Jester

I bloody adore Battle - garage classic.

You can’t stand Christmas Wrapping?! 😵‍💫 clutches pearls

Yeeeeees at the Grace re-entry 😍😍😍

Also love this. As hoped 3/3 so far for me.

Was going to ask where you were in 1995 to not know it was a number 6 hit, then I realised you were definitely not born 🥴😂

Oooh glad you share the same number 1 as me! I thought the sales were generally impressive, many of the dance songs were near or over 100k at the top, things would only go down from there generally. Thanks for the comments throughout 😁😁

Thanks for your comments John, I’ve enjoyed reading your take on the music 😁

Thanks for your rankings and I look forward to 2015 and seeing where you put Uptown Funk!

Glad you enjoyed the countdown Rich, and thanks again for your comments 😁

You have fabulous taste as always! Thanks for your comments 😁

Yeah Tom was the matchmaker there! I also told her what a great guy you were on the tube on the way back to central London so hope I helped! 😁

So, I got there in the end! 38 number 1s to rate is pretty lengthy. Here is my full rate: 1. Duke Dumont ft. Jax Jones - I Got U 2. Kiesza - Hideaway 3. Clean Bandit ft. Jess Glynne - Rather Be 4. Route 94 ft. Jess Glynne - My Love 5. Secondcity - I Wanna Feel 6. Sigma ft. Paloma Faith - Changing 7. Sigma - Nobody to Love 8. Calvin Harris - Summer 9. Mr Probz - Waves (Robin Schulz Remix) 10. Lilly Wood & Robin Schulz - Prayer in C (Remix) 11. Ella Henderson - Ghost 12. Pitbull ft. Kesha – Timber 13. Mark Ronson ft. Bruno Mars - Uptown Funk 14. Pharrell Williams - Happy 15. Oliver Heldens x Becky Hill - Gecko (Overdrive) 16. Calvin Harris ft. John Newman - Blame 17. Take That - These Days 18. Ed Sheeran – Sing 19. Nico & Vinz - Am I Wrong 20. David Guetta ft. Sam Martin - Lovers on the Sun 21. Ed Sheeran - Thinking Out Loud 22. 5 Seconds of Summer - She Looks So Perfect 23. Aloe Blacc - The Man 24. Jessie J, Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj - Bang Bang 25. Rita Ora - I Will Never Let You Down 26. Ariana Grande ft. Iggy Azalea – Problem 27. Rixton - Me and My Broken Heart 28. DVBBS & Borgeous ft. Tinie Tempah - Tsunami (Jump) 29. Cheryl - I Don't Care 30. Cheryl Cole ft. Tinie Tempah - Crazy Stupid Love 31. Sam Smith - Stay With Me 32. Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass 33. Magic! - Rude 34. Sam Smith - Money on My Mind 35. Band Aid 30 - Do They Know It's Christmas? 36. Gareth Malone’s All Star Choir – Wake Me Up 37. Will.i.am ft. Cody Wise - It's My Birthday 38. Ben Haenow - Something I Need Thank you so much to those of you that have also rated and commented, it made this very enjoyable. I appreciated the chance to rate the number 1s of the best year of the 2010s for music imo.

1. Duke Dumont & Jax Jones – I Got U Chart run: 1-2-3-6-8-18-19-20-26-26-32-33-34-38-39-41-40-45-51-60-57-63-73-72R(5) (24 weeks) Sales at number 1: 112,082 Year End: 26 Number 2 peaks behind the chart topper: None You may have guessed what was my number 1 of the year already. If not, here it is! By 2014, the Duke had already made a splash with his 2013 chart topper Need U (100%) ably covered by Jaz in their rate. This success set the Duke up as a leading dance producer in the UK and was ripe for another huge success. I Got U certainly delivered this. It is a slice of summer (written in winter) and is the epitome of topical house with its Balearic beats and steel drums. Its literally a summer holiday in a song. The main hook is the interpolation of Whitney Houston’s 1999 number 2 hit My Love Is Your Love. It is of great effect as it doesn’t use the chorus or song title, more a verse leading up to it so the sample isn’t as obvious as it could be. My Love Is Your Love is the best of Whitney’s hits in what was her late 90s imperial phase and its clever to not actually use her voice but instead uses vocalist Kelli Leigh – her voice is comparable to Whitney and is fairly hard to tell apart imo, plus backing vocals from Daniel Pierce (him off One True Voice again). Jax Jones is the co-producer and this helped kick start his career as a producer of dance tunes leading to collaborations with Years & Years and Demi Lovato in the later 2010s. The video is fantastic – it’s the story of a virtual reality holiday in Thailand with infinity pools, sex (!), coconut drinks, water sports, drinking. Everything needed for a summer escape. This is just a perfect house dance track. Its literally a laid back slice of a hot humid summer and is the defining track of the mid 90s house/dance revival. It is my favourite 2014 number 1 by far and easily one of the best songs of the decade imo.

