RabbitFurCoat

07. Carly Rae Jepsen – Call Me Maybe 4 weeks at #1 (entered 8th April) 01-01-01-01-02-03-03-03-05-07-10-08-11-11-12-13-13-15-16-20-27-28-30-35-33{-40-38-39-46-51-50-60-54-52-67-67-70-56-33-25-41-53-59-73-62R(2)-62-70-75} (48 weeks) Kept off #1: Sean Paul – She Doesn’t Mind, Justin Bieber – Boyfriend, Conor Maynard – Can’t Say No, Calvin Harris feat. Ne-Yo – Let’s Go Sales: 106,657, 110,024, 114,993 & 99,569 EOY: #2 (1,142,995) Onto the one song in the top 10 I wasn’t overly enamoured with at the time but have grown to love over the years, Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen, the biggest worldwide selling song of the year and #2 in the UK. Carly first came to prominence in her native Canada on Canadian Idol in 2007 and released a debut album with a folk influence the following year, but failed to chart, whilst a couple of its singles were minor top 40 hits there and nowhere else. She didn’t exactly have the profile of a singer who would return three years later to have the biggest worldwide hit of the year. Originally released in 2011 in Canada, it entered the chart at #97 and would gradually climb its way to the top 17 weeks later, helped along by support by Canada’s then-biggest star, Justin Bieber. It came to the UK in April, it had been promoted but not massively so its success wasn’t completely obvious, it climbed 48-24 on the airplay chart in the week it was released before shooting up to #6, although it was another that had demand to have a fake version chart, as Carly Rae Jepsen Tribute Team charted at #49 the week prior. Being so immediately successful from relatively little promotion, it was perhaps likely it’d grow in popularity and its sales increased in its 2nd and 3rd weeks at the top, before being a few hundred copies short of four consecutive weeks selling over 100k. Its chart run doesn’t look anything unusual in the present day, but 8 weeks top 3, 20 weeks top 20, and 44 weeks top 75 was phenomenal in 2012. Call Me Maybe is just a great pop song, exceptionally catchy, a great melody and decent lyrically too, a tale of describing someone you fancy is as old as pop music itself but the perspective felt modern and up-to-date for a 2012 audience and it’s no surprise it was able to appeal so widely to audiences of different ages. Great pop songs continued for Carly, though her relative lack of success I’ve found quite surprising – Cut To The Feeling and Run Away With Me make for a superb trio of pop songs as good as much bigger acts have. I suspect that my reasoning for taking a while to truly appreciate Carly’s Call Me Maybe is that I’d spent most of the 2010s listening to a different version of the song. As it was knocked off the top of the chart by Tulisa, my favourite act of the first half of the 2010s covered the song in Radio 1’s Live Lounge, and it’s Ben Howard’s version I’ve played endlessly, and I still can’t help but feel it’s the definitive version of it. In Carly’s four weeks at the top, there were four separate songs hitting #2, it was the third song Sean Paul got stuck behind before three new entries could only peak at #2, though in none of the four weeks was it a particularly close battle, 77k being the highest sale of any of them. No strong favourites here, Can’t Say No is boring and I’d forgotten about Connor Maynard’s existence entirely, Let’s Go amongst the more generic of Calvin’s offerings, making Bieber my preferred of the four. Still trying to find his way after the initial success being so young, definitely a decent song with a maturing sound.

It's hard to pick favourites off The Seldom Seen Kid, pretty much the whole album is so wonderful. Some Riot is great, I adore Friend of Ours with the story behind it, and Weather to Fly and Mirrorball are both gorgeous too.

