RabbitFurCoat

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.

24. Cover Drive - Twilight 1 week at #1 (entered 29th January) 01-06-07-10-19-26-25-32-42-58-70 (11 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 76,109 EOY: #75 And now for the last song that I'd completely forgotten about, not just its existence but how it went and who the act were. If there had a been a NMTBJ style quiz running at the moment I wouldn't have identified it. Every now and again there will be a discussion on the chart forum on this site regarding ‘non’ number one hits i.e. one which was totally forgettable and people outside of chart followers would neither know it was a number one single or necessarily remember the song. Twilight will typically come up in these discussions – a song which fell out of the top 5 in its second week, by a group who had no real prior pedigree or much success afterwards, and something which is barely listened to in the years since. As discussed in the post for Young, Spotify streams aren’t a perfect metric, but Twilight is the song ahead of Tulisa, 34.7m streams ranking a comfortable 33rd by that metric, almost 25m behind #32. Cover Drive were a group from Barbados who came to prominence by posting themselves covering popular hits on YouTube, which led to them being offered a record deal. Their promotion and success was almost entirely limited to the UK & Ireland, Twilight charted lowly in Japan and Belgium but they were their only chart entries of any kind anywhere else in the world. They released their first single, Lick Ya Down, in the previous summer and whilst it charted at #9 in the UK it was out of the chart entirely within a month and was quite terrible. Twilight was their second single and was promoted heavily in the UK in early 2012, peaking in the top 5 & top 10 of the radio and TV airplay charts prior to release. Its weekly #1 sales of 76k were perfectly reasonable without being massive, it was the second highest sale of the 6 weeks into the year at that point, and lower totals were recorded in a further 11 weeks, so it’s not like it got to the top by default of low sales, but it had no longevity whatsoever – it fell out of the top 5 the following week with only one new song ahead of it, falling immediately behind 3 of the previous weeks top 5, and lasted just 8 weeks in the top 40. Only one of 2012s #1 singles had a shorter run, whilst Chris Brown’s was the only one which sold fewer copies overall. They’d have three more entries in the singles chart in 2012, charting at #4, #13 & #29, and then disappear forever, a second album five years later did nothing whatsoever. As a song Twilight is perfectly pleasant, a bit forgettable maybe and quite generic and of its time but Amanda Reifer, the most prominent singer, has a nice enough voice and it fits well with the reggae/dancehall vibe of the song. It’s the type of song you’d expect to hear in a beach bar somewhere and enjoy because of the setting, it’s just not the type of song you expect to be writing about in a series such as this. It’s not a song I’d have heard often, and not one I’m going to continue going back to, but am at least happy enough to have been temporarily reminded of its existence.

At a festival over the weekend so two today and Monday instead... Moving on from ones where I'm more negative, we're now at the section (of two) of songs which I had no memory of, are typically fine but have no real desire to listen to again going forwards, after that we can start getting some positivity in here! 25. One Direction – Little Things 1 week at #1 (entered 18th November) 01-03-09-06-10-16-14{-17-29-36-47-53-36-59-66-74-53R(2)-67R(3)-71R(3)-67R(21)-68R(2)} (21 weeks) Kept off #1: Bruno Mars – Locked Out of Heaven Sales: 85,308 EOY: #65 It had been two years since One Direction were on X-Factor, they didn’t come close to winning, finishing 3rd and always being the 3rd or 4th most popular act each week, but went on to become probably the biggest act to come from it. The manufactured boyband was over two decades old at this point, and the way to success was proven – marketable, good looking young lads, a team of hit writers, releases close together… 1D hit each of them. Little Things was released on the same day as their second album, Take Me Home, and both entered the chart at #1. It was a slightly unusual strategy to have not released the single a week or two before, and it would probably have had a better sales figure had it done so, but it worked anyway. It was their 5th release as a group, and perhaps surprisingly just their second chart topper. The lead single for the album, Live While We’re Young, underperformed somewhat, entering at #3 and being almost out of the top 40 by week 6. I do find Little Things to be a pleasant enough boyband ballad, but ultimately quite forgettable. It’s fine, and they sing and harmonise well, and not too bad lyrically, just that from a genre where I like few songs, but the ones I do I tend to love, it blends in with many other acts and songs. For a song which is so perfectly ‘dull but fine to listen to’, topping the bottom third of entries feels about right. It was an all-new top 3 on the week of release, it comfortably won the X-Factor boyband vs girlband battle as Little Mix 3rd single DNA entered at #3, split by the first single from another second album behemoth, Locked Out of Heaven by Bruno Mars. It perhaps unsurprisingly had the most longevity of the three with 10 weeks in the top 10, by which point Little Things and DNA had fallen to #36 & #65. Locked Out of Heaven is definitely my preferred track of the three, but not to the point where I’m a big fan or would still listen to it, it would only end up a few places higher here had it won out in that week.

