My Random Music

Tough narrowing it down to 5 but here goes: George Duke - Brazilian Love Affair Roxy Music - Oh Yeah (On The Radio) Electric Light Orchestra - All Over The World Skids - Circus Games Split Enz - I Got You Worst: Bow Wow Wow - C30, C60, C90, Go

Best: Electric Light Orchestra - I'm Alive The Korgis - Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart Change - A Lover's Holiday Surface Noise - The Scratch Tiebreak: The Cure - A Forest Worst: Rod Stewart - If Loving You Is Wrong (I Don't Want To Be Right)

My 5 picks: The Undertones - My Perfect Cousin New Musik - This World Of Water Roxy Music - Over You The Specials - Rat Race Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Messages Looks like I'm going to be in the minority here but worst for me is "Funkytown" by Lipps Inc. I find that song so irritating, especially the singing.

Just discovered this, great idea. Tough choice to narrow it down to 5 but here goes: The Brothers Johnson - Stomp Squeeze - Another Nail In My Heart Genesis - Turn It On Again B.A. Robertson - Kool In The Kaftan Dr Hook - Sexy Eyes Worst: Fern Kinney - Together We Are Beautiful

The Ramones cover of "Baby I Love You" is excellent in my opinion, but can understand why one may not be so keen. Just a small correction, it's not a Motown cover. It was originally by The Ronettes who were on Philles Records.

I would say Neneh Cherry is a different entity to the other Swedish acts because she'd been living in England for several years before she broke through and was part of the UK scene.

I did the same thing myself a few years ago. It worked too as I managed to identify a Flo Rida record at the quiz and we ended up winning. Long since forgot which record it was though.

Wow I can't believe how late most of these years are. For me it was 1987 when I remember Starship being number one with "Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now" on Top of the Pops. I stopped paying attention around 2005 when I got out the habit of watching Top of the Pops when it moved to Sunday and found the music to be mostly rubbish. Started following again around 2016 just after I'd started my blog and heard that Bryan Adams 16 week record at number one was under threat. I follow more for the chart stats these days because if anything the music's got even worse.

I agree with an earlier response that it's often a well known artist with a record that's not so well known. Some examples I can think of: Simple Minds - Belfast Child: they had several well known records, some of which didn't even make the Top 40 (e.g. Theme for Great Cities) but I think many would even struggle to hum this one Queen - Innuendo: I once put this in a music quiz and someone said that's the most obscure Queen record I could have put in there even though it was 1 of just 3 number ones they had in Freddie Mercury's lifetime U2 - The Fly: this was a recent Popmaster question, the contestant thought they were pretty clued up on U2 records but this one didn't ring any bells to them Wet Wet Wet - Goodnight Girl: an anomaly between their 80s heyday and "Love Is All Around" in that this topped the charts but the rest of their singles charted much lower Take That - Sure: they were so popular they would have topped the charts with any lead single off a new album but this was very much overshadowed later by "Back For Good" Also think the Toni Di Bart example above is a good one. When I looked at number ones of the 90s some point in the early 21st century this was the only one I didn't recognise. Once I found out what it was I remembered it but was surprised it topped the charts. I think I was on holiday the week it was number one.

If I had to pick a favourite Swedish act I would probably say Eric Prydz. I thought the members of Swedish House Mafia were decent as individual DJs previously but I can't say I'm a fan of Swedish House Mafia. The definition of "good artists and bands" is subjective and most of those you've listed aren't my cup of tea. However in terms of successful bands and artists I would say Max Martin and his fellow Swedish songwriters play an important part and it's their philosophy of making music for the masses by following a certain formula. ABBA arguably started that trend, I can recall one of the blokes from ABBA saying it was a bit of a surprise that writing something a bit corny was so well received but because it worked so well they kept on doing it.

Yes the only big happy hardcore hit here was "I Wanna Be A Hippy" by Technohead. There were some minor happy hardcore hits in the mid-90s from the German acts such as Scooter and Mark Oh who were much bigger in their native. It was huge in Holland, even though Technohead were British they were based in Holland at the time and topped the Dutch charts with "I Wanna Be A Hippy" a year or so before it hit the UK charts by which point one of the members had sadly passed away. Force & Styles had a go at cracking the charts with "Heart Of Gold" in 1998 with Kelly Llorenna on vocals but only made 55.