Interlude #1 In other threads in this series posters have also used it to talk about other notable things within the year, such as ranking the #2 singles. I thought about doing this, however I simply don't care for any of them enough to bother, the best runners up from this year are on par with the likes of Part of Me and Call My Name so had no real desire to do anything other than note them as I have done. I thought about doing something with the #1 albums but in truth I didn't buy or listen to that many of them and didn't have the inclination to listen to them. For those who have been paying attention to the End of Year positions, you’ll have noticed that the highest placed song to appear so far was #5. Whilst it had become common for the top spots in the end of year chart to be taken by songs that didn’t reach number one (Love The Way You Lie #1 in 2010, Moves Like Jagger #2 in 2011) the top 6 in 2012 did all hit the top. The first song from the top 4 will appear next, so it certainly feels like 2012 must be a contender to be the year whose top 4 selling songs I’d like the most, and I nearly considered going through historical end of year charts to see if anything could match these four but decided not to. Either way, shame about James Arthur preventing a nicer round number of best top 5. There was something about 2012s charts which stick out, which is... 2012 - The year of the old(er) song peaking at #4 If you wanted to really stretch this you could technically include Avicii's Levels in this, which had charted at the end of 2011 at #4 and climbed back there in the new year, however that's a bit of a stretch as it was a current song and I've already written about it anyway. But there were three others: John Legend - Ordinary People As a 16 year old in 2005 the majority of my listening was to the UK indie bands of the time - albums from the likes of Maximo Park, The Futureheads, Bloc Party, Stereophonics, Kaiser Cheifs, and the emergence of Arctic Monkeys. But occasionally there would be an album from another genre I'd really get into and one of those was Get Lifted by John Legend, very much helped by the single Ordinary People, a #27 hit in the UK, his highest peaking. At the time I thought he had a brilliant voice and wrote great songs and I’ve never got bored of Ordinary People, I still love giving it an occasional listen. In 2012 it gained a new lease of life, as many songs had done in recent years, after it was performed on a TV talent show. This time it was the turn of The Voice, by Jaz Ellington in the semi-final. It was a relatively short-lived return to the charts with a chart run of 27-04-12-25-33, but was a popular enough performance to find a new audience. It would be another couple of years before John got any more significant success, when All of Me reached #2 and spent 18 consecutive weeks in the top 10. Elbow - One Day Like This Elbow had generally been a band I was aware of, liked a few of their songs but never fully got into. That changed in 2008 with the release of The Seldom Seen Kid album after the lead single Grounds for Divorce. It remains one of my favourite and most listened to albums of all time, the standout moment of course being One Day Like This. I have always considered it to be one of the best songs ever written, everything about it is phenomenal. The way that it builds, the beautiful lyrics, Guy Garvey's voice being at its most gorgeous, the stunning orchestra playing on it. It has never not made me smile and it is incredible to watch live and be part of an audience singing along. It remains the song that has spent the most time on my personal chart, with 31 weeks from its release. One Day Like This had always been a relatively popular song that had never 'gone away' if you like. There were multiple re-entries to the chart each year, and by the end of 2011 it had spent more than 50 weeks inside the top 100, but only six in the top 40 and even then only just inside, as it only had a peak of #35. But in 2012 Elbow performed it at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, a typically great performance of it that captured more people than it had done before, re-entering the chart at #4 the following week. It wasn't the only beneficiary of a closing ceremony inclusion, Emeli Sande's Read All About It entered at #3 and Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill at #6. Lower down, British staples of Imagine, Wonderwall and Waterloo Sunset also re-entered. Public Enemy - Harder Than You Think US hip-hop group Public Enemy had 16 top 75 hits in the UK between 1987 and 1999, the highest peak they reached was #16 with He Hot Game. I was completely unfamiliar with them, being from a genre I don’t listen to much and their peak being before my time. In 2007 they released their 10th studio album to mark the 20th anniversary of their career, the lead single from it was Harder Than You Think. It was a song that was essentially completely unknown in the UK but it was used in the summer by Channel 4 as the theme song on the trailer to their coverage of the London Paralympic games beginning at the end of August, causing it to have a short chart run of 71-23-63. When the games got closer and then started, the song was all over Channel 4 and it quickly regained popularity, climbing 56-11-04 to become their highest charting song. It has remained part of the channel since as it’s stayed as the theme tune to The Last Leg, originally launched to bring comedy and disability together as part of the Paralympics and continued to be broadcast for 14 years turning into more of a topical news show. Unlike the other two songs here which I already loved, Harder Than You Think was very much a discovery. The song is based around a sample of Shirley Bassey’s 1972 track Jezahel, as they take the brass section from it and beef it up to become the excellent instrumentation of the song, whilst Chuck D raps some glorious lyrics, “thank you for letting us be ourselves” to those who had supported a 20 year career, and easy to see why it was seen appropriate for Paralympics coverage. In the last 14 years, it’s definitely a song which has gone on to become one of my all-time favourites of the genre.

08. Calvin Harris feat. Florence Welch – Sweet Nothing 1 week at #1 (entered 21st October) 01-03-06-11-14-18-20-23-26-27-25{-18-24-37-45-46-59-64-71} (19 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 94,154 EOY: #48 That brings us nicely to Sweet Nothing, the second Calvin/Florence #1 of the year. Calvin had wanted to work with Florence on a song for some time, and after remixing Spectrum managed to find a slot in her tour where she could record some vocals to go on a track he’d made for her. It would be the 6th track to be released from his album 18 Months, following four #2s from 2011 and 2012, but would go one better and become the second to reach #1, along with his collaboration with Rihanna, We Found Love. Three further releases from it would all reach the top 10 in 2013 making it the first album to be home to nine top 10 singles. Its first week sale was one which Spectrum couldn't reach but it didn't have longevity and ended the year 29 places lower. Both of these songs sound very much like the early 2010s Calvin Harris that they are, but that’s not a bad thing as it was definitely when he was often at his creative best. Sweet Nothing is both the perfect accompaniment to and follow-on from Spectrum, where it definitely sounds like the more dancier of the two and that it is the original song, it’s lyrically superb and the break over the chorus is exceptional and for that I nudge it ahead as the better of the two. A great combination of artists that worked so incredibly well, twice. I’d probably place the two songs at #4 & #5 in both my “favourite Florence songs” and “favourite Calvin songs” lists, behind: 1. Rabbit Heart 2. Dog Days Are Over 3. Everybody Scream and 1. I’m Not Alone 2. Feel So Close 3. We Found Love

Properly catching up on the comments of the past few days. Nice to see everyone's thoughts and stories and glad the order seems to be relatively popular with songs typically being more liked as we go on! Enjoyed the following typo/autocorrect... A very different song, and video/dance to go with it!

09. Florence + The Machine – Spectrum (Say My Name) (Calvin Harris Remix) 3 weeks at #1 (entered 15th July) 01-01-01-03-04-07-06-07-12-21-25-22-29-29-32-35-35-46-58-55-63-59-52-58-51{-35-40-52-75-66R(3)-73-73R(9)-71R(5)} (33 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 64,816, 63,960 & 65,790 EOY: #19 (554,000) Florence + The Machine, led by singer Florence Welch, had been one of the most successful British acts of the previous few years. Debut album Lungs was released in July 2009, spent a couple of weeks at #1 the following January and hadn’t ever left the top 100 by this point, some three years later. It would only fall out for the first time towards the end of 2012 after 176 consecutive weeks. Second album Ceremonials went straight to the top on its release in November 2011 and had been bouncing around the bottom half of the top 75 for three months by the time the fourth single from it was released, Spectrum. I had enjoyed Florence to some extent since she first emerged, Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) being my favourite Machine song and thought Lungs was great. I was less fussed on Ceremonials but had at least enjoyed the singles from it. The original album version of Spectrum is good, but it didn’t make much of an impact on me – it’s a fine album track but not a track I’d ever really go back to on its own. In the summer a remix was promoted by another of the UK’s biggest acts, Calvin Harris, the Scottish DJ/Producer/Songwriter, who’d had three chart toppers and three other number two hits in the years leading to this, most of them in the previous 12 months, as he’d become a huge name in the UK music scene. For the remix the song was retitled Spectrum (Say My Name) to include the main lyric of the chorus, turning it into an electro-house banger. Spectrum had charted just outside the top 100 the week before thanks to sales of the original album version of the track and made the 104-01 climb the week later following the release of Calvin’s mix where it stayed for three weeks with incredibly consistent sales, potentially helped by the instrumental’s use in the BBCs coverage of roundups in the London Olympics. Calvin’s work on Spectrum is brilliant, from the beginning sounding like it’s going to be a bit more of an upbeat version to the original, to the break at the chorus where it transforms it into something greater and a dancefloor filler. Florence’s vocals sound great over Calvin’s work, and the chorus is fantastic. It showed how good Florence’s voice sounded and suited dance music…