2. Kiesza – Hideaway Chart run: 1-2-3-3-5-9-16-17-20-25-27-29-33-34-37-41-37-34-40-39-43-47-49-40-43-56-62-67-66-60-55-75-68R(6)-73-72R(2) (35 weeks) Sales at number 1: 136,286 Year End: 15 Number 2 peaks behind the chart topper: None Lets tell a story about Kiesza first. It is November 2014 and I travelled to London as I did often back then. I went to the Tower of London to see the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I ceramic poppies in the moat then had a night out. Nothing related so far! But my night out was with Tom Kay and Gooddelta (GD) off Buzzjack to go and see Kiesza at the Electric Brixton. Needless to say she was great and it was rather ‘electric’ to hear her two big hits live. GD and I had a debate where her follow up Giant In My Heart had charted in August. I thought number 2, GD thought number 4. I lost the debate! Here is a pic of the night (and with GDs other half too): Canadian Kiesza seemed to appear from nowhere – she was a songwriter for other artists before 2014 and had actually served in the Royal Canadian Navy Reserve before moving onto music! She wrote Hideaway with Rami Samir just before she boarded a plan to LA from New York where she was based. The song had been part worked on by Rami and Kiesza returned to the studio and they basically completed Hideaway in an hour and a half. She just got her flight. The song is reminiscent of 90s dance, inspirations were Robyn S, CeCe Peniston and Crystal Waters in particular, but with more of a deep house sound. The video is what grabbed the attention of the public. It is a one take shot of Kiesza on the streets of Brooklyn where she dance-walked around whilst draping herself on street furniture. Its an amazing single shot achievement, reminiscent of Massive Attack’s Unfinished Sympathy but with more dancing and less grittiness. I especially love the sound of Hideaway, the way it starts with a simple keyboard sound and then builds with beeps and boops and oooh and ahhs behind the deep house beats. I would say this is in my top 5 dance tracks of the 2010s and it was oh so close to topping my rate. A final word. Whoever said that the oooh and ahhs sound like Cilla Black, you are a swine as I cannot unhear it!

3. Clean Bandit ft. Jess Glynne – Rather Be Chart run: 1-1-1-1-3-3-3-5-7-8-8-9-12-16-16-18-22-21-23-23-25-28-32-24-28-27-29-29-26-26-30-34-31-29-30-32-35-39-43-40-35-43-48-56-60-58-50-46-50-28-30-39-40-49-51-49-50-44-45-39-44-46-44-48-51-57-57-65-66-72-73-70-74-63R(2)-66-68R(2)-72-70R(5) (78 weeks) Sales at number 1: 162,801; 136,952; 102,542; 79,050 Year End: 2 Number 2 peaks behind the chart topper: Will,i.am, Miley Cyrus & Khalifa – Feelin’ Myself (Year End N/A outside the top 100) & Zedd feat. Hayley Willams – Stay The Night (Year End: 91) Before 2014, Clean Bandit were a rather niche band that had minor success with A+E in 2012 and the number 17 peaking Mozart’s House in 2013. As alluded to with their second hit, they focus on a fusion of classical music and dance. The band is made up of brothers Luke & Jack Patterson and Grace Chatto, none of which are vocalists so they rely on guest spots to provide these. Rather Be features Jess Glynne and this was her debut hit. Jessica Hannah Glynne (the original family name was Goldstein but changed by her grandfather) is from London and she had grounding in the music business as her mum worked in the industry in A&R. When Jess was 15, she was requested to take part in the second season of the X factor, but dropped out due to a row with producers. She showed some integrity early on then! After completing a course at music college, she was signed by a music management company and then Atlantic Records in 2013, leading to her to collaborate with Clean Bandit. Rather Be was written by Jack from the band and James Napier who has collaborated with Disclosure and produced by the band. The song is a fusion of classical music with violins, bass and piano with house beats thrown in. It really is an infectious song, it blends classical and dance well together and it still sounds fresh to this day. It is one of the songs I think of immediately when 2014 is mentioned and it even survived over use on M&S adverts. It was also nice to like Jess Glynne before she sounded very sheep like. Baaa humbug. I do like the video – it shows a Japanese fan hallucinating that they see the band and their logo everywhere. The music goes oddly well with the daily life of a chef. Rather Be was a huge hit, making 4 straight weeks at number 1, the biggest January sale of a number 1 since Spaceman in 1996, was the year end 2nd best seller and even made the top 10 of the US Billboard chart. It also launched both themselves and Jess Glynne spectacularly and both will appear several times in future rates. A future classic. I am guessing this will be most people's number 1, but this was just pipped by the runner up for me and the winner is miles ahead!