The Hit Parade

He sold fewer albums than Bradley Walsh?

I'm aware that George Michael performed that medley, but it's not exactly a tribute is it?

Yes, and according the OCC's article it's already the highest-chart single named after that particular fruit. Obviously the highest-charting single with a fruit in the title is 'Blackberry Way' by the Move.

The Beatles actually recorded 'Golden Slumbers' and 'Carry That Weight' as one piece, so they're barely separate songs... although they did add to them afterwards, which is why John Lennon is on 'Carry That Weight' but not 'Golden Slumbers'.

It's from the medley on Side Two of Abbey Road. It must sound really odd if you just download that one track on its own.

I see Amazon are now listing a best of Elbow on the 24th November. Seems short notice but I suppose there was an embargo on Golden Slumbers until today.

It's the third track on my Release Radar this week. Possibly it's only on UK Spotify though? If Thriller this week is anything to go by, ACR might even help Christmas songs by weakening the competition.

Why wouldn't it? Lots of British adverts are filmed in the USA (or other countries).

I think it was a deliberate strategic decision to bring in a new, unfamiliar DJ for the chart - but it didn't seem to work.

The album was supposed to be re-released last year while he was still alive, but it was postponed because the documentary wasn't finished. And then obviously postponed again when he died.

There are people who don't have any of the previous 700 Madness hits collections?

I've got the David Bowie box on order so I probably shouldn't buy anything else this week. I'll see if there's anything out I feel like streaming in the meantime.

I think Wolf Alice can do it because they're likely to have more "urgent" buyers who'll want to grab the album in release week. Whilst Shania obviously has plenty of fans I reckon they were a relatively small set of her total audience and of course her huge sales were in the days when more people bought albums generally so it's very hard to guess what she'll do this time. By the way, is there a deluxe of the Wolf Alice album? I saw two versions with different covers but no tracklisting in HMV.

Co-written by Bob Dylan, fact fans. I've just looked it up and the 7" single of 'Steel Bars' had 'How Can We Be Lovers' on the B-side, so best of both worlds there.

It's not that strange, because 'Clementine' is a much more memorable song. I remember it as a quite a pleasant surprise at the time. I also quite liked his third single 'I Am What I Am' but the album version isn't as good as the single.

I remember thinking it was odd when Jordan Knight had a solo hit so long after NKOTB, and even odder that I quite liked it. Odder still that he never seemed to try to follow it up.

Yeah, I was just reminded of the existence of Foxes because I was listening to Now 87 in a room which I can't mention without setting off the spam filter.

Yeah, but look how well French Montana's album didn't do.

I wonder whether R1 would still have been playlisting Echo & The Bunnymen if they'd been together all along, rather than splitting up and getting back together? I presume Jo Whiley was lobbying quite heavily for them, I remember her being quite excited about their comeback. I saw another playlist from 1998 that had Paul Weller's 'Brand New Start' on it, so if I was wrong about 'He's The Keeper' that would have been his last appearance.

We're getting into songs I remember now. Why did they dress Matt Willis up like a Nazi on the cover of his single though?

I suppose you could argue that the real location of the eclipse is in the eyes of the people who see it. But yes, to get back to the original point, the totality of the eclipse was only visible in certain parts of America. People in some part of the UK could theoretically have seen a partial eclipse, but it was so cloudy down here I didn't even bother looking.

Well no, it was millions of miles up in the sky, wasn't it?

The Supremes did two albums with the Temptations and three with the Four Tops and had multiple hits from them. If you count those as boy and girl groups, of course.

What happened to MNEK anyway?

Here's one somebody tweeted to me the other day: https://web.archive.org/web/19990428154305/...m/playlist.html