superbossanova

Terrible year. The top 3 are excellent, AM and Mutya are good, Just Jack is average, don't care that much about the other four. +15 Kate Nash - Foundations +12 Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand - Let Me Think About It +10 Mark Ronson - Stop Me +8 Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm +6 Mutya Buena - Real Girl +5 Just Jack - Starz In Their Eyes +4 Take That - Rule The World +3 Fergie - Big Girls Don't Cry +2 Manic Street Preachers - Your Love Alone Is Not Enough +1 Gwen Stefani - The Sweet Escape -2 Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend

Yes, I agree. The reason why the likes of Alexandra Stan and Aloe Blacc have had no problems with on air, on sale is that they've essentially followed a normal curve of a post-album release of an individual song in which they had little interest at first and thus increased every week concurrently with their airplay and promotion increasing. For the likes of The Saturdays they're following a completely different model where they peak/enter highly on their first week and then bomb down before stabalising - which has been part of their problem as it peaked in its first week on radio and then has been dropping the last two weeks! What needs to happen is that radio needs to see out a song for at least a month, the same way they would if it was a held back release AND then think about dropping it from their playlists, not seeing it drop 8-21 and then immediately thinking it's a total flop. I mean, if it grows on radio but still drops 8-21-36-54 or something then yes it's done terribly and is probably a lost cause but if, like The Saturdays release, it drops 8-21-33 and then climbs back up then it's clearly got potential left in it. The same happened with Beyoncé - it peaked on its second week at #40 on the airplay chart (the week after it had climbed to #11 in the charts) and then radio slowly dropped it, probably because they saw it dropping down the iTunes chart (shock horror!). Again, very silly - if they kept increasing their support it could easily have stabalised in the top 20 or 30 and then boosted into the top 10 when the video came and then that campaign would be looking a hell of a lot better.

Yeah, quite! I might pop in again next week and see if they have anything better. I'm convinced the crap they're trying to flog now won't sell, even for £1! The Peter Andre CD column was completely untouched as far as I could tell, which unless it was put up only today is a bit embarrassing, although not exactly surprising when you consider the content. It was one of his more recent ones too - can't remember the name, I'd have to look at some of his cover sleeves. I haven't heard that Thunderbugs song in an absolute age so I'm quite happy to have a 'copy' of it now. I always preferred it to Friends Forever to be honest which I always found more than a little cringey, IATYWM is a very respectable pop song - if a little mature for a girlband in 1999! As for the Norway thing, I guess top 3 means it peaked at #2 or #3... and off the top of my head the only songs that peaked there on this CD are R. Kelly, Ann Lee, A1, Alice Deejay and Artful Dodger. Of those, I'd instantly rule out Artful Dodger and Ann Lee for being ridiculous, R. Kelly and Alice Deejay didn't drop away fast, which leaves... A1?! I always preferred the flip-side to that - Ready Or Not, didn't care much about Everytime. I didn't like Back to the 80s much at all - I think Aqua are only a group I can enjoy in the context of the 90s anyway. If a new group came around like them today I'd just laugh at them and hate them, probably! I've never bought a compilation for only one song before :o Some of the more recent Nows I've literally only bought to carry on my collection though, mind. I think 40 does have its selling points though - my absolute favourites are Viva Forever, Looking For Love, Feel It, Stranded, All My Life, Be Careful, Sonnet, Teardrop, Legacy and Can't Help Myself, and then are about a dozen more I like. :lol: I've heard of everyone on Hits 51 except G:UK, which sounds like another random dance act to me. I'm terrible at remembering the floppy dance songs. Loads of songs I haven't heard since 2001 I guess though! It does look quite good but gooddelta's comment about songs being chopped puts me off a bit... :drama:

If that doesn't work in the UK then how did this lot manage to fool everyone and get away with it? P.S. There's also Snap!, Culture Beat, Technotronic and a pointless answer... B.B.E.! :D You could also count Ace of Base if Aqua qualify really.

