BillyH

A really pathetic and slightly humiliating 107/232...probably could have done the lot four or five years ago but I'm too old and past it now. Looking at the results there's a few how-the-hell-did-I-not-remember obvious ones ( ) but even after those I probably wouldn't have passed 120 or so in a million years.

Clean Bandit are Rangers fans and have just supported Glad All Over on Twitter!! (not really, but can you imagine...)

The Christmas Top of the Pops is going to need some frantic re-editing if Clean Bandit win - you've got Rockabye as a scheduled studio performance and an Xmas #1 "revealed" at the end of the show, presumably by just playing the video. As they can hardly air Rockabye twice, they might have to shift the performance to the end - but now Fearne & Reggie's link won't work and the episode is four minutes too short. Hmm...

I remember a lot of posts suggesting that the NHS Choir had no chance until very late in the week, about the point Bieber tweeted his support. Surprised a fair few people in those last few days!

Almost bet a tenner on CB when they were 15/1 a few days ago...might regret not doing that now! A worthy winner if so all the same!

The race is always on to find the next big evolution of dance music that will revolutionise the charts, lead to huge amounts of megahits and "THE SOUND OF" compilation albums, until eventually fizzling out with a couple of 80s cover versions and trend-chasing pop cash-ins a couple years down the line. But what genres have we yet to hear? Be as serious or silly as you like, it's just for fun. Here's a few of mine to start off with: Arctic house - House music that sounds like you're shivering in snow-covered, northern Scandinavian winters - wind chills, ice cracks, the occasional husky bark etc. First hits big with a track called "Glacier" or "Polar" or "Mush" or something and eventually leads to a huge #1 with an up-to-date remix of East 17's Stay Another Day. Nu-Trance - An astonishing fusion of Nu Metal and Trance, this features screaming angry rock vocals over pounding electronic beats from the world's top DJs, a headling grabbing Ferry Corsten feat. Limp Bizkit collaboration starting off the genre's mainstream success. In Germany, Scooter grumble they've been doing exactly that for twenty years, and a remixed 'The Logical Song' with the help of Linkin Park is a worldwide top 10. MDM - Mechanical Dance Music. Similar to EDM except DJs have to program every beat and note inside a physical pianola-like device and crank a massive handle live on stage to make it work - speeding up or slowing down the movement depending on vibes of the crowd, turning a chillout tune into a hardcore banger and vice versa. And exercises your arm muscles and keeps you fit! First hit to make it big is simply titled 'A' which causes some mild controversy and frustrating Youtube searches. Any more? Quick, it's 2017 soon, you can still get there before the charts do!

Admittedly those that you've mentioned are quite good! 'Slam' is one of my absolute tracks of the decade, I remember being blown away by it and the first time I really started paying attention to drum & bass. Still remember my disappointment the week it only charted at #34...and my bigger disappointment five years later when the way way inferior Watercolour went top 5, a classic example of a brilliant band where their biggest hit is by no means their best. Pow completely passed me by, I really wasn't listening to much grime back then except for the odd Dizzee track. But a few of my other friends adored it at the time, was a big uni favourite for those a couple years older than me. Love On My Mind should have been a massive #1. That was another moment when I stared at the charts in horror as it completely missed the top ten and wondered what the hell was going on with the British public. See also Axwell's 'Feel The Vibe', confidently thinking it would be huge and it only reaching #16. But probably the biggest "WHAT?!" moment in terms of 2005 chart injustice came with this track, one I thought and hoped was heading straight for top ten... _GG3vM_jJwo Chart position - #45. Jeez.

A Wikipedia user got confirmation from a chap called Steve Sweetland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sally_Sweetland

Regarding the Spotify/iTunes balance, it reminds me of the very early paid download days (2004-05) where there was a clear divide as to what sold well on physical singles and what did on downloads. Older fanbase acts (Erasure/Bon Jovi/Depeche Mode/New Order etc) were shifting tons on CD and getting some of the biggest hits of their entire career with tracks barely anyone remembers now in comparison to their 80s/early 90s heyday, and given the collectability of the CD single in comparison to a digital file they're going to sell way more on the older format. Similarly some harder dance acts did much better physically than on download - who's going to want to buy a lossy AAC file when you can grab a HQ version on CD or vinyl? I have a memory that DJ Tiesto's 'Adagio for Strings' wasn't available on download at all initially, which might go to explain its odd chart run - only a #37 peak (astonishingly low for what was a massive club anthem of the time) but hung around the lower reaches of the chart for ages afterwards. I didn't go anywhere near iTunes for dance tracks until they increased the bitrate in 2009, sticking to CD singles until then with downloads only for the odd pop or rock track. Going even further back to the early 1990s, there was almost certainly a divide between which artists sold more on vinyl and more on the new-fangled CD and cassette singles. Part of the reason the era has so many re-issued singles charting so high - other than being used in commercials - was because it was everyone's first chance to own copies of the songs on CD, meaning they could finally bin their knackered old record player...