10. Labrinth feat. Emeli Sande – Beneath Your Beautiful 1 week at #1 (entered 14th October, #1 28th October) 71-85-01-02-02-04-04-04-04-08-11-10{-10-15-20-27-32-32-30-35-40-42-45-58-71-69R(8)} (25 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 107,775 EOY: #12 (663,000) It’s probably an apt and fitting place to begin the section of songs which I think are genuinely great, the top 10, and we kick if off with a duet between two of the biggest British stars of the time, whose appearance in this list is largely down to a performance on X-Factor. Labrinth was first introduced to the public as a featured act on Tinie Tempah’s second single, Frisky, in 2010, charting at #2 (although he had also been uncredited on Pass Out earlier in the year too). Over the next couple of years he’d reach the top 5 another three times with his own tracks that would appear on his 2012 debut album, Electronic Earth, which peaked at #2 and finished the year as its 46th best seller. It was only 10 tracks long, with five others released earlier (3 before album release, 2 after) than Beneath Your Beautiful. Labrinth wasn’t typical of acts I’d listen to but I did enjoy most of his singles to some extent, particularly his biggest hit Earthquake, in which Tinie Tempah returned the favour in featuring on it, and taking it to #2 also. It was perhaps surprising that this hadn’t been released as a single earlier given it featured Emeli Sande, who’d had some hits in the previous few years, largely featuring with others, before fully breaking through in 2012 in a big way, her album Our Version of Events being #1 on five separate occasions throughout the year and ending it as by far the years biggest seller, with 1.393 million copies sold, over 600k more than anything else managed. It debuted at #1 in February and spent 66 weeks consecutively in the top 10, first departing it in May 2013. It would also go on to be the 2nd best seller of 2013 behind that years One Direction album, with a very bunched top 5 all selling above 600k but less than 700k. Even when Beneath Your Beautiful was given a push it hadn’t made much of an initial impact, charting at #71 before falling to #85 the week after. Then they performed it together on X-Factor, Labrinth singing his parts whilst playing the piano, and Emeli only being introduced and lit up once her part was due to start. It was a stunning performance and went down as one of the shows best and most successful, giving the song the traction to catapult to #1 the following Sunday, before spending almost the rest of the year in the top 10, falling outside by just one place in Christmas week, and ended the year as its 12th best seller. The song showed huge variation in the styles that Labrinth was capable of, following some releases typical of the electronic influenced hip-hop of the time with a stunning ballad. It’s not typical of the type of song I’d usually like and listen to, however it’s a fantastic example of when it’s done well it can be great, with the two involved working together excellently and bringing a lot to it. I’ve listened to more of Labrinth’s early work again as a result of doing this and it definitely feels like he’s a low-key underrated act of this period. For Emeli, I still enjoy Heaven and Wonder (with Naughty Boy) but have never cared for her much outside of those, her solo version of Read All About It maybe, but I did get bored of it quite easily.

11. DJ Fresh feat. Rita Ora – Hot Right Now 1 week at #1 (entered 19th February) 01-03-06-06-07-13-16-25-32-40-41-52-57-57-68-72-65R(8)-51R(5)-75-56R(43)-50-73-70 (23 weeks) Kept off #1: Emeli Sande – Next To Me Sales: 127,998 EOY: #24 (482,000) DJ Fresh had been releasing music for the best part of a decade by the time he first had any real chart success, Gold Dust in the summer of 2010 being his first UK top 40, spending 11 weeks in it without reaching the top 20 (coincidentally, it would have a similar 10 week top 40 run peaking at #22 2 years later) with a first big hit coming in 2011 as Louder entered the charts at the top, becoming officially the first dubstep UK #1. Just seven months later he was back at the top with Hot Right Now, which was officially classed as the first drum and bass #1. Like his other big successes, he was reliant on a female vocalist to add to the hit-making potential of Hot Right Now with Rita Ora following Ms. Dynamite and Sian Evans, this being her introduction to the majority of the public as her first charting single. Its weekly sale in reaching the top was comfortably the highest of the year to date and would remain the highest until June when it was bettered three times in as many weeks by Gary Barlow, Cheryl and Maroon 5. I had Louder as #4 in my ranking of the chart toppers of 2011, but I don’t think it’s that much better than Hot Right Now, just that 2012 was a significantly better year for songs I liked hitting the top and that if released in the opposite years would be in very similar positions. It is an excellent drum and bass song, a great instrumental with Rita performing her best work on the vocal, a catchy lyric and chorus that elevated this above many others of the genre and easy to see why it went to the top. Hot Right Now held off Emeli Sande from the top spot with Next To Me, the lead single from her album Our Version of Events. Next to Me is better then plenty of songs which did reach the top in this year, but certainly always the weaker of the songs in the top 2 in each of the three weeks it ended as runner-up. I probably enjoy it more now than I did then, a nice enough song but it (and she) were certainly overexposed in 2012.