Sam Sparro first?! How very random of you all. I think Britney deserved to go straight through to the final with her best single in 7 years at the time, especially over an average Adele and a crappy Kings of Leon song - for shame! +15 Kelis - Trick Me :wub: One of my favourite R&B singles of the 00s... +12 Girls Aloud - The Show +10 Jamelia - Thank You +8 Girls Aloud - Love Machine +6 Christina Milian - Dip It Low +5 The Libertines - Can't Stand Me Now +4 Destiny's Child - Lose My Breath +3 D12 & Eminem - My Band +2 JoJo - Leave (Get Out) +1 Manic Street Preachers - The Love Of Richard Nixon Actually can't decide what to give my -2 here to, nothing is really that bad. So for the first time ever(!!) I think I'll forfeit the opportunity :o

Well I went in this morning and LORD that must be the cheapest Poundland in the land :lol: Rather than a whole selection like I was expecting/hoping for, they only had a truly random selection of 5 albums (and all in plentiful supply!) - Peter Andre, Motörhead, some Celtic album, Basement Jaxx and another one I've forgotten. Anyhow, given I took the bus to town specifically to go there I didn't want to leave with nothing so bought the Basement Jaxx album (which is quite handy really, it's one of the few of theirs I didn't own before). Thankfully, I popped into the British Heart Foundation store across the road and lucked upon Hits 2000! So yeah, not a complete waste - but I was hoping to come back with a few Hits albums not only one and then a Basement Jaxx album personally :drama: And I HATE Barbie Girl. It's the type of crap that gave the late 90s a bad name :( Let's face it, to the general public, that's all the 1997-1999 period means. I do generally like Aqua though, but their first two UK #1s were horrendous. For me their best songs were some of their least successful - Good Morning Sunshine, Cartoon Heroes, etc. And 5,6,7,8 is just rubbish. On the subject of Now 41, I could probably listen to the entire first disc without skipping but I don't really like U2, Melanie B, Lutricia McNeal and Phil Collins. On the second disc, I dislike Billie, T-Spoon and the Vengaboys. The rest are average to great - and I love Home Alone! I think it's a fairly close run thing but the best tracks on 40 are better than the best on 41 imo. EDIT: Looking at the tracklisting properly for Hits 2000 and wow, it has the Thunderbugs' 2nd single on it!! See, this is what I was hoping for in terms of some of the rarer pop flops :heehee:

Oh really! I was just down in the town centre this afternoon, and even walked right past the pound shop! :lol: I didn't even know they sold CDs in there otherwise I'd go in there far more often. As it happens I haven't been into one of them in years, but I'll try to remember to have a pop in and see next time. Now 39 is obviously incredible but 54 was just average for me - i.e. I like about half the tracklisting, which is usually the standard for me on most Now albums, although the last few have been even less than that in general. For me the gems are those that are approaching/exceed 30 songs that I like on it! :drama: The late 1990s ones can pick up those kind of numbers consistently. I actually think 39 may well be my ultimate favourite now that I think about it. There's only one track on Disc 1 I'd skip if push came to shove (Boyzone's Baby Can I Hold You, and even that's perfectly listenable in a background way), and while Disc 2 is much worse with some faceless dance it still only TRULY wobbles on the Aqua-Steps couplet before Louise comes to save it. And even Vanilla stuffed at the end is so bad it's become an essential staple of the 90s in an ironic way. Also contains my favourite tracks by Lighthouse Family, Natalie Imbruglia, Radiohead, Space and some good one hit-type acts (Billie Myers, Cornershop, Run-DMC vs Jason Nevins)! All of this is making me want to listen to it now. And on closer inspection 40 is nowhere near as good as I thought! Too many pop flops on it that look like they'd belong on a Smash Hits compilation - except dear Keri-Ann, she can stay as I do like that one. Still better than most though and some very good tracks (plus lots of memories, it was the first Now album I owned, on cassette as well - which ended up becoming unwound after about 2 weeks!). 41 is better than I remember though.