You're right that "Shooting Star" was a b-side on one of the CDs but that wasn't what made it popular. The original of "Shooting Star" was a happy hardcore record by Bang! and was one of the biggest happy hardcore tunes of the late 90s, all the DJs were playing it. At the end of the 90s the popularity of happy hardcore had plummeted but started to turn the corner in late 2001. One of the tactics for growing the popularity of hardcore again was by getting a big label (AATW) to put out commercial watered versions of old happy hardcore records to hook people in and get them listening to actual hardcore records. Other examples include "Heart Of Gold", "Field Of Dreams" and "Pretty Green Eyes" which were all originally by Force & Styles. I was one of those who liked the originals and hated the remakes, though 21st century happy hardcore was never really my thing.

I've said what I've wanted to say about your points. I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact you stream music instead of buying it, this is how a lot of people consume music these days and perfectly legal. I've also highlighted some of the ways streaming can be beneficial to the artist. What I don't like is the attitude of the artists not deserving a penny from you because you can legally listen to everything they've ever spent time and money producing for free.

There's a strong case for both sides of the argument, however I can't say I agree with many of the points you make. At the end of the day somebody has put a lot of time and money into make that music, the same way a farmer has put time and money into providing food. Addressing your points: some people do buy food direct from farmers or books direct from authors. In theory you pay the shop, the shop pays the farmer/author. You don't pay the streaming platform, so it's different the CEO of Tesco is most likely a millionaire too, doesn't mean we should get our weekly shop for free it's Hobson's choice for a lot of them, either only sell physical products in the knowledge you're narrowing your audience or at least make a small amount of income by widening your audience yes a physical format isn't much good without anything to play it on, but it's like saying you only steal food you can eat raw because you have no cooker true, the same way that not paying £1 for a loaf of bread isn't going to make a difference to the bread company but if everybody decided to just take a loaf of bread instead of not paying for it then the bread company won't last much longer neither are a lot of people, doesn't mean we can just take anything we can't afford that's like justifying stealing from a shop because you've paid your bus fare to get there. Plus if streaming didn't exist I'm sure you'd still pay for your wifi and device and they don't owe you any music to listen to at your leisure I do agree with you on that point it does raise an important issue, but there's lots of things I'd like to have but don't because I can't afford them I buy CDs because I prefer to have a physical product which is mine forever. I can't really say I'm supporting the artist because more often than not I buy them from a charity shop. I'm old and hate 99% of modern music so it's really my only option these days for CDs, any CDs available at HMV that interest me are ones I already have generally speaking. As a youngster before even the internet was a thing I did have several copied tapes. When I first got pocket money it was £2 a week, the bus to town and back was £1.30 and a CD was around £13 so if you do the maths it didn't allow me to buy too many CDs. That said I did probably spend more on CDs than anything else. Plus I did buy some of the copied tapes on CD when I was older and had more money. I know there will always be people that will get things for free if that's an option but I do think the combination of expensive CDs and musicians flaunting their wealth was a big factor in turning people towards illegal downloads once this was a possibility. A regular CD isn't particularly expensive these days but we still have the issue of musicians flaunting their wealth and doing blatant money grabs. The problem is there's not that many artists in the grand scheme of things who are that rich but people assume they are. I too thought everyone who appeared on Top of the Pops in the 90s were millionaires but a lot of them work in regular jobs now, not something you'd do if you could afford not to. I do however think that streaming has it's advantages for both the listener and the musician. There are certain artists I've seen in concert whose music I would not know had I not had the ability to listen to it on the internet. There's also a bunch of music that was deleted long before streaming came along that you can now listen to on streaming platforms, so no sales have been lost on that basis.

Assuming I understand your methodology correctly, one big factor would be that you used to get a lot of bands in the chart but you don't get many these days. Bands tend to be more male generally speaking meaning you'd need more female artists to even it out. For example, UB40 had a hit every year in the 80s and they had 8 male members so you'd need 8 female singers to even that out alone. There's loads of other factors at play, for example Texas would be 4 or 5 males (depending on era) and 1 female, but the female member is the only member the general public know and they're a band that's helped raise the profile of women in music. If we look at 1952, the first year of the charts, there were a total of 19 artists, 12 male and 7 female so 63% male and 37% female. There were duets, but all were solo artists so no bands skewing the figures. There's no real accurate way of measuring, any methodology would raise question marks but fair play for doing it.