Jaz13music

Thanks for putting ‘Yes’ at #1 so I didn’t have to!

Brill, thanks! I’ve corrected for the total SLY (I should have realised that couldn’t be right). Would you say 1.5m (a figure I’ve seen quoted) is a better estimate for She Loves You? Or even higher??

I’ve been working on this list so I thought I’d share in case anyone else might be interested? It’s the best I can do with info I’ve brought together from the brilliant threads on BJ (thanks to all) plus some sources elsewhere. Obviously the earliest data is either absent, very vague or likely to be potentially inaccurate. Apologies in advance for (likely) errors, any help with the missing years data or corrections is very welcome. Happy New Year to you all! UK’s best-selling singles for every year since 1952, with approximate sales. 1950s 1952: Al Martino – "Here in My Heart" (Sales not available) 1953: Frankie Laine – "I Believe" (Sales not available) 1954: Doris Day – "Secret Love" (Sales not available) 1955: Slim Whitman – "Rose Marie" (Sales not available) 1956: Pat Boone – "I'll Be Home" (Sales not available) 1957: Paul Anka – "Diana" (Sales not available) 1958: Elvis Presley – "Jailhouse Rock" (Sales not available) 1959: Cliff Richard – "Living Doll" (~800,000) 1960s 1960: Elvis Presley – "It's Now or Never" (~1,000,000+) 1961: Elvis Presley – "Wooden Heart" (~800,000) 1962: Frank Ifield – "I Remember You" (~1,100,000) 1963: The Beatles – "She Loves You" (~1,300,000) 1964: The Beatles – "Can't Buy Me Love" (~1,200,000) 1965: Ken Dodd – "Tears" (~1,268,000) 1966: Tom Jones – "Green, Green Grass of Home" (~850,000) 1967: Engelbert Humperdinck – "Release Me" (~1,000,000+) 1968: The Beatles – "Hey Jude" (~900,000) 1969: The Archies – "Sugar, Sugar" (~950,000) 1970s 1970: Mungo Jerry – "In the Summertime" (~800,000) 1971: George Harrison – "My Sweet Lord" (~700,000) 1972: The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards – "Amazing Grace" (~850,000) 1973: Dawn feat. Tony Orlando – "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" (~800,000) 1974: Mud – "Tiger Feet" (~730,000) 1975: Bay City Rollers – "Bye Bye Baby" (~900,000) 1976: Brotherhood of Man – "Save Your Kisses for Me" (~1,006,000) 1977: Wings – "Mull of Kintyre" (~2,000,000) 1978: Boney M. – "Rivers of Babylon" (~1,995,000) 1979: Art Garfunkel – "Bright Eyes" (~1,155,000) 1980s 1980: The Police – "Don't Stand So Close to Me" (~808,000) 1981: The Human League – "Don't You Want Me" (~1,150,000) 1982: Dexys Midnight Runners – "Come On Eileen" (~1,200,000) 1983: Culture Club – "Karma Chameleon" (~1,390,000) 1984: Band Aid – "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (~3,000,000) 1985: Jennifer Rush – "The Power of Love" (~1,280,000) 1986: The Communards – "Don't Leave Me This Way" (~745,000) 1987: Rick Astley – "Never Gonna Give You Up" (~759,000) 1988: Cliff Richard – "Mistletoe and Wine" (~750,000) 1989: Black Box – "Ride On Time" (~960,000) 1990s 1990: The Righteous Brothers – "Unchained Melody" (~840,000) 1991: Bryan Adams – "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" (~1,850,000) 1992: Whitney Houston – "I Will Always Love You" (~1,500,000) 1993: Meat Loaf – "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)" (~720,000) 1994: Wet Wet Wet – "Love Is All Around" (~1,783,000) 1995: Robson & Jerome – "Unchained Melody" (~1,840,000) 1996: Fugees – "Killing Me Softly" (~1,360,000) 1997: Elton John – "Candle in the Wind 1997" (~4,770,000) 1998: Cher – "Believe" (~1,830,000) 1999: Britney Spears – "...Baby One More Time" (~1,445,000) 2000s 2000: Bob the Builder – "Can We Fix It?" (~853,000) 2001: Shaggy – "It Wasn't Me" (~1,151,000) 2002: Will Young – "Anything Is Possible / Evergreen" (~1,783,919) 2003: The Black Eyed Peas – "Where Is the Love?" (~625,000) 2004: Band Aid 20 – "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (~1,065,000) 2005: Tony Christie feat. Peter Kay – "Is This the Way to Amarillo" (~1,100,000) 2006: Gnarls Barkley – "Crazy" (~820,000) 2007: Leona Lewis – "Bleeding Love" (~788,000) 2008: Alexandra Burke – "Hallelujah" (~888,000) 2009: Lady Gaga – "Poker Face" (~882,000) 2010s (Streaming data incorporated from 2014) 2010: Eminem feat. Rihanna – "Love the Way You Lie" (~854,000) 2011: Adele – "Someone Like You" (~1,242,000) 2012: Gotye feat. Kimbra – "Somebody That I Used to Know" (~1,318,000) 2013: Robin Thicke feat. T.I. & Pharrell – "Blurred Lines" (~1,470,000) 2014: Pharrell Williams – "Happy" (~1,620,000 units) 2015: Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars – "Uptown Funk" (~1,760,000 units) 2016: Drake feat. Wizkid & Kyla – "One Dance" (~1,950,000 units) 2017: Ed Sheeran – "Shape of You" (~3,200,000 units) 2018: Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa – "One Kiss" (~1,570,000 units) 2019: Lewis Capaldi – "Someone You Loved" (~2,300,000 units) 2020s 2020: The Weeknd – "Blinding Lights" (~2,200,000 units) 2021: Ed Sheeran – "Bad Habits" (~1,700,000 units) 2022: Harry Styles – "As It Was" (~1,550,000 units) 2023: Miley Cyrus – "Flowers" (~1,700,000 units) 2024: Noah Kahan – "Stick Season" (~1,990,000 units) 2025: Alex Warren - Ordinary (~2,179,000 units)

