RabbitFurCoat

28. Jessie J - Domino 2 weeks at #1 (entered 25th December 2012, #1 15th January) {54}-34-08-01-01-03-04-04-06-06-10-11-11-14-13-11-15-25-27-31-38-42-46-50-32-44-43-45-38-29-31-52-{75R(52)-66} (34 weeks) Kept off #1: Rizzle Kicks – Mama Do The Hump Sales: 57.369 & 64.255 EOY: #8 (749,000) Jessie J reached the top of the UK chart on three occasions from 2011-14, and Domino is by far the best of them, the others would have dropped out long before the 9th song in their respective years. Whilst this is nowhere near as objectionable as her other #1s and could quite feasibly have been ranked a few places higher, its low position here can largely be summed up by the following quote from my opening post: "I started working properly in April in an office job in which a high repeat radio station like Heart FM or something equally rancid was on ALL THE TIME. As a result there are definitely a couple of tracks here that appear lower than they might otherwise have had, due to the memories of hearing them minimum three times a day, Monday to Friday, every single week, for what felt like an eternity." Domino ended 2012 in the UK as the airplay #1, with 8,500 plays and 200,000 audience impressions more than the second placed song, which was also enough to make it #5 on the decade-to-date airplay chart too. It’s the type of song that was by an act that was new, fresh and young enough to be played on the likes of Radio 1 and Capital, but also pleasant and inoffensive enough to be lapped up by the likes of Heart, Magic and Radio 2 (I haven’t fact checked that it was playlisted by each of these, but easy to imagine it was given the stats). It was probably in my top 5 most heard songs of the year despite having never chosen to play it, with Moves Like Jagger and Adele (general) the other main offenders for heavy rotation on an office radio station. My stance on Domino has definitely softened over the years, as a pop song it’s fundamentally fine, but that chorus certainly did wear me down enough that I still recoil at hearing it. Its follow-up, Laserlight with David Guetta, is probably the only song of Jessie’s that I’d prefer to listen to now. But I generally had a dislike for Jessie J since she debuted with Do It Like a Dude; annoying voice, annoying songs, annoying hair, annoying personality whenever I saw her on TV. A singer I’m more than happy to forget about. A look at the chart history for Domino is like something from a bygone era when looking through the current lens of streaming, a song entering the chart in Christmas week, with only 12 Christmas songs in the 53 positions above it, before being one of a few genuinely new hits to mark the beginning of the year. In its second week at the top it held off Rizzle Kicks with Mama Do The Hump, they’re something of a blast from the past who were popular for a period in time, it was comfortably their biggest song as lead artist, and probably their best too. It ended the year inside the top 20 sellers of the year, #17 making it the 5th highest seller to not make the top, with four previous charting weeks in 2011 too, so unlucky to have not made it at any point, though as it was only ahead of Domino when they were both new and climbing the chart so it can’t be claimed it deserved to have made #1 ahead of Jessie.

