Paddington James

Candy still remains the biggest loss for me. I’d never heard the Gary Barlow song before but it’s in the bottom few for me. I absolutely detest Chris Brown, so I’d probably put that last. Horrible human, horrible song. I much prefer the Shontelle version of Impossible but James’s version is passable.

I presume that Steps have made the top 50, which is a surprise to me. What may be a bigger surprise is that B*Witched might’ve made the top 50. I’m less sure on them though.

Pon de Replay was such a great debut from Rihanna.

Just giving this a mid month bump to see if we can get any more votes. :)

Thank you so much everyone for your lovely words! ❤️

Really looking forward to this rank, 2012 had some great #1's. I liked Candy, I remember winning the Take The Crown about in an online contest. Also I remember really liking follow up single Different.

Haha yes, which explains why I wasn’t overly familiar with Saturday Night but could sign the Sexy Eyes chorus. 🤣

Yes: Saturday Night - #78 Sexy Eyes- #6 Gimme Gimme - #14

I always think of Sexy Eyes being Whigfields big song. Probably because it was in Australia.

Thank you very much @Jaz13music I'm really pleased you enjoyed it! 😃 I know you'll do a fantastic job with the 2013 edition. I was a little nervous too, nut I just found a write up style that worked best for me. 🙂

Well that brings to a close my rank of the UK #1 Singles in 2011. Thank you everyone for following along with me and for commenting along with the countdown. I’ve loved following these from when @gooddelta started these mid last year and it really was an honour to be given this opportunity to participate in what is something I consider to be a very popular series in the 21st Century Throwback Forum, so thank you for that opportunity @Julian_. I found this to be quite the experience going through and revisiting all 31 UK #1’s from 2011. It brought back so many memories for me both good and bad and founds at times that doing this was quite therapeutic. So thank you for the care and love shown through as well with some of my commentaries, it really put a smile on my face. I will now pass the baton over to @RabbitFurCoat who will be taking you through the UK #1’s of 2012.

The full countdown: 1. Someone Like You – Adele 2. We Found Love – Rihanna ft Calvin Harris 3. What’s My Name – Rihanna ft Drake 4. One The Floor – Jennifer Lopez ft Pitbull 5. Don’t Hold Your Breath – Nicole Scherzinger 6. Price Tag – Jessie J ft B.o.B 7. Give Me Everything – Pitbull ft Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer 8. Read All About It – Professor Green ft Emeli Sande 9. We R Who We R – Kesha 10. Dance With Me Tonight – Olly Murs 11. Grenade – Bruno Mars 12. No Regrets – Dappy 13. Heart Skips a Bit – Olly Murs ft Rizzle Kicks 14. Promises – Nero 15. Louder – DJ Fresh ft Sian Evans 16. What Makes You Beautiful – One Direction 17. Stay Awake – Example 18. All About Tonight – Pixie Lott 19. Swagger Jagger – Cher Lloyd 20. Party Rock Anthem – LMFAO ft Lauren Bennett and GoonRock 21. Wherever You Are – Military Wives ft Gareth Malone 22. The Lazy Song – Bruno Mars 23. Changed The Way You Kissed Me – Example 24. Loca People – Sak Noel 25. Don’t Wanna Go Home – Jason Derulo 26. Cannonball – Little Mix 27. When We Collide – Matt Cardle 28. Don’t Go – Wretch 32 ft Josh Kumra 29. She Makes Me Wanna – JLS ft Dev 30. Glad You Came – The Wanted 31. Wishing On a Star – X Factor Finalists 2011 ft JLS and One Direction