01 (01) Palace - Dream On (01) (05) (2 weeks) 02 (02) Pond - Skyworks (02) (07) 03 (07) Tame Impala - Hummer (03) (05) 04 (03) Mystery Jets - A Hole To See The Sky Through I (01) (10) (4 weeks) 05 (11) Yard Act - New Beginnings (05) (04) 06 (04) Modest Mouse - Life's A Dream (04) (06) 07 (16) Overmono feat. John Joseph Holt - Knight In Shining Prada (07) (03) 08 (08) Olivia Rodrigo feat. Robert Smith - What's Wrong With Me (08) (06) 09 (05) FKA Twigs feat. Lil Yachty - On Your Mind (05) (07) 10 (10) Angine de Poitrine - Sarniezz (10) (06) 11 (06) Radio Free Alice - Lunch Money (04) (07) 12 (14) Boy Harsher - Jeans (12) (04) 13 (09) Paris Paloma - Stem the Flow (03) (09) 14 (24) Hercules & Love Affair feat. Hips & Lips - Boy (14) (02) 15 (12) Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Boys (12) (05) 16 (17) The Big Moon - Gravity (16) (04) 17 (20) Nina Simone - That's All I Ask (HAAi Remix) (17) (05) 18 (13) Yard Act - Redeemer (02) (12) 19 (22) Gener8ion feat. Yannis - Love & Tears (19) (06) 20 (29) Mystery Jets - Anaglypta (20) (02) 21 (15) Blossoms - Joke About Divorce (01) (14) (5 weeks) 22 (25) BALTHVS - Liminal Stages (22) (04) 23 (18) Touring feat. Holybones - Ten O'Clock (14) (08) 24 (34) STUM - Way to High (24) (02) 25 (27) The Temper Trap - Runaways (25) (03) 26 (19) The Itch - No More Sprechgesang (05) (09) 27 (31) DMA's - Killing Time (27) (03) 28 (**) The Drums feat. Mareaux - It Didn't Matter (28) (01) 29 (21) Boards of Canada - Prophecy At 1420 MHz (02) (13) 30 (**) *Wolf Alice - Hammond Song (30) (01) 31 (38) Hot Chip - Do Not Wait (31) (02) 32 (23) BALTHVS - Shakedown Street (02) (13) 33 (**) Slayyter - Brand New Chanel$ (33) (01) 34 (28) Ed O'Brien - Teachers (12) (10) 35 (32) Jon Hopkins feat. Imogen Heap - Reckoning (32) (05) 36 (26) Angine de Poitrine - Mata Zyklek (05) (15) 37 (**) HAAi feat. Echonomist - Ignition (37) (01) 38 (35) Nia Archives - Boys In Blue (21) (12) 39 (30) Hercules & Love Affair feat. Hips & Lips - I Get High (14) (09) 40 (36) Man/Woman/Chainsaw - Nosedive (01) (15) (1 week)

Well there goes my theory! 😆

12. PSY – Gangnam Style 1 week at #1 (entered 9th September, #1 30th September) 61-37-03-01-02-03-03-05-07-06-07-06-08-09-09-06{-03-03-09-12-16-22-24-29-30-38-38-37-39-50-46-54-58-63-64-62-71-67-55-70-51-57-63-67-67-70-73-71-66-50R(20)-59} (51 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 84,421 EOY: #6 (878,000) Going from a true one hit wonder to one in spirit now with PSY, the Korean rapper who had a 2012 worldwide viral smash with Gangnam Style. There was a #10 follow-up Gentleman in 2013 so he can’t claim to be a one hit wonder, but he might as well be given the scale of hit and what he’s known and remembered for. Gangnam Style was an unavoidable phenomenon in the latter half of 2012, a song that had everything to become such a viral hit; catchy, a fun video, a memorable and easy to mimic dance, and to help in the UK and other English speaking countries, an English language part in the chorus. The speed of its virality was incredible, with a vast cultural impact - it didn’t take long to become the first video to reach a billion views on YouTube, overtaking Justin Bieber’s Baby as the most viewed on the platform in the process, a record it held for almost five years, and its rise up the UK chart was as quick as you’d get then – 61-37-03-01 for a first four weeks. It stuck around for ages too, with 17 consecutive weeks in the top 10. There were Gangnam Style dance mobs across the world where thousands would gather to do the dance together. It was hard not to be taken in Gangnam Style, there was a novelty-ish element to it but it was very fun and easy to see why it became as big as it did, it felt everyone attempted the dance at some point. Even though I had a disdain for some of the songs and generic lyrics that were around at the time, and I’d have probably slagged off the same lyric in many others, it was hard not occasionally end up singing “HEEEYYYY SEXY LADY”. It probably did get too annoying after a while, but nice to look back on all these years later. K-Pop has become a huge export for Korea in the years since this, it’s hard to know how much of an impact Gangnam Style had in that, but it certainly played a part in its rise. It’s not a genre I’ve ever really found anything I love in, but then it clearly isn’t made and marketed for me. There’s also only one way that I can finish a post about Gangnam Style...

Nice to have the overall positivity of Bom Bom! That or today's entry would certainly have been my main guesses at what would be in a bottom 5. Of the top 11, no predicting which song it is someone might dislike so much!

13. Sam and the Womp – Bom Bom 1 week at #1 (entered 26th August) 01-02-05-09-13-17-24-25-35-45-51-49-62-62-73-72-39R(3){-33-51-55R(22)-65-68} (22 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 107,461 EOY: #42 Here we have a song I had completely forgotten about but delighted to be reminded of, and one which is a true one hit wonder – Sam and the Womp have no other charting songs anywhere in the world, but Bom Bom had relative levels of success in a dozen countries across the globe, although it’s only the UK where it reached the very top. Sam and the Womp were made up of Sam Ritchie, a British trumpeter, and Bloem de Ligny, a vocalist from the Netherlands who moved to Britian – she has a vocal style compared to Bjork, which does make some sense here on Bom Bom. It wasn’t unusual for a random act I’d never heard of to get a big dance hit at the end of the summer, though they were often Euro acts who had a popular hit over the continent and we’d catch on later in the UK, whereas this was a British made hit. The song is a bit bizarre and all over the place and I could easily see some people ranking this 20 odd places lower, but I do find it to be a lot of fun for three minutes, it’s a real earworm of Sam’s brass over an electro beat, and Bloem’s vocal on it really works, some great lyrics and her delivery is excellent, especially the emphasis on “I like your style of WOMPING”. I can’t imagine it’s a song that’s listened to that often now, but I have certainly enjoyed remembering its existence.