29. Tulisa - Young 1 week at #1 (entered 6th May) 01-02-05-10-14-21-27-33-36-37-43-52-62 (13 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 121,694 EOY: #43 One look at N-Dubz and I knew that I wasn’t in their target audience. I probably heard some of their songs in passing, but don’t particularly recognise any and certainly would never seek them out, they were reasonably successful without being massive so I did fortunately find them incredibly easy to ignore. The obvious counter to this was Number 1, them featuring on Tinchy Stryder’s number one hit in 2009, which was a decent song. It felt like N-Dubz would be a thing for a short period and then quickly disappear, but that’s not what happened at all as their main members went on to do other things successfully. In 2011 Dappy launched a solo career and got a UK number one, whilst Tulisa replaced Cheryl Cole as a judge on the X-Factor, mentoring eventual winners Little Mix in her debut year, and would return again in 2012. The increased exposure meant it was the perfect time to launch her own solo career, and Young would kick that off in May, backed up by a performance on Britain’s Got Talent’s semi-final week. The promotion and increase in profile worked and its debut sale of 121k was the second highest of the year at this point. Young is an innocuous party pop song, lyrics about being able to make mistakes while you’re young, set to a reasonable beat in part created by the third N-Dubz member, Fazer. Her voice is decent enough – it received Katy Perry comparisons which I kind of get – and it’s not particularly offensive. To repeat the phrase I’ve used in Will.i.am’s entry, it is pure 2012 Capital FM fodder, sounds a lot like many other songs of this period, deeply inoffensive dance-pop unlikely for the then me to care about enough to listen to, and certainly not for the current me to give any thought to Tulisa after completing this undertaking. Unfortunately for Tulisa, Young made no real lasting impact, it fell from the charts relatively quickly and has barely been listened to since. It was only when looking at this list of number ones that I remembered “oh yeah, Tulisa was A Thing”. Streams on Spotify aren’t a perfect measure of popularity as they can come from anywhere in the world, and this was very much limited to being a UK hit, but its total of 18.3 million streams seems low for a song that was #1 just before the streaming boom, and it ranks 34th of 35 (one song, yet to be revealed, is not on Spotify) in this list, comfortably ahead of Gary Barlow but with barely 50% of the total of the #33 rank. There was very little chart success for her after either, album The Female Boss only charted at #35 in the Autumn, while follow-up singles only reached #11 and #18, and that would be it for the top 40, until 2022 when N-Dubz made a comeback and Charmer snuck a week in, though to be fair it was a hugely hyped and massive tour they put on, and fair play to them, I certainly wouldn’t have imagined it was possible.

30. Rita Ora feat. Tinie Tempah – R.I.P. 2 weeks at #1 (entered 13th May) 01-01-04-08-12-15-20-26-24-26-34-36-42-48-69-47-23-33-54-55-65-75-74R(5) (23 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 104,592 & 57,434 EOY: #28 (453,000) 2012 was certainly the year of Rita Ora, she’d risen to prominence featuring on a hit earlier this year (more on that one later), and on the back of that it was deemed the perfect time to launch her solo career, some four years after first being spotted and signed to Jay Z’s Roc Nation label. A cursory look at those involved in R.I.P. it was always obvious this was going to get the push required to be a big hit, even for a relative unknown singer – Drake, Tinie Tempah and Stargate were all involved, and its main producers were Chase & Status who had their own big breakthrough in the previous year. Despite the involvement of a number of acts I liked and had enjoyed a lot of their work previously, I was never taken in by R.I.P., it was rumoured to have been written for Rihanna (denied by Ora), and it does have a feel of Rihanna cast-off to it (the “I, I, I’m ready for ya” in the bridge even makes Ora sound like Rihanna is on backing vocals), it’s fine but there’s nothing in the lyrics, production or delivery that makes me sit up and take notice or want to return to. The rapper featuring on a pop song / pop chorus featuring on a rap song was a well-trodden path by now, and various combinations of rapper/pop(pier) act made up at least 15 UK number ones in 2010-12. Tinie Tempah was the chosen one here, and he’d benefitted previously with Eric Turner providing the excellent chorus on his own 2010 #1 Written In The Stars. In some of these, the combination works well, both involved complement each other brilliantly and the added rap/chorus is excellent. On others, the addition feels completely pointless and this is one of those – Tinie was a huge star by this point and deservedly so from that debut album, but he was phoning it in here – a poor rap some way short of what he’s capable of and the song didn’t need it – without it I’d have placed R.I.P. above the next two which are both just solo female hits. This wouldn’t be uncommon for him though, he’d have four more #1s and a further four that all peaked at least as high as #6, but his best work was all released in 2010 and 2011. R.I.P. didn’t stop anything else from reaching the top, the previous and next chart toppers were both at #2 during these weeks, but at #4 in both of these charts was Too Close by Alex Clare, which finished the year inside the top 20 sellers, with over 100k more sold than Rita and Tinie managed, and a song I’d have definitely been up for having swapped positions – not a huge favourite but a good song and a would be comfortable top half finish in this ranking.

Delighted that Spain got there in the end, the right outcome for the tournament, definitely the best team in it. Don't think it's been a vintage tournament, certainly towards the bottom end of the ones I've watched. Too bloated, poor knockout stage, FIFA worse than they've ever been.

