gooddelta

Going to go with Extraordinary Day by Delta Goodrem and Rule The World by Take That. Honorary mention to Yanou’s Candlelight Mix of Heaven by him, DJ Sammy and Do.

Very sad for them, all the history lost if they can’t archive it. I hope the owner gives the members the opportunity to buy or crowdfund it. Seems only fair to me as members make a community what it is.

I’d better think about bulking up my potentials list with some quality elder millennial pop!

They probably didn't expect it to be so big and then when it was they decided not to do a CD2 with the radio edit. I don't think it would have surprised anyone at the time if it had just gone 4-8-12-19 etc... Its chart and sales trajectory bucked all of the 1999 trends. That rule is another reason I used to buy imports of a lot of dance singles, which didn't have the same restrictions. On that note, how was it that these imports counted to the UK chart and weren't subject to these length rules? e.g. I bought Blue (Da Ba Dee) import which reached the top 40 here and I'm sure it had six or seven songs on it.

Had quite an entertaining morning looking for entries for my year and found several songs I like. Tricky!

'Alexander girl, I know what you like' 🤩 I liked this one, it just about crept into my top 100 of the year and I bought her album off the back of it, which I enjoyed. Very catchy song and good melody (lyrics quiff naff indeed), like a lot of 2009 pop the production has dated a lot now; this quite cheap sounding electro-pop party stuff that just pre-dated the Club banger era of 2010-12.

Oh yay at this theme being picked! Let’s go with 16 please, where I just finished in BJSC.

Puff Daddy on this episode too, so they'd have had to edit that out anyway 😐 I take it the Westlife performance butchering was done by whoever uploaded the episode and not by TOTP?

We lost Better Off Alone's epic climb towards No.1 with them not showing these episodes, shame. And of course it's a bigger shame that it couldn't overturn Westlife, who never would have got that opening run of seven chart toppers off the ground at all! I was so gutted when I saw the sales that week, the fact it missed by under 500 sales that week has always stuck with me. But the song did so well to grow like it did, against the prevailing 1999 trends. The first time I ever heard it was on Radio 1 in the car on the week of release, on a baking hot day on the way up to a holiday park in Great Yarmouth (not a dissimilar story to Jade's uncle...!). I asked my mum to turn it up as I was so immediately struck by it, and then a few days later we went to Woolworths in Great Yarmouth and I bought Now 43 on the day of release, which is for a while the only place the single version was available on CD. I have no idea what they were thinking only putting long dance mixes on the CD single as that probably contributed to costing it the No.1. My brother bought the CD single anyway and the 'UK Short Cut' was on the cassette single which my sister bought, a true generational hit as we barely ever used to like the same music. My favourite song of 1999, and still in my top five of all-time ❤️ It's held up a lot better than most other dance hits of the time too, approaching three quarters of a billion streams on Spotify now. Other songs I still enjoy from the last few charts are To Be In Love by Masters At Work (sublime house, also on Now 43), Doolally's reactivated Straight From the Heart (garage classic), At The River by Groove Armada, and Rendez-Vu by Basement Jaxx, which I bought at the time. Drinking In L.A. is so good too and the Travis and Eminem songs are decent, the former is iconic but I prefer other songs from The Man Who personally. Let Forever Be feels like it should have been bigger too, Chemicals were big at the time, Noel was always reliable for a hit, I couldn't understand at the time how it only got to No.9.

WandaVision or spin-off Agatha All Along, can't remember which one. It's Kathryn Hahn as Agatha.

Eagle is the one I spotted earlier on that fit the brief, great selection, such a moment for me in the Voyage show. Delta going full on Tina Turner/Starship in this one in one of her random dalliances with genres she doesn't usually go for between albums. Blackstar is a good choice (that final album was great) and Atomic Kitten's mentor continues to play every round so well. Every time you think the band has run out of tricks there's another banger or beauty waiting in the wings – love the Jenny middle eight on this one 'I'd say that I'm emphatic'. A couple I don't know and a couple I need to remind myself of.

Not too keen on Everybody In Love either, I did buy the parent album at the time as liked other singles and found it a bit whelming, neither here nor there really but with some good parts. One Shot and Eyes Wide Shut (third singles from the album) were my pick from them. Everybody In Love has held up better than I'd have expected as a radio recurrent though, I still hear Heart play it fairly regularly.

Going to need this on Record Store Day exclusive diamond studded vinyl with luxe gatefold packaging immediately.

I would say three as Southgate You're The One wasn't their first World Cup dalliance, they did a cover of All Together Now that was a top 20 hit in Germany in 2006 (not top 40 in UK or US but was a single, so technically works by the rules given, not that I'd expect it to be chosen). A re-release of this by Bowie's opportunistic former label was top ten in 1973! I definitely would expect one of my favourite Bowie songs to be incoming for this round. And also noticed an ABBA one that works really well. Intrigued for the reveal!

Yes it was imports only as I have it and it’s in a cardboard sleeve (can’t remember where from!). With a full release it was probably heading for top five but not No.1 and I can see that they would have wanted to maintain the momentum of the previous two singles. I do actually agree with you btw, I love Calum’s guidelines here because we’re bound to make more discoveries. It is more of a challenge but I love a challenge and even prefer them to open rounds.

Have an assss day

I'd absolutely love the hustle of a Swedish version being used instead, although it wouldn't really wash in this round as most of their Swedish versions were of big English hits. There's always Åh, vilka tider, if their mentor wishes to exit the competition swiftly!

It would have taken one hell of a song for this to have not topped my vote, one of my all-time favourites. I'm quite struck by the lack of choice some artists have for this round having looked up chart positions of singles in their home countries as well as here and the US for where that applies. Should be an interesting round.

This I think was my votes but I can't fully remember as didn't save them: 01 Delta Goodrem - In This Life (one of Delta's more uplifting singles, brings back happy uni memories and just the fact she returned after three long years away was amazing for me at the time) 02 ABBA - One of Us (one of their best 80s singles, the heartbreaking lyrics with the cod reggae lilt of the production is a lyrical and musical juxtaposition that I love) 03 Lily Allen - LDN (I would probably rank anything from her debut album in my top five, obsessed with it and always found this such a joy) 04 Atomic Kitten - Right Now (2001 Recording) (actually prefer the Kerry version of this one but no denying it's a banger, such a fun debut single from them) 05 Conan Gray - Vodka Cranberry (one of the few Conan songs I already know well, and I have liked it since I first heard it) 06 Florence + the Machine - No Light, No Light (a strong Florence single that I forgot how much I enjoyed) 07 David Bowie - Starman (a classic and I should have ranked it higher to help save him from the bottom three) 08 Kelly Clarkson - My Life Would Suck Without You (musically it's so catchy but can't match the amazing My December era for me) 09 Scissor Sisters - Only the Horses (I used to love this but it's not worn too well for me, still decent though) 10 Chappell Roan - Femininomenon (I like it but not a major fave from the album, I do see why it was picked at this stage though as if it had got through she would have had a very strong path to the final) 11 ROSALÍA - SAOKO (not one for me sadly)

When I worked in Asda they used to play this song a lot but would censor Tesco

Although I was one of the loyal import buyers that took it to the lofty heights of No.90.

It was a cancelled single sadly 😭

The Day Before You Came didn’t flop hard enough 🥲

Here for it.

I made some really strong discoveries from Rosalía so thank her mentor for sending her and making some inspired choices and introducing me to stuff I likely wouldn’t have looked up. But this song unfortunately was the only one of the 11 in this round I didn’t rate at least 8/10.