14. Katy Perry – Part of Me 1 week at #1 (entered 25th March) 01-04-06-13-21-24-16-20-24-37-53-63R(8)-72-73 (14 weeks) Kept off #1: Sean Paul – She Doesn’t Mind Sales: 79,079 EOY: #55 It had been almost four years since Katy Perry first broke through with I Kissed A Girl, and she had become one of the biggest acts in the world during that time, with 2 UK #1s and 6 other top 3 credits to her name. Her third album Teenage Dream was the 15th biggest seller of 2010 and 25th biggest seller of 2011. To keep her in the spotlight until her next album, it was decided a re-issue was needed with some extra tracks and remixes, which was scheduled in March 2012, with the lead single being Part of Me, which helped it have another strong year, just sneaking into the top 50 once more. Part of Me had been recorded as a demo as a potential track to include on the original version of Teenage Dream, so had been floating around in leaked copies for some time before it was recorded fully and a released proper. As was typical, it had been sent to radio and music channels over a month before release, and a brand new song by an act as big as Katy always had a good chance of reaching the top, and it would edge out Sean Paul’s She Doesn’t Mind in its first of three weeks at #2, but drop down the chart much more quickly. This was her third UK number one, and would go onto have a couple more later on. Katy Perry feels like a kind of opposite to Rihanna for me, where her songs have held up really well. Her great songs still sound great and the ones in the tier below still sound decent, and that’s where I’d consider Part of Me – it doesn’t touch the pop genius of a Firework or Hot N Cold, or even a Roar or Last Friday Night, but still a good pop song with a great catchy chorus. It’s definitely one that climbed my rankings as I listened to the songs and is a very enjoyable listen. She’s the other act from this countdown that I’ve seen live. I drifted from my friends in the rush of the crowd as Jeremy Corbyn spoke on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury in 2017, and without phone signal had a late afternoon/early evening to myself, and it felt a fairly good choice to watch Katy who was playing before The National, and thoroughly enjoyed watching her rattle through her hits.

I think having 11 of top 15s the same is pretty good going, even if it doesn't include the #1! My two main guesses of what someone would rank so low are both out soon...

15. Cheryl – Call My Name 1 week at #1 (entered 17th June) 01-02-05-10-13-16-22-29-35-64-62-65-62-75 (14 weeks) Kept off #1: Flo Rida - Whistle Sales: 152,001 EOY: #34 (420,000) After 18 months away from releasing music following two albums in the autumns of 2009 and 2010, to go with two number one singles and a couple of others going top 5, Call My Name was the first release for Cheryl after dropping the Cole from her name following her divorce from Ashley. 18 months can be a long time to be away in Pop, and there was no guarantees the public would still be as interested in Cheryl after some time away from the spotlight, but Call My Name duly delivered with the highest weekly sale of the year outside of the X-Factor winner and Christmas week, the only ‘normal’ #1 to top 150,000 in a week. It wasn’t a huge, long lasting hit, end of year #34 feels relatively poor for a single that got such a high first week tally, but it did better than her previous chart topper Promise This. Having made her name through Reality TV in Popstars: The Rivals, before continuing the theme by being an X-Factor judge, it felt strange for her to move away from the release cycle so typical of that kind of act, kick off the campaign in late summer, one more single before the album release in the run up to Christmas and making sure to perform on all of the big TV shows, but in Call My Name they’d gone for a summer anthem and it proved popular. It was produced by Calvin Harris, where he was now in his commercial peak and everything he touched turned to gold, and you can certainly tell his influence and production on this, and it’s better than a lot of his actual singles from this period. His work definitely elevates this from a decent pop song to something of a dancefloor filling banger, but Cheryl is good on this too and I enjoy her vocal more than I typically had done. She may have had bigger and more famous hits, however this is comfortably my favourite Cheryl single. It definitely sounds like it was a hit in the era that it was, but without feeling particularly dated. It was another song to keep off Flo Rida’s Whistle, and thankful that it did.

16. Flo Rida – Good Feeling 1 week at #1 (entered 20th November 2011, #1 8th January) {02-03-04-05-06-07}-03-01-02-05-09-12-17-21-29-36-33-42-44-47-35-43-56-60-64-73-59R(6)-57-72 (29 weeks, 23 in 2012) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 50,907 EOY: #47 (#48 in 2011) Speaking of Mr Rida, Flo is here again with his other #1 of the year, 2011s Good Feeling which climbed to the top in its 8th week in the chart at the start of the year, after beginning with a perfect sequence falling one place each week from its initial entry at #2. Good Feeling is a strange song, in that it samples a song (Levels by Avicii) which itself was largely created from sampling another song (Something’s Got a Hold on Me by Etta James), even more so that Levels and Good Feeling were both a hit at the same time, Avicii entering the chart at #4 the week after Good Feeling entered at #2, meaning they were positioned next to each other on the chart, before both fell down over Christmas to rebound in the new year, Levels climbing back to #4 in the week Good Feeling hit the top. This is the hardest song here to judge and rank, as it's hard to be positive about Good Feeling without giving a huge amount of praise to Avicii, who ultimately created the song it so heavily samples, and it’s Levels that becomes Good Feeling’s biggest help and biggest hindrance. As fine as I am with Flo, and as mainstream rappers of this era go I was typically more than happy to listen to his output, it’s elevated this high because of the track its based on, but why would you want to listen to Good Feeling when you could just listen to Levels? Flo’s parts are fine, but they’re not so good that they improve it. Swap them around in that week’s chart and Levels is easily top 10 here.