31. Will.i.am feat. Eva Simons – This Is Love 1 week at #1 (entered 1st July) 01-03-03-04-09-14-11-23-29-35-40-52-60-72 (14 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 102,320 EOY: #39 (403,000) It almost feels wrong placing this directly next to Payphone, however there ended the section of the completely terrible records, we now begin a run of largely inoffensive but completely generic songs which sound very of the time when listening back 14 years later, that I didn't care for then and definitely don't now. In between Maroon 5’s two weeks at the top, will.i.am. got to the summit, with Is This Love becoming his second #1 as a solo credit (he’d go on to have three more), and 7th overall following 5 with Black Eyed Peas. Most of these had come 2-3 years earlier, where the Peas were huge for a time and he featured on Usher’s OMG. Up until this point, most of his solo credits were appearing on other people’s songs, rather than his own, but that changed in 2012 and he’d have four solo top 3s, all with the helping hand of someone else. It kicked off with T.H.E (The Hardest Ever) in February with Mick Jagger and Jennifer Lopez, and continued in the summer with This Is Love, featuring Dutch vocalist Eva Simons, which entered at the top spot. Produced alongside two-thirds of Swedish House Mafia, Steve Angello and Sebastian Ingrosso, you can tell their influence early on from the first instrumental drop and then the rest of the song – it sounds very SHM and that’s definitely the best part of the song, but even then they were capable of so much better. Will.i.am sounds quite poor which I often thought he had done in previous hits too, the lyrics are nothing to get excited about, generic descriptions of love and the song largely passes by without especially enjoying any of it but without hating it either, it is in effect the ultimate 2012 Capital FM fodder. Eva Simons was the singer to provide additional vocals to this and delivers the chorus, and fair play to Will for reaching out to a relative unknown to be part of this, given he was a superstar at the time and would attract fellow worldwide stars to appear on many of his other singles, though she wasn’t the complete unknown to BuzzJack prior to this – her song Silly Boy had comfortably won an edition of BuzzJack Song Contest and become one of many posters top discoveries from the contest. Her part is fine, but is just typical of the song really – it could be absolutely anyone singing it, and whilst there’s nothing especially wrong with a dull and repetitive chorus, “can you feel the love” “this is love, this is love, this is love” doesn’t really add anything to the song. This may not have appeared in the radio/video edits, but listening to the full version it should finish 30 seconds earlier – it sounds like it’s reached a natural ending but then begins again as Simons repeats “Can you feel the love” for the remainder and is completely unnecessary to be kind, but in reality rather annoying.

32. Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa - Payphone 2 weeks at #1 (entered 24th June) 01-02-01-02-02-02-04-06-12-14-18-20-25-29-25-28-34-40-43-44-54-66-44R(6){-61} (24 weeks) Kept off #1: Chris Brown – Don’t Wake Me Up Sales: 141,410 & 73,998 EOY: #9 (725,000) It felt like Maroon 5 had been and gone after their initial 2004 flourish with the Songs About Jane album and follow-ups that didn’t hit the same commercial or quality highs, but then they had the surprise smash hit of 2011 with Moves Like Jagger alongside Christina Aguilera, who I’d also have said was past that level of smash hit. It was completely unavoidable and ended the year as the UK’s second highest selling single. They were fully back in the public eye around the globe, and a brand new single was always likely to have huge exposure and a great chance of being massively successful, and so came to pass with Payphone, its sales tally as it entered at the top was only bettered four times over the year. You could tell it was a likely entry at the top, as in the previous week’s chart Precision Tunes were at #9 with their version of it, going back to the days when fake cover versions would chart from time to time whilst official releases were held back for so long. I thought Maroon 5 were alright in their early days. Harder To Breathe was a decent hit, This Love was a good song which showed their poppier side, She Will Be Loved is absolutely fine for the soppy MoR ballad that it is, I’d completely tired of Moves Like Jagger due to how much I’d heard it, but I did enjoy it a lot for a time and it was hard to disagree with it being the success that it was, however there’s always been a lingering problem with Maroon 5, and it’s that Adam Levine has a voice that can be really whiny and grating. And it doesn’t come more whiny and grating than on Payphone, kicking off with the worst intro since Nickelback’s Rockstar, immediately launching into “I’m at a payyyyyyyphone….” before you’ve had any chance to reach for the skip, volume or off buttons. There’s an element of Maroon 5 evolving over the years and Payphone is a song which was very in keeping with the pop sound of the early 2010s, it’s very radio friendly but ultimately quite boring and just plods along, but while feeling like it’s annoyingly sung. If this song was simply “Maroon 5 – Payphone” it’d be slightly less objectionable, but it isn’t… To prove the point that Payphone was in keeping with the sound of the early 2010s, the featured ‘rent-a-rapper’ verse on a pop song had become a popular thing over the previous few years, and few, if any, are as poor and pointless as Wiz Khalifa’s addition to this record. As the final verse it comes far too late in the song to make any impact, feels like it took minimal effort to write and record, a useless and terrible addition to make a poor song worse, I just don’t get why a super radio friendly band with a super radio friendly hit needed this inclusion other than it was the ‘in’ thing. I’ll end this on something positive to say about this song; as it returned to #1 for a second week at the top, it stopped Chris Brown from having a second number one single in 2012.

