The Hit Parade

I was going to go with Duck Rock by Malcolm McLaren until I realised it was Top 10 and not Top 20.

My rejected answers for Question 7 were 'The Ballad Of John & Yoko' and 'Feel Good Inc' so it looks like those would have been pointless too.

Sent mine in. Changed my mind about a few of the answers, hope the ones I rejected don't end up being better answers than the ones I changed to.

Also 'Every Breath You Take' by the Police (the notes for the first album actually list the 5 missing!) Paul Hardcastle didn't believe this when I told him! Should be 'Dancing In The Street', surely?

Manic Street Preachers only show up once and not with either of their Number One singles. Also football songs are never on there except 'Three Lions '98' and identifiable Christmas songs are understandably absent so that rules out all four versions of 'Do They Know it's Christmas?' plus Merry Christmas Everyone etc. 'West End Girls' and 'Heart' by the Pet Shop Boys didn't make it either.

Pretty sure California is already independent from England though.

Tom Jones' actual new single is a bit unexpected - it's a six-minute spoken piece about the negative effects of television and reality TV... You can see why he wasn't performing that one on The Voice.

Same thing with Run-DMC, at least while Jam Master Jay was still alive. The Jam would be one of the most successful rock trios in the UK, if not internationally. Cream were also a big 3-piece rock act, as well as another thing you can put on scones. Crowded House fluctuated between 3 and 4 members (the current line-up that would have been touring in 2020 has 5) and confusingly, their biggest UK hit was recorded as a four-piece but by the time it came out as a single there were only three members again. On the other hand, who remembers The Noise Next Door?

Blimey, I did a lot better than I thought!

You might have seen this already but the new Teenage Fanclub album is Endless Arcade on 5 March 2021. I've put in my pre-order already.

I looked up loads of rappers trying to find out what 7 was but I completely forgot Flo Rida existed.

39 is the one that was really bugging me. I did eventually put something down for it but I'm not convinced it was right.

Sent mine. If only 19 other people have entered I might make the Top 20.

Thanks to all the time spent in charity shops I've recognised quite a few of these without looking anything up. Embarassingly, two of the titles I can't remember are albums I know I own... I can even remember where I bought them.

7Digital is still going (they don't update their front page much but new releases are still being added) and obviously there's Bandcamp for a lot of indie stuff.

Chubby? Who the F Is Chubby? Bonus fact, his real name is Royston Vasey, the fictional village was named after him.

I assume that Roy Chubby Brown single is for charity or something? Not sure how deeply I want to investigate.

To be fair, though, Cretu wasn't the first Enigma in the UK chart: XJM2x6xJ9hQ

No new tracks (for obvious reasons) but they are remixed (again!) and the deluxe version has some surround mixes which I guess will appeal to some people.

Though they were the same people as Doolally who had a hit (twice) with Straight From The Heart Staying with dance: Puretone - Addicted To Bass (2, 2002) and Stuck In A Groove (26, 2003) The Avalanches - Since I left You (16) and Frontier Psychiatrist (18, both 2001) And a few others I remembered (or spotted just now) - some admittedly not very big hits. Them - Baby Please Don't Go (10) and Here Comes The Night (2, both 1965) [Van Morrison has had a small amount of solo success] Glenn Frey - The Heat is On (12) and Smuggler's Blues (22, both 1985) [also a member of The Eagles] theaudience - A Pessimist Is Never Disappointed (25) and I Know Enough (I Don't Get Enough) (22, both 1998) [sophie Ellis Bextor obviously had substantial solo success] The Rasmus - In The Shadows (3) and Guilty (15, both 2004) The Electric Soft Parade - Silent To The Dark II (23) and Empty At The End/This Given Line (39, both in 2002) Eddi Reader - Patience Of Angels (33, 1994) and Town Without Pity (26, 1996) Fat Larry's Band - Center City (31, 1977) and Zoom (2, 1982) City High - What Would You Do? (2, 2001) and Caramel (9, 2002) And just to prove that people from talent shows having two hits isn't a new thing: Marvin Rainwater - Whole Lotta Woman (1) and I Dig You Baby (19, both 1958)

Just as her uncle Gary is arriving in the album charts (as part of Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets).

I think that Guetta/Sia song sounds like an electropop version of 'Love is A Battlefield'.

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A pedant writes: it was indeed written and performed by 70s TV celebrity Doc Cox but it was credited to Ivor Biggun (or in some places "Ivor Biggun and The Red-Nosed Burglars") see what he's done there?

I see the barrell-scraping Stone Roses remix album is being reissued on vinyl. *contains excitement*.