17. Olly Murs feat. Flo Rida – Troublemaker 2 weeks at #1 (entered 25th November) 01-01-03-05-07-04{- 06-10-13-18-27-31-36-41-43-37-42-51-44-45-63-75R(3)-69R(4)-72R(2)-75R(2)} (25 weeks, 6 in 2012) Kept off #1: Girls Aloud – Something New & Bruno Mars – Locked Out of Heaven Sales: 121,497 & 82,696 EOY: #29 (441,000) It’s now the turn of the fourth act in the countdown to have emerged from X-Factor, and the fifth song to be a collaboration between a pop act and a rapper, and Troublemaker by Olly Murs and Flo Rida is the highest placed song from both of these categories. Olly was a well-established star by this point, he’d released albums in both of the previous years and this was his 4th number one single, which was the lead single from his third album, Right Place Right Time, released the week after and which also spent a fortnight at #1. Murs wasn’t a stranger to the pop/rap combination, as the lead from his previous album had featured Rizzle Kicks, although there was a huge difference in profile between them and Flo Rida, who had become one of the biggest names in world music by 2012, this being his 5th visit to the UK top 3 in 2012, and having had three #1s in previous years, not also forgetting his big breakthrough Low, which just fell short and is still hugely popular, and remains my favourite song of his. The collaboration came about after Olly specifically picked Flo to guest on it but thought it was unlikely, however he listened and thought it would be a big hit and wanted to be involved, and he wasn’t wrong. Unsurprisingly given the addition of Flo, Troublemaker was Olly’s biggest worldwide hit including being #25 on USA’s Billboard chart. It also has by far his biggest streaming numbers, 642 million being 300m more than anything else. I rank all of Olly’s big singles fairly similarly, they’re all decent pop hits of the time but I don’t love any of them. If pushed, I’d probably have this just behind Dance With Me Tonight as his best, but it follows the fairly standard formula for an Olly Murs hit, a funky radio friendly pop song with a good hook and danceable, it’s nothing new or innovative but knows its job and does it well. Similarly, Flo’s addition is nothing groundbreaking but fits nicely, certainly not making me wish it was a purely solo hit like some of the previous of these combinations in here. It was released in the same week as a big return, Girls Aloud’s Something New, their first release for nearly four years following a hiatus, to lead their second compilation album, Ten, released to celebrate their 10 year anniversary. It may have been hyped and got to #2 but it was no contest, falling over 50k behind Olly’s sale of 121k. It had no longevity either, with an initial chart run of 2-14-30-45. Part of that was explained due to Christmas, but it never regained any traction, just fell at a slower rate in the new year. It’s certainly one of their weaker singles and would’ve placed much lower than this had it managed to reach the top. Troublemaker is the third and final song here to appear that kept Bruno Mars Locked Out of Heaven off the top too as it climbed back up following Bruno's performance of it on X-Factor.

18. Rihanna - Diamonds 1 week at #1 (entered 7th October) 01-04-04-04-08-08-09-10-03-05-07-10-08{-08-11-15-17-19-25-27-31-31-33-39-48-35-41-42-47-51-42-45-56-55-60-57R(2)-56-74-67R(11)-64R(3)-69-72} (42 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 105,593 EOY: #11 (672,000) Diamonds reaching the top meant it was a 6th consecutive year of getting a UK #1 single for Rihanna, from her first Umbrella in 2007. Her first two albums had been reasonably successful but it was that, along with its parent album Good Girl Gone Bad, that turned her into the huge worldwide star she became. Backed by a hit team of writers and producers, and with genuine star quality and an incredible workrate, she was able to release a new album every year (2008 the only gap, but the deluxe of GGGB spawned two huge hits), which were usually backed up by multiple big hits that showed longevity, and Diamonds was no different, spending the first 13 weeks after release in the top 10, and its parent album Unapologetic ended 2012 in the top 10 sellers, and 2013 in the top 40 sellers. I have a fairly strange relationship with Rihanna and her music. A cursory think about her and there’s loads of songs I’ve enjoyed at the time they were out and she’s probably deserving of all the success she’s had and I’d say I really like her, however I hardly ever listen to her music now, and when I do the majority is when she’s featuring with others or they're heavily involved – We Found Love, Run This Town, All of the Lights probably the main three. Diamonds fits in with this perception vs reality of Rihanna, on the face of it it’s a song of hers I really enjoy and it felt like there was a good chance of a top 10 position in this countdown when I was first assigned the task, but it isn’t a song I actually listen to much now and there’s a reason why, it just doesn’t particularly excite me and whilst it’s still good and I enjoy it, it feels like the memory of Diamonds is better than listening to it now in 2026, there’s far less going on than I thought there was, and I find it a bit too repetitive. It feels like she’s a singer who over time 8/10s turn to 6s and 6/10s turn to 4s etc. It would have been incredible to think at the time that her post-Diamonds career would have gone like it has done, after an extended run of a new album and hit singles every year, just one album released after 2012, with the majority of single successes being features on the work of others – Eminem, Drake, Calvin Harris, DJ Khaled. But it’s a fair and sensible decision to take a step back and focus on other things and raising family, and she’s still one of the most listened to artists in the world without releasing anything new so not like she needs it.