33. James Arthur - Impossible 1 week at #1 (in 2012) (entered 16th December) 01-02-01-{01-03-07-09-11-14-19-29-34-39-43-50-42-48-75-58R(30)} (19 weeks) Kept off #1: will.i.am feat. Britney Spears – Scream & Shout Sales: 489,560 EOY: #5 (897,000) The X-Factor winners single has become common in the bottom few positions of these rank countdowns, and 2012 is no different. This time, it was the turn of James Arthur, who beat Jamene Douglas and Christopher Maloney in the final. I’d never cared too much for X-Factor or its predecessor talent shows, as I found them all quite forced and I was rarely bothered about the type of music and singer that were pushed on the shows. I paid slightly more attention in the 2007-11 uni years but not to the point where I actively followed it. By 2012, I was back living with my parents who also couldn’t have cared less about this type of show, so it was never on and I was full on ignoring it by this point. I can’t say I recall the names of either of the other finalists, and a quick Polyhex search would suggest neither amounted to anything, a significantly weaker than usual final. But maybe it was just luck of the TV voting audience vs single buying public, as Union J, Ella Henderson and Lucy Spraggan all had some form of post-show success and career and I recognise who they were. Rylan too of course, but nothing to do with his singing abilities. The single itself is a cover (obviously) of Shontelle’s #9 hit Impossible from just a couple of years previous. The original was fine, passable R&B I’m happy to hear but would never actively listen to. Arthur’s version is comfortably weaker, sounds exceptionally TV talent show by numbers, the kind of thing that brings to mind some youth in tight jeans and a half-unbuttoned shirt oversinging with his acoustic guitar. Not the worst X-Factor winner single, but I'd definitely have it towards the bottom of the 9 there had been by this point. My biggest blind spot in following the charts and popular music is from mid-2015 to COVID. I'd noticed in the year prior to that there was a real lack of anything I was interested in being successful (from mid '14 to mid '15 I'd have Uptown Funk as the second best #1 and I don't even like it). I moved into my own flat in May 2015, was much busier in life and ended up spending hardly any time on this site anymore which continued for a while, and when I did it wasn't in the UK chart forum, so the charts and what was popular became easy to ignore. There are loads of big hits and number one singles that I wouldn’t be able to recognise or know happened – wtf is a Rachel Platten, a Lukas Graham, or a Lil Dicky – so I’m quite surprised to learn that James Arthur didn’t disappear without a trace but was (and maybe is?) really popular, a run of hits almost perfectly coinciding with this time period. Impossible has over a billion streams on Spotify which is about a billion more than I’d expect, and he has multiple others that hit that mark. Listening to his other number one now for the first time, 2016s Say You Won’t Let Go, it feels like a complete non-entity of a song and shows why I began to pay no attention to what was happening. Impossible held will.i.am and Britney Spears off the top with Scream & Shout, although it would go on to replace it in 2013. Post-2009 Black Eyed Peas success, it felt like will.i.am was continuously releasing some over-autotuned dirge, and whilst I don’t consider this particularly different it is at least better than almost everything else he was involved in as a solo artist, and Britney’s contribution definitely made it better.