+30 Rip It Up – Orange Juice +29 Yes – McAlmont & Butler +28 Holidays in the Sun – Sex Pistols +27 Fools Gold – The Stone Roses +26 This Charming Man – The Smiths +25 Karma Police – Radiohead +24 Rock Island Line – Lonnie Donegan +23 Positively 4th Street – Bob Dylan +22 Big Fun – Inner City +21 Walk This Way – Run-DMC +20 Smack My Bitch Up – The Prodigy +19 Live Forever – Oasis +18 Venus – Shocking Blue +17 On My Radio – The Selector +16 No More Heroes – The Stranglers +15 Jump Around – House of Pain +14 Bat Out of Hell – Meat Loaf +13 Yesterday – The Beatles +12 Close (To the Edit) – Art of Noise +11 Stuck in the Middle With You – Stealers Wheel +10 The Message – The Furious Five & Grandmaster Flash +9 Talk of the Town – Pretenders +8 Crossfire – Brandon Flowers +7 Barcelona – Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballé +6 Going for Gold – Shed Seven +5 Hippychick – Soho +4 Do You Know the Way to San Jose – Dionne Warwick +3 Remember Me – Blue Boy +2 Time Is Running Out – Muse +1 Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High? – Arctic Monkeys For me, this is one of the strongest rates so far. Had to leave out so many great songs across all the decades, hopefully others will vote for them!

Yeah it’s crazy that a great brand new single from 2 brilliant and well established artists should be ignored in preference to stacks of songs that were released months ago!

Yes and it’s great. Hopefully it will have some success.

That’s great, thanks.

Oh no! Too. Many. Great. Songs! I have a shortlist of over 150 songs so far…..can’t I just choose 100😆? Just to give a heads up though Rollo, because I’m not sure of what your timescale will be for the SFs and final, but I’m out of the country in January. I’ll definitely try to my best to jump in and vote where I can (I don’t want to miss out). Thanks for organising this, it’s great fun!

Oh wow is it that time of year already?! I’ve been looking forward to this, the #7s was my first real participation in a rate and I really enjoyed it. So many great songs though, this is going to be hard!

Yes I agree, a lovely little song, just missed out on points from me.

Thanks Julian for all your hard work through the year on these threads. Great and very interesting stuff!

That’s brilliant, thanks Julian! Now I can enjoy Twixmas getting lost among all those threads/stats😆!

I suspect this might be a big ask, but does anyone have, or know where to find, a full list of all the UK singles end of year best sellers with their sales totals? I was trying to work out how many chart years didn’t have a single million seller and ultimately which year had the lowest selling EOY #1. I assume the pre rock n roll 50s would have had low numbers and I remember the mid to late 80s being a barren spell for million sellers as well as the pre streaming, and especially pre download eras when physical sales were waning. Obviously since streaming took over there have been multiple ‘millionaires’ each year, often even double figures recently. I would be grateful if anyone could help! 🙏

A Boxing Day bonus😆! Here’s my Top 20 albums and a Spotify playlist of my favourite songs from them that aren’t already included in the best songs list, if you fancy a listen?! CMAT - Euro-Country Geese - Getting Killed Oklou - Choke Enough Dijon - Baby Lux - Rosalía Dove Ellis - Blizzard Smerz - Big City Life Clipse - Let God Sort ‘Em Out Hayley Williams - Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party Divorce - Drive To Goldenhammer Men I Trust - Equus Asinus/ Equus Caballus Nourished By Time - The Passionate Ones Great Grandpa- Patience, Moonbeam Sharp Pins - Balloon Balloon Balloon Pulp - More PinkPantheress - Fancy That Saya Gray - Saya Cardiacs - LSD Billy Woods - Golliwog Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band - New Threats From The Soul Hope you all had a great day yesterday and have a fantastic New Year!