That does sound rather amazing and almost too good to exist, but unfortunately I'm stuck down in the south! Looking at the website of this place, the closest to me is about 90 miles away, which is quite a distance considering I can't drive - and I'm not sure I fancy asking my mum or dad to drive me there just to get a few random compilations from 10 years ago! I can only imagine their reaction to that :lol: It also says on their website that they're planning to open more soon so hopefully they'll have one that is at least a managable distance away from here. Does it sell old CD singles too? How much would they be? And does it only sell old stuff? I'm surprised if it's getting away with selling newer stuff at such prices :o

I just looked at the tracklisting for Hits 55 on Wikipedia and it does look quite good! Hits 56 looks even BETTER though - although some of these inclusions are truly random. Who the hell is Saffron Hill - it's not anything to do with the lead singer of Republica, is it? :o I'm sure she was called Saffron, but I can't remember her surname. And yeah, that was quite a crap period for Now albums really, some of there were very starved in terms of big hits. Now 52 was a particular lowlight, one of the worst ever - only a handful of decent tracks on there. For what it's worth, the Hits albums I own are: New Hits 96 (very good - especially for including TLC's Creep and some nice 'second string' Britpop) Big Hits 97 (kinda rubbish really) New Hits 98 (good, but really sub-par compared to the equivalent Now 39) Fresh Hits 98 (very good) Hits 54 (not sure why I randomly own this one but I do recall a TV advert for it with Rosie Ribbons as one of the tracks advertising it which is a bit WTF in retrospect but that's probably why :lol:) So yeah, five, which is more than I thought, I forgot I had Big Hits 97. I guess there's nothing stopping me from buying the entire series one-by-one online (well, apart from money, which I don't have much of right now!) some day though, but I'm not sure how many songs I wouldn't already own on other random albums/compilations. I guess it would be worthwile for some of the rarer late 90s/early 00s flops though. As for the Top of the Pops series, I own almost all of them from mid-1998 to mid-2003 and I think it might have ended after that as I don't remember seeing any more. My favourite would probably be the very first of them I bought - Top of the Pops 1998 Volume 2 - which had a load of good stuff missed off Now 40/41, including the infamous Alda! :D Impressive collection! I only(!) have Now 1 and Now 18-78. But some of the early ones weren't even released on CD so it'll be impossible for me to go back that far. Yeah, sometimes the second disc is used as the rock/indie disc. It depends on the trends at the time I guess. It also used to often be home to all the dance music, or more often than not a mish-mash of the two, plus they usually throw the MoR Radio 2-type stuff on that side too. The last few times it's just been a continuation of Disc 1 in terms of genres/themes with the odd alternative hit thrown in, but oh well! I much prefer it when the two discs are a bit different musically, personally. Mind you, I still nearly always prefer Disc 2 to Disc 1, although there are exceptions of course.

Actually, Fire was about as successful as most of the songs around it (Crazy Town, Alien Ant Farm, etc). It's only the mid-2000s stuff like My Chemical Romance and Stereophonics that is lower than they probably should be because of the well-documented low sales at the time. Although of course you're right that any future big rock hits will probably find it easy to get into the top 10 on this list. And yes, the list of songs is ATROCIOUS (and I like rock music), but I'm sure it'd be the same for any other high-selling genre list, bar (pure) pop music. I mean, the best-selling hip hop song of all-time is I'll Be Missing You which is complete and utter horse $h!t, for example.

Wow, what amazing results for 2003. I voted for every song that got through to the final/wildcard round which is surely some kind of first in one of these games! Shame Rock Your Body didn't get through instead of Cry Me A River but eh, that's only minor picking. I'm very happy that Stole got through especially, with an up middle finger (Oxide and Neutrino-stylee :lol:) to the people who dismiss it as boring! Doubt it will advance to the final round though when the wildcard voting comes but it's already exceeded my expectations. +15 Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah +12 Britney Spears - Piece Of Me +10 Geraldine - The Winners Song +8 Wiley - Wearing My Rolex +6 Sam Sparro - Black & Gold +5 T.I. feat. Rihanna - Live Your Life +4 Adele - Chasing Pavements +3 Eric Prydz - Pjanoo +2 Leona Lewis - Better In Time +1 McFly - One For The Radio -2 Soulja Boy Tell Em - Crank That (Soulja Boy)