Enjoyable to read everyone's comments, assumed these two would be more popular being placed towards the bottom. I can see why Turn Up The Music would've been a guess as a non #1, but I was more thinking of an act as well as the song for that! Also intrigued as to what @Iz様 🌟 thinks might be low that needs defending!

34. Chris Brown – Turn Up The Music 1 week at #1 (entered 1st April) 01-05-09-20-23-19-19-36-52-67-61R(5) (11 weeks) Kept off #1: Sean Paul – She Doesn’t Mind Sales: 83,777 EOY: #79 Occasionally, there are events that happen that make me weep for humanity. The continued successful career of Chris Brown following his pleading guilty to assaulting his then girlfriend Rihanna, and we’d all seen the pictures, is one of those events. To still have such significant promotion, and such a large fanbase, predominantly of younger women, is wholly disappointing. He’s not someone who’s music and career I’d have likely followed much anyway, as his style of music at its best is what I find ok or passable, but given who he is it’s a career I’ve actively avoided. As such, it’s quite frustrating to see he has 74 separate UK chart entries and has charted in 19 of the last 20 years. As for the Turn Up The Music itself, I think even if it had been performed by one of Brown’s contemporaries, a Ne-Yo or Usher for example, it’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t still be taking a place in the bottom 5 here. It is typical of the trend which had been so prominent in the previous couple of years, a highly generic electronic-dance-pop-r&b club song, a David Guetta-fication of popular music mashing various genres together. A couple of years earlier this type of sound was everywhere and still sounded relatively fresh, even the most generic were still ok (jealous of Iz getting to be so positive so early in his 2010 countdown), whereas by 2012 it felt like performers and producers were phoning it in (“If you’re sexy and you know it, put your hands up in the air” – that’s quality there, Chris and the nine other men it took to write this). Sadly, plenty of this was still hitting the top of the chart. If Chris Brown had to get a number one single then it’s a shame it had to be with this dross (or maybe it’s not and it’s fitting?!), his biggest hits tended to be a lot better, and much more popular songs and I could at least understand their popularity. Even within 2012 follow-up Don’t Wake Me Up was much less objectionable as a song and finished the year 42 places higher in the best sellers of the year list. Of the 36 songs to reach number one in 2012, Turn Up The Music was the one that sold the least come the end of the year, which is something positive to share at least. The song it held off was another unlucky number two single, She Doesn’t Mind by Sean Paul spent three weeks at #2, behind three different songs, this was the second of those weeks. Sean Paul had a string of successful hits almost a decade earlier, seven consecutive singles from Gimme The Light in 2003 peaking at #5, #4, #1, #3, #2, #6, #2 over the next couple of years, but hadn’t managed to hit those highs since, #11 being the highest he reached in both 2006 & 2011, so She Doesn’t Mind became his biggest hit in a few years. It’s a good effort to bring the standard Sean Paul reggae to the early 2010s club banger sound – a decent mish-mash of the 2 – certainly preferable to the first 2 of the three songs that held it off the top spot, but nothing amazing, probably landing just shy of the top half here if it had snuck a week at the top.