1 – Someone Like You - Adele 5 Weeks at #1 / Weekly Sales – 111,739 / 114,792 / 116,347 / 95,654 / 82,357 #1 in EOY 2011 – Total Sales of 1,242,917 There could only be one song taking out my gold medal for my favourite #1 single of 2011 and that is the gigantic smash hit single Someone Like You by Adele. Released as the second single from her second album 21 in February Someone Like You debuted at #36 on the UK singles chart before climbing to #33 the following week and falling to #47 in it’s third week. Then of the 15th of February Adele performed Someone Like You and that sent the song soaring up the charts, after selling less than 7,500 copies the week prior Somone Like You would rocket from #47 to #1 with sales of 111,739 copies. It then stayed at the top of the singles chart for an additional three weeks with sales of 114,792, 116,347 and 95,654 before being replaced by Don’t Hold Your Breath. It would however return to #1 the following week for one last week with sales of 82,357, by which point it had amassed sales of 632,607 copies. I’ve always loved this song and been a big fan of Adele’s right from 2008. I can still remember reading a review in the newspaper for 19 a few days before it was released and it had made me curious to check it out, so I went on YouTube to listen to Chasing Pavements and I was hooked from then. The next day I got the train into the city and asked at the music store whether they’d got any copies of 19 in to go on sale the following day, to my surprise the guy working at the shop returned with CD is hand and asked if this was it. I looked at it, said yes and then they sold it to me. Over the next few years I regularly listened to 19 so when 21 was announced I was eagerly looking forward to it. I loved 21 from the first listen and Someone Like You was my favourite song from the album, I can recall how many times I listened to that album, around the house, on the train, on car journeys I played it a heap. My preferred version of Someone Like You has to be her version from the 2011 Brits as it just feels so raw and emotional, I’d tapped the Brits that year as I wasn’t able to watch them at the time and I must’ve watched that performance at least 50 times in the first week, so much so that I think even my parents knew the words to the song… Someone Like You took a little longer to find its way to #1 internationally though. It took until the end of June to reach #1 in Australia where it stayed for 7 weeks and it took until September for it to reach #1 in the US. In the five weeks Someone Like You was at #1 it didn’t prevent any #2 from reaching the top (Price Tag and Don’t Hold Your Breath). Someone Like You would end 2011 as the highest selling song in the UK with sales of 1,242,917.

2 – We Found Love – Rihanna ft Calvin Harris 6 Weeks at #1 / Weekly Sales – 87,573 / 106,553 / 92,689 / 79,834 / 66,941 / 79,804 #5 in EOY 2011 – Total Sales of 902,500 The silver medal and that means second place in my countdown goes to an artist who continued to ride the wave of her popularity from previous years, its Rihanna with We Found Love ft Calvin Harris. Spending six weeks at #1 in two separate three week stints across October, November and December and would go on to see We Found Love end 2011 as the song with the most weeks at #1 for the year. When this was released I found it to be a real breath of fresh air as I hadn’t largely connected with many of the 10 different songs that topped the UK charts of the previous ten weeks. I have very clear memories of when this was released and it was on very regular rotation on car journeys with friends on weekends, we’d play it multiple times no matter where we went. I was going through a bit of a dry spell with listening to club bangers at this time of year but this reignited it again for me after some brilliant releases from earlier in the year. As much as I love this though it probably wouldn’t make my top 5 Rihanna or even potentially top 10 Rihanna singles. Saying that though this is still an absolute banger of a song and was so incredibly close to being my #1. Unfortunately though it fell short to a song from an artist that had one of the all time biggest years in 2011, more on that next. Of the six weeks We Found Love spend at #1 it only kept four songs with a #2 peak, Moves Like Jagger from Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera, Lightning by The Wanted, Take A Chance On Me by JLS and Good Feeling by Flo Rida. Elsewhere on the charts over that six week period Gym Class Heros and Adam Levine debuted at #3 with Stereo Hearts, giving Adam Levine the #2 and #3 song that week. Kelly Clarkson debuted at #6 and Lana Del Rey at #9 with Mr Know It All and Video Games. Pixie Lott followed up her #1 hit All About Tonight with a #10 debut for follow up single What Do You Take Me For and One Direction’s follow up to the massively successful debut single What Makes You Beautiful debuted at #3, Gott Be You.

I loved Red Dress at the time but it's far from a Sugababes favourite of mine now. It's decent enogh though.

After The Love Has Gone Both are great though.

Other songs I loved but won't include a write up on are: Cascada - Night Nurse Adele - Set Fire To The Rain Christina Perri - Jar Of Hearts Ed Sheeran - Lego House The Saturdays - Notorious / All Fired Up / My Heart Takes Over Vanessa Amorosi - Amazing Nicola Roberts - Lucky Day Katy B - Easy Please Me Florence + The Machine - Shake It Out Nicole Scherzinger - Wet Bruno Mars - It Will Rain Alexis Jordan - Happiness

Nicki Minaj ft Rihanna - Fly This was the song that really got me to start noticing Nicki Minaj as before hearing this the only songs I'd heard from her was Check It Out which didn't really do anything. In the days leading up to taking my first international trip and my first ever flight I stumbled upon this song when checking out Rihanna's wikipedia page, so I decided to check this one out because of her. I felt that it really spoke to me at the time as the song was called Fly and I was preparing to 'fly' for the first time for my trip to the UK. It probably seems a little cringe now but at the time it really felt like I connected with the song, so much so that I played it more than a few times whilst on my flight. It also lead to me purchasing Nicki's debut album when I returned home, as by that stage Super Bass was blowing up and I was really getting into that song as well. Fly peaked at #18 in Australia, #16 in the UK and #19 in the US. Clare Maguire - The Last Dance + The Shield And The Sword Both of these two songs were on heavy rotation for the first four months of 2011 for me. I used to make a new playlist on iTunes every month of new songs to listen to and I could never bring myself around to removing these two. The Last Dance was the first one I heard and like many other songs it was one that I loved from the moment I heard it, but it was The Shield And The Sword that would have the lasting impact on me. I found that the lyrics and music really spoke to me for some reason.

