gooddelta

The Baby Jane song feels on the same level as the prior couple to me which came 10th. Nevertheless, the hype is here for it so it looks like it's coming for a big improvement. RontBet is shortening Skall odds to 6/1 (third favourite after joint Hendinia and Bronzil) and lengthening poor Yehesi out to 12/1 due to the votes they'll be missing.

Daz robbed. Heart, imagination, colour and fun. All things that can't be said about the cover of Somethin' Stupid, which gets my vote again.

Will go with Will this time as it's close with others and Grace was way better despite peaking much lower.

Domino I did like more at the time than I do now, and it is one of Jessie's stronger efforts. I wouldn't skip it if it came on now but probably wouldn't actively play it. Young definitely isn't a favourite, would be bottom ten for me I'm sure. Found it quite an average example of club pop that was simply a success due to Tulisa's profile at the time and not due to the song being anything spectacular.

Good luck hearing a boombox playing a ballad over 82,500 screaming football fans.

Skall is amazing, I just didn't dare to dream hard enough. Go on pop bloc, vote for it, you know you want to.

Nice, I've actually been lucky enough to see her so many times live in the last few years that it doesn't feel as essential for me to rush to get tickets, however the fact she is finally coming to my hometown Brighton is amazing. I no longer live there but tempted to go back for a night just to see her in the Dome <3 Hope the demand is there to sell out venues like that and The Palladium, they're not small.

Honestly this is my favourite Taylor single since the 1989 era. I'm still addicted to it, it's just so gorgeous to listen to. It has such a fragility and nostalgia to it that chimed so beautifully with the film.

Even so, I would say 1 is harsh when it's an improvement on the last release, aside from perhaps a few missing dance songs they may not have had any control over. I know people hand out 1-star reviews to make a point when they're unhappy, most people leave either 1 or 5-star reviews on restaurants for example, and that's fair enough if you truly hate something, but this while it has some bad spots is by no means a 1. We could have had 40 fillers and no hits, for example. But we got two No.1s by major stars and a lot of nice songs on Disc 1 especially. There aren't enough casual consumers reviewing these albums on iTunes anymore to offer balance, so we just end up with every new Now release getting a terrible average score. This really can't help the optics and must be putting people off buying them. They haven't released many true 1-star albums imo although for lack of imagination the recent Power Ballads spin-off would be (although more for 100% repeated songs from the series and not the quality of the actual songs featured on it).

That's a great buy. I finally got hold of Now 19 last year for £25 secondhand and felt like that was a bargain! In other news, my iTunes review for Now 124 is finally live and has dragged the average rating up from 1 to 2.5 stars. Anyone with an iTunes account, do feel free to add your own reviews if you feel it is worth more than 1 (which objectively it is if you compare the tracklist to the charts and what they had at their disposal to include), and let's try and keep this series going, at least until the Yearbooks are done!

It's not in the top 50 airplay chart anymore. If anything I haven't heard Rein Me In that much on the radio while it's been No.1, I heard it far more last year when it was first released or in the lower end of the top ten and actually playlisted by the major stations. I would wager that the fact it is not overplayed on radio is helping keep its streaming profile so high as people like it and are still seeking it out.

Now 42 was the first I bought and I remember picking it up in Little Chef (!) the day before official release. I was obsessed with it, but then even more addicted to Now 43, which at the time was the only place to get the radio edit of Better Off Alone by Alice Deejay (the CD single had only club mixes). That remains my favourite compilation ever, summer 1999 was just magic for music to my tastes. I have never missed buying a Now album on its week of release since. It has certainly helped to diversify my music taste over the years, and listen to things that were out of my usual wheelhouse. Even today I still find the odd discovery on there, although I can't remember the last time I found something I really love. More than anything I really have appreciated having a reliable, affordable way to get many of the year's biggest hits without having to shell out loads of money for all the CD singles or, later, downloads. While the winter editions tend to be the largest selling and often contain the bigger hits, traditionally I have often most enjoyed the summer editions, full of dance hits and Eurohits, and just feel good music. Now 43, Now 46, Now 49, Now 52 and Now 55 was an incredible run, and Now 64 and Now 70 were amazing too. More recently, Now 115 if we ignore Lewis Capaldi and David Kushner had my three favourite songs of the year in the opening five tracks in Miracle, Tattoo and Padam Padam <3 And was just a strong album overall.

I think the George/Wham! licensing stipulation has changed more recently than 2019 though. Obviously the Queen Disc 1, Track 1 stipulation is decades old at this point, but George seems to only be in the last five years, since Jenny left. Rihanna was very prolific in those years Ashley was compiling, so I think if he had the license then he probably wanted to make sure she was on there.