I do wish I had bought more of the Hits compilations, but I never knew when they were out! Plus the constant rebranding didn't help. I only have about four of them, and only one of them after 1998! I have loads of Top of the Pops compilations though as I always saw them advertised in the TOTP magazines I bought so it was easy for me to keep track of them. But the TOTP series was always far more similar to the Now albums than the Hits series. I only have two Smash Hits albums but they're even MORE similar to the Now albums with some utter pop flops thrown in - and I'm not just talking minor flops, I'm talking songs that missed the top 20, and a handful that missed the top 40 - and mostly deservedly, I should add! I wasn't shocked when Walk of Life flopped as much as I was gutted :( I didn't care about her first album much bar Honey To The B, which was lovely, but I really thought she was going up a notch with Day & Night and Something Deep Inside both being pop gems for me and I loved the R&B touch she added to her music. I didn't like WOL anywhere near as much but it just annoyed me to see all the wasted potential, gah! I think the same with Samantha Mumba, who was totally f***ed over by her record label even though she never actually had a flop single - really unfair her second album was canned - and had far more potential for future prospects than most other pop acts of that time. Oh right. I see your point there. I guess the cherry-picking is done by a different kind of person though - someone with a bit more of a casual interest, I guess. That's the only reason I can think of really. I'm sure most of the kids do already have all the songs they want.

Yeah, it's true that Britpop had died out by then but there was still some dregs doing well in the charts. I just think it was a really poor selection from that genre, bar Blur. For me it would have been better if they put Catatonia's Dead From The Waist Down (which I adore, it reached #7 and Catatonia were included on 39 and 40 so I don't know why it wasn't on there), Suede's Electricity (another song they ignored even though Suede were on other Now albums) or even the Super Furry Animals with Northern Lites (although I'm not sure they had the rights, I have it on a Smash Hits compilation from the same time period). And I don't understand why they held back Shania Twain, Britney Spears and Sixpence None The Richer to Now 44, so random and it would have made Now 43 a lot better for me also. Now that I think about it, it also probably didn't help that two of my favourite songs back then - TLC's No Scrubs and Hepburn's I Quit (yes, I was a loon for girlbands in 1999!) didn't make it on in terms of my enjoyment of it. Yes, Disc 2 of Now 47 is quite good. Although I have a minor gripe there too - WHY did they include the pre-release Walk Of Life (which flopped about a month after it was out) to the far superior career higlight that was Something Deep Inside for Billie Piper? Sorry, but these things bug me everytime I listen to it so it's nice to get them off my chest! :lol: Apart from that it's good though, I would probably only skip Steps (awful), Darude (don't get it, Sandstorm was alright though), Azzido da Bass (headache-inducing) and B-Boyz. Yes, despite my trance-hating, I even like the trance cover of Duran Duran, shockingly enough! :heehee: I prefer Disc 1 of 48 to the second, actually. The Samantha Mumba and Britney Spears tracks there are probably two of my favourite pop songs of the early 00s, and Nelly Furtado, Shaggy, Gorillaz and Emma Bunton are all good. Disc 2 had a lot of bore "rock" on it and it's probably a challenge to stay awake through the first four songs, and while it gets better afterwards only Feeder, Jakatta, Melanie B and Mya are really highlights for me. Apart from those songs I mentioned it's consistently mediocre to awful though. That Dario G cover of The Cranberries is a particular lowlight for me, I'm afraid :( Although I don't even like the original anyway...

I know what you mean there. Lots of songs from the late 1990s have that "one of the first songs I remember loving" kind of feeling. Although I usually find its the one-hit wonder kinda songs that I usually get more nostalgia over for some reason - like, say, Karen Ramirez - Looking For Love or something. Probably because I associate both the song and the act with a particular era, plus it was massive on the radio but doesn't get played as much as other songs now (in fact, I can't even remember the last time I heard it on the radio!) so it's very much associated with my memories of 1998 when I heard it all the time. Better Off Alone is good, I guess... but I never liked that trance scene much at all :lol: I don't think it was a song I particularly played much/at all on Now 43 either, probably because it was put right at the end of Disc 2, so I don't really get many memories from it. I do like a lot of the songs you mentioned but most of the acts had better songs on other Now albums, so it's hard for me to love a compilation of sub-par material for those acts, personally. Plus I can't forgive the Now compilers for that awful trio on Now 43 of Adam Rickitt-Lolly-Cartoons all in a row :manson: And in terms of britpop/indie it was a definite downturn too - Gomez and Cast?! Who the hell let them on? I swear that Gomez song wasn't even close to being a hit too. Shockingly bad song. For me, 43 and 44 (despite it being the best-selling ever) was a bit of a downturn and I don't play either that much these days. 45 was a step in the right direction again, some really great songs on there. 46 was okay but I hated the dancier second disc, never paid much attention to that one. 47 is excellent too. I know what you mean about the post-47 ones though, there was a bit of a massive drop in quality from 47 to 48 for some reason and it kind of wobbled from then onwards, although I did like 50. The next high quality one for me was probably 56, which has some stonking pop gems on. Yeah, I don't understand why they would have died in the internet era? :unsure: It's just easy to buy these Now albums for a nice collection of all the recent hits in one place. I don't see that ever changing any time soon. I struggle to see why they'd ever die out, to be honest. It would have to be a forced retirement, probably, as their legacy is so strong now that no other compilation can even compete, anyway. Maybe the Hits series could have if they didn't get so random and start faffing about to confuse everyone.