35. Gary Barlow & The Commonwealth Band feat. Military Wives - Sing 1 week at #1 (entered 3rd June, number one 10th June) 11-01-03-11-23-27-34-40-51-71-64 (11 weeks) Kept off #1: Flo Rida - Whistle Sales: 141,670 EOY: #60 2012 marked 60 years since Queen Elizabeth II took the throne in the UK, and in the early summer this was celebrated by a Diamond Jubilee event and extra bank holiday. There needed to be an official single for this and thus Gary Barlow and Andrew Lloyd Webber were chosen to pen it. Gary toured the world to enlist the help of musicians across the Commonwealth to become The Commonwealth Band, as well as getting the Military Wives choir on board, fresh from their 2011 Christmas #1 with Gareth Malone, to record Sing. It was released the week before the main celebration event and entered the chart at #11, before being catapulted to the top following it. There was a lack of longevity though, with a quick descent down the chart, and it sold over a third of its total tally in its week at the top. I’m no anti-royalist but at the same time I simply don’t care about the Royal Family and never have. I pay no attention to them or any of the big events that surround them, but am ultimately not against their existence, and I've always found them relatively easy to ignore. I'd have had no interest in the Jubilee, however it had me more annoyed than normal at its existence as I’d recently finally started working, and being agency staff didn’t get paid for bank holidays, so was frustrated at losing out on £60 or so for something I didn’t care about and would have happily worked through. There are occasionally songs which you know you aren't the audience for, and Sing is definitely that. It’s not something I’d have naturally come across, neither was it performed and written by anyone I’d deliberately check new music out by. I may have listened to this once out of curiosity, but to be completely honest I might not have done. Sing was completely irrelevant to me at the time and I'd completely forgotten about its existence as quickly as it dropped out of the charts. A listen to it to determine the rankings here, and then one more when doing the write-ups, were essentially done with completely fresh ears. When first going through the list of songs I had to rank I’d tentatively put this at around #30 - no memory of it, and can’t imagine a song with these artists will be something I’d rank much higher, but also unlikely to find it more offensive than this bottom five. However, it turns out it is. In the end it was a close run battle between the Take That boys for the bottom position, but I just couldn't justify something this irrelevant that made so little impact on me being at the very bottom. The lyrics start and end with the voice of a single child which I find off-putting and not something I’d want to listen to, the chorus is as I’d expect it to be, tries to be rousing with a big vocal from full choirs but is just quite boring, and the song just plods along for 4 minutes and then ends with a 30 second bagpipe outro from nowhere, probably the worst instrument there is that immediately makes anything it features in worse. Everything about it just sounds so forced and polished, get two national treasures to write a soppy ballad with a big chorus for the Queen and watch the public lap it up. Sing was also included on a 7 track album of the same name which was #1 for three weeks, it included a version where Gary sings it rather than the choir, a cover of The Beatles Here Comes the Sun, as well as versions of songs typical of this type of event – Amazing Grace, Land of Hope and Glory and of course, God Save the Queen. It’s difficult to imagine an album I’d want to listen to less, although with a run time of only 24 minutes it could be worse, and I suspect plays of copies of it since 2012 are incredibly low and gathered a lot of dust. The song it kept from the top spot was much bigger, Whistle by Flo Rida ended the year as the 15th biggest seller, the 4th highest song which didn’t reach number one, and this was its first of 2 weeks as runner up. Four years after debuting in the UK with Low, 2012 was a big year for Flo and it was unfortunate to not become his 5th UK number one – by the time Sing was out of the top 40 Whistle was still top 5, having spent 8 weeks between #2 and #6, a genuine big hit. Despite Sing being awful, I don’t wish I was writing more than this paragraph about Whistle instead. In the previous post I was discussing the two most irritating big hits of the year, and Whistle wasn’t far behind, an annoying whistle throughout and unnecessarily vulgar, it’s comfortably my least favourite of Flo’s big hits and would also have been in the #30s in this countdown.

Thanks for all the comments. Glad there is some other disliking of Candy, even if not quite as much as me! I do think 2012 was a good year overall for number one singles, it was a good variety and lots of stuff that is decent - there is a lot of rubbish but then there is in every year and when 36 songs reach the top, there's bound to be!