19. The Script feat. will.i.am – Hall of Fame 2 weeks at #1 (entered 9th September, #1 16th September) 02-01-01-02-06-10-14-15-15-21-28-21-19-29-34-34-17{-19-33-42-46-51-62-58-56-51-58-61-65-74-68-74-62-55-61-67-74-73R(2)-71-58-52-41-50-63-68-75R(45)} (46 weeks) Kept off #1: Amelia Lily – You Bring Me Joy, Example – Say Nothing Sales: 70,150 & 63,980 EOY: #21 (529,000) We reach the top of the bottom half now with another pop act/hip-hop act collaboration. The Script are, perhaps surprisingly, one of two acts in this countdown which I’ve seen live (Isle of Wight Festival, 2021), and the other isn’t far ahead. A lack of stages and competition and a thought of “well, they do have one great song” meant they were the safe choice to be towards the back of the field partly paying attention. That song is The Man Who Can’t Be Moved, rather than Hall of Fame. There’s nothing offensive about The Script, they’re just a little but dull for my tastes – hard to particularly dislike, but nothing to wow me, and I’ve never been a massive listener of radio stations that would play them loads to get too bored or annoyed by them. The Script had proven to be one of those radio friendly bands that appeal to a lot of audiences and as a result get hits that stick around for a while, with most of their early singles also having multiple runs in the chart as they find new sources of popularity. They probably needed something a bit extra to take the extra step and be a #1 selling artist though, and they did that in 2012 as they turned to will.i.am on Hall of Fame, released to radio just after he’d reached the top with This Is Love, and released as a single a few weeks later. It stuck behind Ne-Yo in its first week but had much better longevity and spent the next two weeks at the top. Hall of Fame was created after Danny O’Donoghue, The Script’s singer and songwriter, and Will were both judges on the first series of The Voice at the beginning of the year and they decided to record a song together which they felt was good enough to lead their third album, #3. The chorus of Hall of Fame is good enough, decently anthemic, and Will plays a much better role than the usual featured rapper/hip hop act does, as he’s far more involved throughout rather than the typical one verse. It is a bit Script-by-numbers piano-led anthemic ballad, and that’s fine. They have a role and play it well, and Hall of Fame certainly does its job. It’s easy to see why this took them to the next step and a #1 single, and is amongst the best from both artists. It prevented new entries at #2 in both of its weeks at the top. Amelia Lily, from the previous year’s X-Factor, with her debut You Bring Me Joy, and Example, quickly following up his major breakthrough album but not quite able to match the two chart toppers it brought. You Bring Me Joy is a song I have no recollection of, and listening to it find it very forgettable, whilst Say Nothing is a poor version of what Example had done before, I’m certainly not left thinking it’s a shame there wasn’t a reversal in either of these top 2s.

20. Little Mix - Wings 1 week at #1 (entered 2nd September) 01-04-04-07-11-14-17-21-26-31-41-39-34-44-55-71-71-36{-53} (19 weeks) Kept off #1: N/A Sales: 106,766 EOY: #40 (397,000) Now time for the customary release from this period of late summer single for the previous year’s X-Factor winner, it helped re-promote the show as it begun again for a new series and allowed the public to remember what they loved previously. In 2012 it was the turn of Little Mix, who followed their winners debut Cannonball in reaching the top with their launch, Wings. A successful girl group had been something the show had been missing. A few other acts had gone on to have decent post-show careers, and there was little correlation to whether they won or not, but girl groups were traditionally voted out early. I didn’t watch or follow the show closely enough to know why Little Mix were so different, but their post-show career has gone on to be one of the most successful and it’s been deserved too – a list of my top songs by X-Factor acts would contain a few of the girls bigger hits. Wings wouldn't be one of them but it’s not a bad song by any means, and certainly better than most winners returns. It's a fun enough enjoyable girlband song and it was great they wanted to be so involved in their first single, and all had a key part in writing it and wanting it to sound instantly recognisable, and it does to be fair, setting the tone for a successful career, but was definitely eclipsed for me by some of their latter successes.

21. Gabrielle Aplin – The Power of Love 2 weeks at #1 (entered 11th November, #1 9th December) 36-05-07-06-01-04-09-13{-23-34-47-65} (12 weeks) Kept off #1: Bruno Mars – Locked Out of Heaven Sales: 57,515 EOY: #53 Christmas adverts for John Lewis had become an event around the turn of the decade. It feels slightly insane just how popular and anticipated a TV advert for a department store could be, but they were as millions wanted to see it each year. From 2009 they were soundtracked by a song, usually by some form of stripped back cover, with Taken By Trees version of Sweet Child o’ Mine being the first one to make the chart, at #23. The year after they had a bigger name singing it, and Ellie Goulding’s version of Your Song was huge, but unfortunately peaked in popularity at the time the X-Factor Finalists released their customary cover version, so had two weeks at each #2 and #3. 2012 was the first year that the soundtrack song went to top the chart, and it was probably no coincidence that for the first time it had gone with a Christmas song, well one traditionally seen as a Christmas song at least, in The Power of Love by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, sung by unknown female singer Gabrielle Aplin, who’d signed her first record deal earlier that year. The advert for this year was the snowman journey, starting with children building male and female snow people who go on a bit of a journey. It’s far from what I’d rank as my favourite of them (though it’s not a trend I care about and have never sought the adverts out), with Gabrielle’s voice soundtracking the full 90 seconds. The Power of Love is a great song and it is one I consider a Christmas song, and whilst that isn’t explicitly the case it would seem so strange to hear it it any other season (if I were doing this later in the year it might rank higher – feels too out of place in June/July!). Gabrielle Aplin’s is a decent version, she has a nice voice that suits it and she sings it really well, it feels like it’d be hard to do a version in this style and it be bad, but it doesn’t touch the original. She was able to capitalise on its success to a certain extent, with a #2 album and three other charting singles in 2013. The Power of Love was the third song to keep Bruno Mars off the top with Locked Out of Heaven.