My favourite run of Nows are the ones from 27-42. That was a real strong period for quality and variety of music, and thus the Now! albums were also incredibly varied. Of those, the ones that really stand out are 29, 33, 37, 39 and 40. It would be tough to pick a favourite and they all have their selling points (33 for the uber-alternative Disc 1 at the height of Britpop, 39 for the sheer number of classics packed onto it representing that massive sales period of late 1997 when there was a future million seller released basically every week, 40 for the nostalgia of the legendary summer of '98, etc) so I like them all in different ways. 43 was less good, but it does have my favourite single of 1999 on it (Basement Jaxx - Red Alert), plus career gems from Blur, Geri Halliwell, Backstreet Boys and a few good late 90s forgotten acts (Shanks & Bigfoot, Precious, New Radicals, Semisonic) so it's not all bad. Post-42, my favourite was 61. Good time in my life, I guess, as everyone else hates it :lol: They sell faster than ever. Why would they have died out anyway? It's not like they haven't adapted to the digital climate :unsure:

Oh, I see it now. It was a very bad joke. Well, I certainly don't feel sorry for missing THAT if it suggests my humour isn't so awful. Regardless, my post is still relevant as the OP was implying leaving the top 40 would have been slow back then, which is what I was disagreeing with ;)

Maybe, but if there's one thing Westlife('s management) were is smart and opportunistic. They would have likely concentrated all their promotion (remember there were far more opportunities for promotion in the physical era than these days) into one week, probably the one where they would have had the best chance of #1 (similar to how they did in the late 1990s with avoiding the obvious big records). Plus with no front-loading, sales would have been naturally lower on both the strong weeks and the weak weeks, which would have dropped to around 50-60k at the very least surely, making it even easier for Westlife to target a week at #1 with a big push. I wonder if we would have seen acts holding back one of the CDs in the late 90s? I can certainly imagine this would have happened. Release the first format, watch all the fans buy it, then weeks later release another format with an even BETTER tracklisting (more exclusives, etc) to entice the fans to buy it again as well as the casual fans that are hearing it on the radio. Back in those days they released all formats together to get a bigger push to #1 but in an OA/OS climate it would have made more business sense to not do that, unless they were aiming for a push to #1 purely on their first week? I think it would be MUCH faster, as there were far more records being released with mainstream promotion then there are now. Plus there's the issue of reducing stock, limited area to display (we're talking relatively small stores here) so I imagine more recent releases would be favoured over the old, and record companies stopped producing more copies of certain singles when they wanted it to drop out of the chart to make room for the next single, etc - things that are not problems or issues at all with downloads. I guess it wouldn't have been as fast as it actually was back then, but probably more of a halfway point between now and then? Back then it was pretty incredible when a song passed 20 weeks in the top 40. And if you made it to 30 weeks like LeAnn Rimes did then it was just beyond belief!!!