36. Robbie Williams – Candy 2 weeks at #1 (entered 4th November) 01-01-06-08-07-11-15-14-{09-11-16-23-34-42-49-51-39-44-53-56-61} (21 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 137,581 & 90,812 EOY: #22 (503,000) When I was first aware of popular music and what was in the charts, Robbie Williams was as big an act as they come. I was slightly too young to have been aware of Take That, splitting in 1996 which was a year or two shy of me properly getting into any popular music, but Robbie was massive, absolutely everywhere, somehow managing to release songs that primary school kids of my age loved, as well as their mums, dads and grandmas, which was quite the feat. Six solo number one singles with his first five albums each selling over 2 million copies in the UK – some of them were truly excellent that I enjoyed then and now - but this heyday was a long way off by the time we were in 2012. Lead singles from three consecutive albums had failed to make the top spot, a couple of runners-up in Tripping (2005) and Bodies (2009), and a lowly #4 for Rudebox (2006), which was the sound of someone who’d been a popstar for 15 years attempting to be ‘down with the kids’, a poor effort that was (and likely still is) regarded as his weakest single. After not being part of That That’s initial reunion and huge success from 2006 onwards, he made up with the band and re-joined in 2010 to be part of their 3rd album since reforming, The Flood. He also released a solo single Shame, with Gary Barlow, ahead of the release of his second Greatest Hits album, which along with The Flood single both fell short of giving him another chart topper and instead he had another pair of #2s. By 2012, it had been 8 years since he’d topped the singles chart, as big a gap as the one between his debut solo single and 6th #1, but he also seemed as much in the public consciousness in a positive light as he had for a while too; back in Take That, lacking controversy, he’d been a guest mentor on X-Factor on the Saturday as he was about to release his new single, Candy, on the Sunday, and also performed the song on the show. It had been held back for weeks, spending almost 2 months on the UK Radio airplay chart by the time it was released (though controversially not playlisted by Radio 1 of course, the disgraceful ageist bast*rds), it was all set to give him a return to the top spot, and it duly delivered, smashing it with its #1 sales tally of 137k being beaten only five times throughout the year, holding off the previous #1 on both of its weeks at the top. Anyway, enough of the context and this history, why, amongst all the other drivel that 2012 served, is Candy at the bottom? Simply put, I have always found it to be one of the most annoying songs ever made. Sometimes you get fed up of catchy and popular songs from how much you’ve heard them even if you once quite liked them (hi Moves Like Jagger), some you just don’t quite get their popularity or know it’s music not made for you (hello Someone Like You), whilst others just irritate from the very first listen and then only ever get worse, and Candy is one of those, right from the brass section in the introduction. Though it should be no coincidence that a song which interpolates lyrics from a popular nursery rhyme (ring a ring a roses) should be annoying. His voice is irritating on it, the rhymes are irritating, I hate how catchy it is and that I only have to see the words “Robbie Williams – Candy” for the annoying chorus to get stuck in my head. I hated listening to it in 2012 and after years of not doing so, hated doing so once more. To be fair to Robbie, he showed he could still write a hit, didn’t need to rely on attempting to be cool anymore, and could still catch the imagination of the public, and fair play to him – in some ways it was nice to see him get that elusive number one single again, happy for him, just the song was not for me, and that’s fine – by 2012 I’d stopped caring that songs I disliked would be big hits, as it was so common. The next few songs in this countdown may technically be worse as far as compositions of music go, but ultimately they’re a bunch of forgettable non-entities that were easy to block out then and in the 14 years since, therefore any level of dislike wasn’t quite the same. I checked back to see if I said anything on the site about Candy in 2012, and clearly I wasn’t in the mood to be too negative about songs at the time as it rarely got a mention, a defence of Radio 1 for not playlisting it was the main topic of my discussion for it, and I gave it my one allowed negative score on the thread to Rate 2012s number ones, so I’m pleased that I have always been consistent at least. It was a more difficult choice to rank this last than I was initially expecting when first looking at the list, but it might have been even more difficult; 2012 was a year for the super annoying big-hit pop song, but thankfully the year’s other biggest irritant didn’t make it this high and I don’t actually have to listen to the warbling of We Are Never Ever Everrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Getting Back Together again for the purposes of compiling this list.