Rihanna - Cheers (Drink To That) Cheers (Drink To That) was released as the final single from Rihanna's 5th studio album Loud and it's one I've always absolutely loved. The song partly samples Avril Lavigne's single I'm With You and you can even hear Avril on this track to (Yeah-Yeah). Whilst it wasn't a pop/dance/club banger from Rihanna the song still spoke about having a good time at the weekend. I can remember my friend and I going out driving on cold winter nights blasting this song and winding down the windows screaming out the chorus to this song. Such fun memories in an otherwise sad time. Cheers (Drink To That) peaked at #6 in Australia, #7 in the US and #15 in the UK. It also ended 2011 as the 41st highest selling single in Australia. Alexandra Stan - Mr. Saxobeat I could've very easily picked follow up single Get Back (ASAP) for this section but in the end I decided to chose the song that introduced me to Alexandra Stan. This was one of my favourite new singles/new artist discoveries of 2011. I can remember hearing this for the first time, I was sitting at home on my laptop checking out BuzzJack (this was a good year before I decided to join BuzzJack) and I saw this mentioned in the UK Charts thread and so I checked it out. I'd never heard anything like this before but I was completely hooked. I absolutely loved this and Get Back (ASAP) so much that I ordered the album off Amazon. Mr. Saxobeat peaked at #19 in Australia, #21 in the US and #3 in the UK. It ended 2011 as the 94th highest selling single in Australia. JLS - Take A Chance On Me Unpopular opinion time but this is my favourite JLS song. Ok I'll be honest, I've only ever heard 3 JLS songs in full. Take A Chance On Me, Beat Again and She Makes Me Wanna and the last one was only because I had to as it was a part of the #1 rank for 2011. I don't even quite recall what made me check this out in November 2011 but for some reason I did. Maybe I thought it'd be an ABBA cover, or maybe I wanted to see what Rihanna blocked from reaching #1 in the UK. Whatever the reason though I found that I really enjoyed this song and it's one that I played a lot in the lead up to Christmas 2011. I'm still yet to make the dive into and other JLS songs. Take A Chance On Me was never released in Australia but peaked at #2 in the UK.

Simple Plan ft Natasha Bedingfield - Jet Lag This was one of the first new songs that I remember hearing in May 2011 when I returned home to Australia from my 4 weeks in the UK. (Outside of the new Lady Gaga album Born This Way). I think I connected with it in a way that I'd just come back from a 21hr flight to get back home, so I liked that there was a song referencing Jet Lag, even though I didn't feel like I had any. I'd also made some really good friends and strong connectionections with people whilst away so I also resonated with juggling the time differences with trying to talk to people. Jet Lag peaked at #8 in Australia and ended the 2011 as the 60th highest selling single in Australia. Jet Lag failed to chart in the UK. Havana Brown - We Run The Night I can still remember the first time I saw this charting on the iTunes Australia chart. I was in a hotel room in Waterford, Ireland and I'd just came back from dinner and was checking out the iTunes store on my phone and I had a real WTF moment when I saw this in the top 5 because I'd only ever known Havana Brown as a DJ (DJ Havana Brown) and not a singer. The preview sounded good but it wasn't until I returned home a little over three weeks later that I heard this song properly for the first time. I fell in love with it straight away and had it on heavy rotation for a good month or two. We Run The Night peaked at #5 in Australia and ended 2011 as the 40th highest selling single in Australia. A remix featuring Pitbull and produced by RedOne was released the following year in 2012 and would peak at #26 in the US. Adele - Rolling In The Deep What a way to kick off a second era. I can remember listening to Rolling In The Deep for the first time on a Friday afternoon in the office at work. I'd stopped working as this song just hit me. I was just sitting there taking it all in. Still one of my favourite Adele songs. It's a shame it never got to #1 in the UK or Australia.

Over the next few posts I'm going to be shining a light on a little more than 10 of my favourite non #1's from 2011.

I'm not a huge fan of Trouble or Goodies. I felt that Trouble was such a let down after the brilliant singles run from Missunaztood, i fact the Whole Try This era was a real let down for me. Thankfully P!nk went on to much bigger and better things after this I like a few songs from Ciara. 1,2 Step, Oh, Like A Boy and Love Sex Magic are all good, this one not so much for me. Turn Off The Light & Some Girls are both high up for top singles from each artist respectively.

Robbie Williams Ft Nicole Kidman

Elvis Presley

I wonder how long they’ll tease us with live performances of it before they release the studio version of the song.