Can’t be angry about Sabrina winning with Espresso, it’s a great pop song. Especially thanks to Dan for all your hard work. It’s my first time contributing to the ROTD, after watching from afar for a few years, and I really enjoyed getting involved, voting and following your countdowns! 🙏

That’s the countdown done, so finally here’s a Spotify playlist of my whole Top 50 if anyone is interested in listening (it’s missing Hotline TNT who have removed their music from there, so I’ve added Wednesday as a ‘reserve’ instead). All that’s left to say is Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, have a great day everyone and thanks for having me as one of your crew on Buzzjack!❤️

#1 - Geese - Taxes Band of the year, song of the year, and only just missing my album of the year! Another artist I liked since their first proper album and the Disco single, but this year they’ve certainly fulfilled their most exciting band destiny. Both the solo Cameron Winter album and the Getting Killed albums are great, but Taxes was the icing on the cake for me, especially ‘the moment’ in the middle when the full band comes in, one of the best drops of any song, right up there with LCD Soundsystem’s Dance Yrself Clean. I feel that they’re taking on Talking Heads mantle of weird but brilliant indie pop music with unique rhythms. The best compliment I can give is that no one sounds quite like them. I don’t think any AI is going to make anything as unpredictable as this. Brilliant band and song, a deserved number one! And I’m finally getting to see them live in March in Manchester, can’t wait!

#2 - Westside Gunn ft Doechii - Egypt (remix) So Doechii does have one of the very best songs of the year, but it’s certainly not Anxiety! I just love the feel of this, the rhythm the brilliant chopped samples and 2 great contrasting verses. My official ‘most played song of the year’ (thanks Spotify), fantastic stuff!

Yes those were the ones I found it hardest to rank here, maybe because I still think of them more as 1s or #2s? Perhaps I should have left the Pogues out like you did, that way I could have fitted Jona Lewis or Culture Club into my 20 (which I’m regretting leaving out now 😆)!

#3 - CMAT - Take A Sexy Picture Of Me I had real difficulty choosing which CMAT song to include, Euro-Country is the best album of the year and pretty much the whole of it was worthy of a place here. In the end I went with this for its great melody, lyrics/sentiment and her playfully breaking the ‘4th wall’ between verses. I’ve loved her since her first album, getting better with each release, and am really looking forward to where she goes next. She really should be a massive star by now.

#4 - Tyler Childers - Oneida I’m always a sucker for a great alt country leaning song and this one starts off simply with strummed guitar but then bursts into a gorgeous Pogues or Dexys like folk masterpiece. Really great and romantic lyrics, love the waltz rhythm too. An absolutely beautiful song!

Yeah ‘No Tears Left To Cry’ is my favourite of the remaining 5, Ariana’s best in my opinion. A gorgeous song and given the extra poignancy after the Manchester bombing, should really have been a number 1.

I know I’ve asked about this in the past 😆but do you think Billie will now just scrape a second million selling year after all? And maybe for next year would Olivia be the most likely to achieve the same? Or would it still be Alex or Huntr/x?

#5 - Dijon - Automatic I had heard of Dijon before, from his collaborations with Mk.gee and then on Justin Bieber’s Swag album. His is a quirky update on 80s R&B and I’d love to imagine Prince doing something like this if he were still here. His album, Baby, is unique sounding with fantastic production and again I could have chosen many of the songs to feature on this list, but this is just about my favourite

#6 - Chappell Roan - The Subway Chappell writes a Cranberries song! I liked ‘…Midwest Princess’ a lot, but it’s been since the 3 singles after that when I’ve really ‘got’ Chappell’s music properly. Each song better than the one before, it feels like she’s gearing up for something truly special with the long awaited 2nd album. The Subway is a lovely song throughout but it’s the second half, and the beautiful ‘she got away’ coda, that lifts it skyward, each repeat slightly different than the one before. Always makes me cry! Comfortably the best number one of the year, such a shame it didn’t stick around in the charts longer!