her only ever appearance in the UK top 40 was as part of the Just Stand Up ensemble single in 2008, and I don't think the artists were given individual credits for that here.

Gosh that TV chart is bizarre since the majority of the music video channels died. I'm guessing it's the channel That's TV driving most of those ancient entries.

Hopefully Ed will stabilise over the week, it's obviously not good and he'll likely be in panic mode but seems worse for Miley for me, coming off the biggest hit of the whole year with the lead single from her last album only two years ago. The majority of new singles really just struggle to stick around these days it seems after day one (although some do rebound). People seem to be getting stuck in the quagmire of their old favourites even more than ever and won't easily let anything new in.

Call me mad but Eurovision could potentially cause this to happen in the future? Loreen got very close to No.1 just two years ago with Tattoo after she won, granted it was her second hit but most Eurovision acts are having their first hit. Say an extremely popular Eurovision entry coincides with a low sales week at some point, it hardly seems out of the realms of possibility that it could go to No.1. It was only Harry’s label dropping those CDs that blocked Sam Ryder having his first ever top 75 week at No.1. I think it will happen again either from a TV or film sync that blows up suddenly, a song that has been circulating as a viral clip on TikTok that is finally released, some sort of one-off global event happening that causes it like the Captain Tom thing. There are a multitude of ways imo. I agree with Dircadirca - all of those pop act No.1 debuts were driven by the fact that songs were simply unavailable and the hype was built up to a point that demand exploded. Many of those wouldn’t have even got there at all without that strategy, especially the likes of Mama Do and All Time Low. That is a strategy that won’t ever easily be replicated in the instant gratification age but I’m sure the labels are still working out ways to game the charts and drive buzz. Pre-release clips of something that goes viral and explodes immediately upon release (on a low sales week preferably) is the most likely way I see this happening any time soon.

The Sleep Token song is a very interesting track, nice to see it doing well! I'm intrigued that they don't box themselves into one genre, the sound of this new song caught me off guard based on the previous single, the first half of it gave me Bastille vibes which I didn't expect at all. I enjoy the way it changes up too. Ed evidently isn't the day one draw he used to be with new material, but there have been various warning signs stretching back for the last few years that this was the case. But he always turns very commercial sounding stuff into big hits eventually, so I wouldn't write him off too soon. Miley's I'd expect to see grow from that debut as more people hear it, even if it drops back initially.

We're definitely in the era of the slow burner, even moreso than four years ago when Bad Habits debuted AND Ed was still not far out of his imperial phase. It makes no sense to judge anything based on the first day anymore, even for superstars. Underperforming first day/week was bandied about here for Die With A Smile, and look how big that ended up being. No.1 debuts are getting more and more rare and the public are sometimes taking ages to get into things, even from bigger artists. Especially when the incumbent No.1 is one of the strongest we've had for the best part of a year in sales terms, it won't be easily overcome by a new release unless it's something like a new Taylor Swift/Harry Styles lead single. The market is continuing to grow, but the biggest songs are quite a bit smaller compared to the overall market than in the past, people are listening to a far wider spread of music (much of it old catalogue stuff) and are not congregating around the same few songs as much anymore, outside Christmas, anyway. So it doesn't surprise me that it's getting harder to break through the existing noise on day one.