IIRC Jenny Fisher was the subject of mass criticism on Now forums, and on here, during her tenure ("Ashley Abram would never have put four retro tracks at the end of the numbered editions after Now 100", "Ashley would have got more Taylor Swift tracks licensed" etc). Even if she had stayed on the Yearbooks I can't see that the outcome would be any different as it's clearly Queen/its label and George's label/estate that have requested that slot at some point since she left, not the current compilers putting them first because it's their first choice.

Yes I loved it too, it's the first one I think I bought full price from the series rather than waiting for a reduction as I was so impressed by the tracklist. Some great pop remixes on it, and dance songs that didn't make it onto the main Now.

Set You Free to be fair was dual repromoted in 2001. CD1 lead with the Rob Searle remix and CD2 with the 1995 hit version, and Kelly Llorenna performed the original on Top Of The Pops at the time too. I expect Now chose to include the original hit version over the remix as 50 was such a celebratory kind of release so every familiar big hit helped to sell it. Now Dance 2002 featured the Rob Searle remix so they were aware of its existence.

Another Love and Murder On The Dancefloor had at least re-peaked so I didn't mind that, maybe their policy at the moment is to only include old songs reaching or matching new highs or that they haven't featured before. I don't think adding old No.1s popping back for another run outside the top ten (like many from Stranger Things) would be a great addition to the albums personally.

Why? You just said you didn't like Another Love being reused on Now 113. Surely they have taken the right approach by only using the older songs that weren't previously on Now, Go and Beauty And A Beat. Collectors will have the other recent chart re-entries on previous Nows and would surely prefer new songs in their collection.

Again, it was charting low when this tracklist would have been compiled. I expect at least two of the three will be on Now 125 and let's face it, with the way the charts are so slow now, no doubt they will all be top 40 until Christmas songs push them out, so they won't look out of place on that album either, as they are all still peaking now. If they are not on Now 125 but appear on The Annual, then we will have our answer, that Sony decided to hold them for that instead.

We have Calvin Harris, Sonny Fodera and Chemical Brothers, so dance music hasn't been excluded. I expect it's just that a few of the dance hits probably weren't up for licensing yet. When the album tracklist was compiled Free Your Mind and Talk To You would have both been hovering around the low top 20 or just outside area too, so they might have decided to wait to see if they took off more. Alternatively, Sony may have decided to hold them for The Annual, and not offered them to the Now compilers. Now 123 had six dance hits in a row, so there's no reason they'd suddenly decide to ban dance for no reason. There will be a reason for every decision and the only people that know it are the compilers, not us.

That list is depressing for sure. It's crazy that only three artists this year have reached the top ten for the first time (Bella Kay, Prospa & Cloonee and ANOTR feat. 54 Ultra). Labels and A&R are surely absolutely tearing their hair out at the state of things, nothing is connecting outside of the big superstar releases, and even then many of those are underperforming against expectation too so we're stuck with old revivals and the same song at No.1 all year, it's actually crazy. Surprised the BBC, Guardian and Music Week etc aren't all over this with thinkpieces. I do wonder what has so drastically changed, it doesn't feel like there has been a single gigantic new 2026 release so far and we are in late July.

They've cast Paul Ready in this in a very similar way to his character in Motherland, i.e. a bit of a pushover. It's interesting that we have him and Diane Morgan in this while three other Motherland cast members are now in Amandaland. The cast has split off but various members are still working together. However, where I loved Kevin in Motherland (despite being a similar character in some ways he was more likeable in his desperation to fit in and bounced off the other cast better), I agree that Michael doesn't add a lot to this show other than a plot device of having a son. Diane Morgan and Sue Johnston are wonderful in it, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it so much but they're both such talents that maybe it was hard for it to miss. Sue! Sue! Sue! made me laugh every time.

I liked some of the other singles from Rita's debut, especially Radioactive which deserved a higher peak, but R.I.P. wasn't up to much for me so not sure I'd have it a lot higher.

I do agree with many of the points raised but I also think it's important to note that Now albums still retail at £12.99, whereas e.g. Bravo in Germany is €22.99 (£19.50). That is a much larger budget for them to include space fillers and other songs. I think I'd be far more critical of Now if the prices had climbed to £20. I bought Now 46 in 2000 for £14.99, 26 years later I'm paying £2 less for the equivalent summer release, whereas by inflation terms it should be nearly £33 by now. CDs are more or less the only product that hasn't risen in line with inflation (in the UK anyway) and they remain great value. However, it means profit margins are wafer thin so every tracklist is a balancing act. If they did increase the price to £19.99 then sure they could fill it up more, maybe get 2 or 3 more big hits too, but sales are already so low so I expect they have worked out that such a price point would put off a large percentage of remaining collectors and make it unviable. So a few hits get delayed adds to make licensing cheaper, others don't appear at all etc...

That's good news. Oh dear at my 2008 posts though. Longing for the days that 'indie won't rule the charts' 😂 2008 was more or less the last hurrah in the charts for it anyway, so I must have killed it off with that post.