01 (01) Mystery Jets - A Hole To See The Sky Through I (01) (08) (4 weeks) 02 (06) Pond - Skyworks (02) (05) 03 (11) Palace - Dream On (03) (03) 04 (04) Radio Free Alice - Lunch Money (04) (05) 05 (03) Paris Paloma - Stem the Flow (03) (07) 06 (02) Yard Act - Redeemer (02) (10) 07 (09) Modest Mouse - Life's A Dream (07) (04) 08 (05) Blossoms - Joke About Divorce (01) (12) (5 weeks) 09 (13) FKA Twigs feat. Lil Yachty - On Your Mind (09) (05) 10 (07) The Itch - No More Sprechgesang (05) (07) 11 (18) Olivia Rodrigo feat. Robert Smith - What's Wrong With Me (11) (04) 12 (15) Angine de Poitrine - Sarniezz (12) (04) 13 (08) Boards of Canada - Prophecy At 1420 MHz (02) (11) 14 (19) Touring feat. Holybones - Ten O'Clock (14) (06) 15 (21) Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Boys (15) (03) 16 (10) BALTHVS - Shakedown Street (02) (11) 17 (25) Tame Impala - Hummer (17) (03) 18 (12) Angine de Poitrine - Mata Zyklek (05) (13) 19 (28) Boy Harsher - Jeans (19) (02) 20 (14) Hercules & Love Affair feat. Hips & Lips - I Get High (14) (07) 21 (33) The Big Moon - Gravity (21) (02) 22 (16) Ed O'Brien - Teachers (12) (08) 23 (29) Nina Simone - That's All I Ask (HAAi Remix) (23) (03) 24 (35) Yard Act - New Beginnings (24) (02) 25 (17) Antony Szmierek - Chalk (06) (10) 26 (**) Overmono feat. John Joseph Holt - Knight In Shining Prada (26) (01) 27 (30) Gener8ion feat. Yannis - Love & Tears (27) (04) 28 (20) Man/Woman/Chainsaw - Nosedive (01) (13) (1 week) 29 (38) BALTHVS - Liminal Stages (29) (02) 30 (22) JJerome87 - Mr. Alligator (12) (07) 31 (24) Nia Archives - Boys In Blue (21) (09) 32 (23) The Maine - Quiet Part Loud (02) (11) 33 (32) Jon Hopkins feat. Imogen Heap - Reckoning (32) (03) 34 (47) The Temper Trap - Runaways (34) (01) 35 (31) The Coral - Leave It In The Past (26) (05) 36 (26) Overmono - Lockup (10) (09) 37 (27) Orseno feat. KennyHoopla - Past Love (17) (08) 38 (41) DMA's - Killing Time (38) (01) 39 (37) Austra feat. Patrick Holland - Siren Reprise (30) (06) 40 (34) Mystery Jets - Black Sage (08) (10)

26. Rita Ora – How We Do (Party) 1 week at #1 (entered 19th August) 01-02-03-09-15-20-24-33-38-48-62-73-53{-57R(7)-66} (15 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 100,436 EOY: #50 I’ve already discussed Rita Ora here, as R.I.P. was a few places lower than this follow-up single, How We Do (Party), but repetition of acts in this countdown is low. For a year consisting of as many as 36 number ones, there are very few acts I need to cover more than once which I do find quite remarkable, but poor Rita is the first of the acts with multiple entries to appear a second time, however all is not lost as she is the only act I’ll need to cover for a third time. Mid-February, mid-May, and now mid-August. Entering the chart at #1 every three months is remarkable consistency and does take me back to a previous era where singles were evenly spaced out in a way which they no longer are. She went for the quad but Shine Ya Light only managed #10 in mid-November, not helped by it coming after the release of her debut album, Ora. There are definitely positives to How We Do (Party), I think the production is great and elevates it beyond the last few songs, and I like Rita’s voice a lot more here than on R.I.P., but lyrically it’s pretty dire and completely unoriginal for the 2012 landscape, four minutes of describing getting drunk and falling for someone at the previous night’s party was incredibly tired as a concept by then. The sample of Party and Bullshit by Notorious B.I.G. for the main hook feels unnecessary too. Not the best of starts to Rita’s solo career, but she would go on to improve – her other biggest hits that came a few years later, I Will Never Let You Down and Anywhere, are much better than all I heard from her debut album Ora.

That's interesting about the Mario song, always quite liked that. I did think with its similarity of title and style to some of Ne-Yo's work, whether some would expect to hear from "Ne-Yo - Let Me Love You..."

27. Ne-Yo – Let Me Love You (Until You Learn to Love Yourself) 1 week at #1 (entered 9th September) 01-03-04-05-12-13-18-22-29-29-41-50-57-68{-63R(3)-71 }(16 weeks) Kept off #1: None Sales: 88,784 EOY: #51 There were a number of songs in this list that I’d forgotten about, some of which were easy to remember and a select few that brought back no memory whatsoever, and this Ne-Yo entry certainly fits the latter of those two. It was his fourth entirely solo number one (as well as his feature on Pitbull's Give Me Everything), hitting the top spot every two years – following So Sick in 2006, Closer in 2008 and Beautiful Monster in 2010, but it feels like Let Me Love You (Until You Learn To Love Yourself) is comfortably the least memorable of them. Each of Ne-Yo’s #1 singles sound fairly different, with each definitely being more in tune with what were the current trends of the time, So Sick a decent enough R&B song, Closer his best effort that had moved style with the likes of Rihanna, and 2010s Beautiful Monster being more for the dancefloors with more of an EDM influence. Let Me Love You (Until You Learn To Love Yourself) is very much of the 2012 trends with another upbeat dancefloor hit, with influential producers Stargate involved along with Sia contributing to some of the lyrics, but perhaps coming a little late in the context of this type of song, as it just kind of exists, it doesn’t offend in any way but there’s nothing to help it standout from the plethora of other similar sounding hits, whereas his contribution to Pitbull’s Give Me Everything a year earlier helped it become one of the deserving smash hits of this period. Let Me… I’d rank as the weakest of his number one singles, entirely forgettable.

Will be interesting to see how different our tastes are, and how much similarity there is towards the top - interested to follow yours. The final number one of the year (between James Arthur's weeks) is not on streaming platforms, so could be the one you're missing?

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.