Same here - limp, non-descript dance music. Bores me to tears. Room 5 is next on my hitlist after. I swear I don't hate dance music as much as this suggests, what with me planning to vote out XTM, Ultrabeat and Room 5 one after the other, it's just the dance records on this poll are particularly awful!! Move Your Feet is one of my favourites though. It's a shame Tomcraft didn't make it - what number was that on the year-end list? It must have been pretty close (along with Hole in the Head :angry:)

Seriously, I'm amazed at Electric Six's popularity on here. I remember in the Record of the Decade game that was run last year by thisispop it made it through the 2003 nominations round but then did completely crap there (it was near the bottom, if I recall correctly). So I'm a bit baffled how it's doing so well here, unless the voters are drastically different I guess, or the list of #2s is just completely rubbish for most people?! I was hoping it would scrape through on some big votes from the more alternative crowd but it seems to be picking up high points from almost everywhere... :o

Electric Six = nu-Beetlebum! :D I hope to God it does go through. Would be the most pleasant surprise in any of the games for me so far. Surely the total needed to go through would be much lower in this round due to the sheer number of choices available too?

I did!! :lol: Sorry! And even more shamefully, I still LOVE it 8 years later. Anyway, 2003 was a good year for me chart-wise in general, but there's a lot of rubbish here! Although I guess with 36 #2s more crap is always going to sift through compared to if there was, say, half that number. I still love you, 2003. +15 Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage :lol: The better of the two camp rock bands listed here as far as I'm concerned. Their fall into oblivion was far more rapid than The Darkness! They still exist today, if anyone's wondering, putting out albums to a niché fanbase. Love it, but nothing else they did was quite as good... +12 Kelly Rowland - Stole I was obsessed with this at the time, was gutted when t.A.T.u. beat it to #1... +10 Girls Aloud - No Good Advice Meanwhile, this I thought was completely crap compared to SOTU (which I bought on its first day out), but it grew on me like fungus! Now I have no idea why I didn't love it at first - strange! +8 Justin Timberlake - Rock Your Body A great funky little pop song! Cry Me A River usually gets more attention but this is better for me (although both are great) +6 Sinéad Quinn - I Can't Break Down +5 Big Brovaz - Favourite Things +4 Rachel Stevens - Sweet Dreams My L.A. Ex +3 Justin Timberlake - Cry Me A River +2 Dannii Minogue - I Begin To Wonder +1 Dido - White Flag -2 Fast Food Rockers - Fast Food Song

XTM for god's sake!! Honestly, just p*** off. It's an absolute joke some of the songs this has outlasted. Can't believe In Da Club only lasted two rounds longer than Ayo Technology did. I thought if that could make it to Round 10, then In Da Club would make it to Round 20 at least. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised as some people vote on genre, not the quality of the song anyway :lol:

It was actually re-released and re-promoted after the success of Emancipation, it didn't just 'regain' popularity as such by itself. Same for several other albums mentioned here. Although of course it's still valid, just saying. I think the same happened with The Proclaimers and their Greatest Hits after the success of 500 Miles as a Comic Relief song. Sting & The Police's The Very Best Of was also re-packaged and re-released in 2002 and went straight to #1. Chances are if an album re-enters at a high position rather than climbing its way back up it was re-released. Radiohead's Pablo Honey is a good example of a studio album that continued to re-enter and be revived as the band grew and grew. It actually finally managed to repeak at #22 during the success of OK Computer, five years after its original release. Unfortunately it hasn't made another top 75 appearance since the late 90s.

Daniel Powter through? :mellow: You people are STRANGE. I genuinely don't understand how anyone can enjoy that song. And poor Mariah! But it was expected because she's hated on here for no real reason at all. I bet the superior It's Like That would have gotten through :kink: +15 Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys - Empire State Of Mind +12 La Roux - In For The Kill +10 Mr Hudson feat. Kanye West - Supernova +8 Michael Jackson - Man In The Mirror +6 Taylor Swift - Love Story +5 Rihanna - Russian Roulette +4 Noisettes - Don't Upset The Rhythm (Go Baby Go) +3 The Saturdays - Forever Is Over +2 Robbie Williams - Bodies +1 Kid Cudi vs Crookers - Day N Nite -2 James Morrison & Nelly Furtado - Broken Strings

If there was any justice, then Supernova, In For The Kill, Empire State of Mind and Man in The Mirror would be SAILING through from that list. They are several steps above the rest (and all are excellent), which range from average to embarrassingly awful. And I don't think you can judge popularity of songs from that Dannyboy game. In For The Kill went early in that just because Elly Jackson's voice is very love/hate. It'll get a lot of love, guaranteed. High points from me for sure.