22. Wiley feat. Ms. D - Heatwave 2 weeks at #1 (entered 5th August) 01-01-02-03-06-13-23-28-32-40-46-72-70R(2)-73-74R(7) (15 weeks) Kept off #1: Calvin Harris feat. Example – We’ll Be Coming Back Sales: 114,121 & 69,713 EOY: #38 (416,000) Heatwave was Wiley’s first solo number one. He was famous for being one of the more notable members of the Roll Deep collective, who had a couple of decent sized hits in 2005 and then a pair of #1s in 2010, and had been releasing a fair amount of solo material in-between to various levels of success, most notably in 2008 with Wearing My Rolex, a #2 hit that spent its first five weeks in each of the five positions below the #1, a big hit that mashed his usual grime style with the popular electro sound of the time, similar to the big hits from the likes of Bodyrox, Mason and Fedde Le Grande. It was a song I thought was alright but never truly got its popularity, and that sound worked much better without a grime vocal. Similar to Rolex, Heatwave took influence from some of the popular sounds of the time, including having Ms D (now known as Dyo), reprising her role from Chipmunk’s 2009 #1 Oopsy Daisy as the female singer providing a catchy chorus, and it was a song designed for the summer dancefloor and it did that job very well. Dyo’s chorus is excellent and elevates this song, but I also much prefer his rapping on here to on Rolex, it’s nothing outstanding but there are few lines linking to heatwaves and various hot weather things which I enjoy ("I wanna get a slush puppy with both flavours" I’ve found quite humorous). It’s easy for this type of song to be terrible but this wasn’t, and even 14 years on Heatwave sounds good again in the summer. Judging solely on the song it should somewhere around 6-8 places higher than this, but where this does fall a few places here is because… well, it’s Wiley and that therefore can't be justified. In the last few years he’s shown he’s something of an objectional character with some horrible views. Banned from various social media sites for some repeated antisemitic posts, and also charged and pled guilty to burglary and violence. He had been awarded an MBE, but was revoked in 2024. It feels quite wrong to listen to him in 2026, and he’s certainly not a good enough act that I’d look past his character to still want to. The song it held off the top for both weeks was a new release from two of British music’s biggest names at the time, We’ll Be Coming Back from Calvin Harris and Example. It was Harris’ fourth #2 in a little over a year (following Bounce with Kelis, Feel So Close and Let’s Go with Ne-Yo), and the first of two in two months for Example, following his pair of #1s in 2011. It is fine but nothing special, not as good as most of their big hits from these years, a slightly disappointing collaboration which could’ve delivered a lot more. However, it was, very unlucky to not make the top, it was one of just three weeks in the year where the #2 sold over 100k, the other weeks being from former #1s.

Good to see other positivity about those two songs, particularly The Justice Collective. With Cover Drive it was simply a case of just not remembering it at all, and even though I thought it's perfectly fine, hard to put it above others where from now there's at least some positive memory from them!

23. The Justice Collective – He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother 1 week at #1 (entered 23rd December) 01-05{-21-47} (4 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 269,248 EOY: #49 A charity cover that was Christmas number one being revealed a fortnight into in one of these countdowns seems like a rarity, but here we are with The Justice Collective’s take on The Hollies He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother being really rather good, certainly in comparison to the previous decade’s worth of X-Factor finalists and largely pitiful Comic/Sport Relief/Children In Need singles. Firstly, it’s a cause I can get behind and don’t roll my eyes at being some kind of cash-in. That may seem harsh on what are fundamentally releases to raise money for good causes, but it’s easy to get the impression a lot of these were for credit and kudos rather than being genuinely passionate about the causes – the X-Factor finalists 4 number one singles felt as much about Simon Cowell’s ego as anything else. He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother was released for various charities associated with the 1989 Hillsborough Disaster, in which 97 Liverpool fans died as a result of the crowd crush. The idea came about after The Farm (with their 1990 heyday), Mick Jones of The Clash and Pete Wylie (a well-regarded Liverpudlian musician) performed together at an anti-The Sun newspaper concert in 2011. The Sun, of course, being (in)famous in that part of the world for the headlines they produced following the disaster. As a huge football fan, and with a father who was in attendance at Hillsborough on that day in 1989 when I was just a few weeks old, The Justice Collective was a cause I enjoyed seeing a song released for. Secondly, the list of acts involved are much more aligned to my tastes than you’d usually find in charity #1s that reach the top – many of Merseyside’s most prominent musicians and singers, and famous football fans along with the odd celebrity and ex-footballer linked to the area such as John Bishop and Alan Hansen. Non-music celebs aside, it looks like a list of singers I’d happily listen to a playlist of – Paul Heaton (The Beautiful South/Housemartins), John Power (Cast/The La’s), Jon McClure (Reverend & The Makers), Paul McCartney, Dave McCabe (The Zutons), Robbie Williams, Mel C, Holly Johnson (Franke Goes To Hollywood), Rebecca Ferguson (as listenable an X-Factor contestant as there is) all being involved amongst many others, but no one that I look at and think “urgh, not them”. Thirdly, the choice of song is a good one. It’s of a big hit (a re-release in 1987 made it to #1, after it was a #3 hit in 1969), but not something so huge or well-known that it feels cliched, and not of something where the lyrical content becomes forced and cringe, as some of those XF ones were. If anything, it’s the complete opposite with it being entirely appropriate for people on two divides of a footballing city to come together for. It’s a song which is good and that I know, but it’s not a song that has continued to transcend the airwaves decades after its release and it’s probably common for younger people to not know it – essentially a great choice of song for this type of release. However, there’s only so high you can rate one of these types of singles, with a different person singing each line they’re not especially easy to listen to and very easy to get wrong, therefore simply being ok makes a song like this be a great version of what it is – if the original Band Aid is the best of this type of song, and the 1997 version of Perfect Day is the essential cover, then He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother is in the next rung below, significantly ahead of most of the dross that passes for charity covers by multiple acts. This type of release has become a thing of the past now. With the charts being so based on streaming now it’s become ever more difficult for charity releases to actually make an impact, they’d pick up so many casual buyers in shops and on iTunes fron people who’d buy it along with what they wanted to buy as they think it’s for a good cause and it’s only a quid or two, but that type of purchasing is now gone. There was a fourth Band Aid two years later, and the Times Like These monstrosity during 2020s lockdown, but that’s about it as far as big collectives go.