Hello, welcome, you may have noticed me slightly more often in this forum over the past year, reflecting on the music I used to like the most, and making occasional contributions to some of these countdowns. I was asked if I wanted to partake in this series, so I have taken a prolonged break from my thread to write this instead. So, we move to 2012. What was I up to and what was happening in the world? In 2012 I turned 23, I’d not long graduated and begun the year signing on still looking for gainful employment, and feeling quite down about it. I was still living with my parents which helped with that situation, and I started working properly in April in an office job and life started to improve. It had an impact on me musically too, as it was an office in which a high repeat dirge radio station like Heart FM or something equally rancid was on ALL THE TIME. As a result there are definitely a couple of tracks here that appear lower than they might otherwise have had, due to the memories of hearing them a minimum of three times a day, Monday to Friday, every single week, for what felt like an eternity. No longer being at uni, I was going out much less and as a result didn’t create the same bond to generic massive party songs as I had in recent years (hello Pitbull and LMFAO) so some of the biggest hits of the year passed me by in ways which wouldn’t have happened previously. It was still amongst the time when I still most active on BuzzJack, having relatively recently introduced Unknown Pleasures into the Indie & Rock forum, part-hosting the Record of the Decade competition in the Chart Forum, and still having some interest in mainstream music and the charts (ask me to do this in 2016-17 and I’d be clueless to what most of the songs were), whilst taking Utopia to some of their most dizzying heights in BuzzJack Song Contest with the most landfill of noughties landfill indie acts, Reverend and the Makers. The landscape of the year in the UK was dominated by two events at each end of the summer. First was the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, an extra bank holiday and party to celebrate Elizabeth II being on the throne for 60 years. At the end, it was London hosting the Olympics and Paralympics, events which genuinely seemed to bring the nation together in celebration, in what now feels like a distant memory in such a post-truth divided world. Chart hits were created from the ceremonies and soundtracks, and some of them big, but unfortunately not quite to the top so as much as I’d love to be talking about Harder Than You Think and One Day Like This, I shan’t be. There was a football tournament too, in which England typically disappointed. Nothing to discuss here again though, as no seriousness was taken to releasing a song and the only effort I can find reference to, featuring ex-footballer and then current TV personality Chris Kamara, didn’t even bother the chart. Musically, it was the year of debut albums from alt-J, Jake Bugg, Perfume Genius, Jessie Ware and Purity Ring; debut singles from Public Service Broadcasting and CHVRCHES; superb 3rd or 4th albums from Hot Chip, The Maccabees, Bat For Lashes and Crystal Castles; Foals released the incredible Inhaler; my favourite album of 2011 (Ben Howard – Every Kingdom) became a mainstream success, but less of what I was listening to and enjoying in 2012, we’re here to discuss what the public was listening to and buying, although I did put two of these UK #1 songs in my Year End top 10 at the time, which is quite the rarity! So there is some overlap, but will they still be the two I like most? After years in the mid-late 2000s of fewer number ones and songs climbing to their chart peaks being common, we had begun the decade back in the era of high turnover at the top, many one week number one singles, and releases being held back to ensure maximum chance of a chart topper. 2012 wasn’t any different, with another 36 number one singles, 26 of which entered at the top, though of the ones which didn’t there were some genuine slow burners which became massive hits. When Julian asked me about taking part in this, I scanned the list of number ones for the year and saw a good dozen or so which I still think are excellent, but as you can tell, plenty of other songs of to get through first and it’s quite the ride. One thing that does strike is how often the word ‘featuring’ will appear in this countdown, as it was a year of collabs galore. I’ve enjoyed following these threads without specifically remembering exactly what’s to come, so won’t be doing much hinting or revealing anything which is still to come at any point. 2012 had number one singles which included the now typical array of; an uninspired cover for an X-Factor winners single, new releases by various previous alumni as well as from past, present and future judges. There was a charity cover, a song for an event, a contender for ‘the most non-number one number one single of all time’ and a disgrace of a human being that shouldn’t have been anywhere near the top of the chart, but this countdown won’t start with any of those because something far, far worse exists, however I’m not expecting the usual near-universal agreement for a bottom placing in one of these countdowns…

Great work @Paddington James, enjoyable to follow. Not a huge amount of crossover in the top of yours compared to mine but do adore We Found Love, would have been my top choice for this year. I can see why Someone Like You is so popular, just never cared for it and that style of music - always felt Rolling In The Deep was my favourite Adele song by a long way! My top 10: 1 - We Found Love 2 - Give Me Everything 3 - Promises 4 - Louder 5 - Party Rock Anthem 6 - Changed The Way You Kiss Me 7 - Read All About It 8 - Dance With Me Tonight 9 - On The Floor 10 - Don't Go I will pick up the baton, probably starting my thread tomorrow PM

Give Me Everything is absolutely superb, truly iconic - great to see it so high. All involved make it great, it's one of the definitive club bangers of the era - it sounds great in 2026 which a lot don't. I do enjoy Read All About It - feels very raw and one of the better rapper/singer male/female collabs there were of this era.