One of my favourite vinyl purchases is Now 22 - quite rare on vinyl as the format was rapidly losing popularity by then (1992) in a dusty charity shop in Oxford. Think it was back in 2009. Cost was £1. A few days ago the same album sold on eBay for £35.

Yeah they were there, they recorded the start and end of the Christmas special and beginning of the New Year one. (I think they planned to film the end of the New Year one too but ran out of time, so presumably that was filmed in another recording) They don't know the exact order of the appearing acts yet, so filmed a load of different links in the middle of the recording introducing the same act but in various different ways (start/middle/end of the show etc) so it can be easily edited later. For now it's opening Christmas and opening New Year, but it could change!

I'm happy being one of those random posters who no one ever really notices but (hopefully) says the odd interesting thing. Next year is nine(!) years since I registered but I lurked for two so I've already reached my Buzzjack decade, hurrah.

There was a bar where you could buy drinks before going in, but nothing in the studio itself - a few throats (including mine) were pretty sore by the end after being encouraged to whoop and cheer along at every take. It was surprisingly empty in the end - being a Monday afternoon they were quite low on audience and had to keep arranging us to make it look like there were double the amount of us, something that got trickier as more and more people left the longer recording went on. Astonishing really given you're seeing a ton of currently A-list acts for completely free, but not everyone I suppose can get the time off work.

So I just got back from seeing the afternoon recording of this, absolutely brilliant - there's four different recording sessions in all, good job too as we were all exhausted after just the one lol. Fantastic day though! Here were the acts and songs played: Look out for me in the Screamadelica t-shirt :P Should be a good one!

Turns out I was out of date here, but only by a few weeks - she died in February 2015, aged a grand 103 years old. Wonder if that will ever be overtaken?

As mentioned on the other thread I have a ticket for one of these (probably the latter) on Monday! What seems odd is that there's four recordings overall, two this Sunday (afternoon and evening) and two on Monday. Seems odd for only two shows, unless half the acts perform on one recording and half on the other? (please don't tell me all the acts perform on one recording and Fearne & Reggie's links are all on the other :P )

The amazing thing is that I swear there was a performance of that on Blue Peter years after the whole Glitter situation kicked off, with the presenters singing it - seems absolutely astonishing now but the song didn't suddenly disappear overnight back in '97, it was only later on in the noughties it completely vanished from radio and TV once further upsetting news about the singer emerged. I've never been able to find a clip of it (the BBC probably wouldn't be too happy if it appeared on Youtube!) but looking at their Radio Times archive, I'm pretty sure this is it, Christmas 2001: Seem to recall it was a musical with all the cast singing Christmas songs and the Glitter track being the main one! Presumably now quietly deleted from the archives. I do like Another Rock & Roll Christmas, and have wondered in the past if one day someone will cover it so it can return to the Christmas canon again, but I think it's a given that absolutely no artist will go near it given the inevitable media furore.

Major Europe-wide hit way back in 1990, bafflingly I don't think it was even released here. Surely a huge UK top 3 smash was missed, hugely 'on-trend' sound for the era given the success of Soul II Soul, Beats International etc. Dr. Alban would of course finally get a massive (and deserved!) UK hit single two years later.

Have a look, 3:30 onwards: VmSRcOUmLK8 In theory you could use some digital editing to 'zoom in' on just the band for the last few seconds, but given the camera's zooming out at the same time (eventually focusing on just the presenter) it's a bit too much hassle to be necessary, particularly given (as mentioned) there's plenty of other live performances of the song available.

There's at least one Slade performance - definitely from TOTP - that has an unavoidable appearance from a certain DJ currently being airbrushed out of history at the very end of the song, which for obvious reasons hasn't been seen since 2011ish. The 'video' of Merry Xmas Everybody I always used to see on music channels looked 1980s and from European television (maybe Germany?), the band looked a lot older and were obviously miming, as the drummer starts randomly bashing the drums over the pre-recorded soundtrack at the end. I've also seen a more recently-edited version of the same clip where they've made it widescreen and overdubbed the original studio soundtrack over the top, missing the mad live drumming.

So December's began and with it the same lineup of songs we'll all be well and truly sick of in a few weeks time. But how has that lineup changed over the last few decades? When did the most well-known Christmas songs become true 'classics' - immediately on release or much later? And what festive tracks used to be played and widely loved but seem much less of a deal today? I'll start with one from the latter group - Slade. Ok, still one of the most famous festive songs around. But go back to the 1990s and earlier and it was the most famous festive song, recharting every few years and the one you easily heard the most out of the then-classics available. Today it's a straight battle between Mariah and The Pogues every year and Slade's track seems much less of a deal than it was back in the 20th century. Or is that just me?

'Everytime We Touch' was a massive hit in the States, which gave the track far more airplay and promo here than if it were just a random European hit. US success always makes the world take notice. Basshunter was more of a surprise, certainly when it stayed there for weeks and kept Adele's debut track from #1. There hadn't been a dance track that long at #1 for years (since Cher - Believe I think?), it just got randomly huge that winter and sold well for the time. But the 'tide' was slowly shifting from indie to dancepop by then anyway, Lady Gaga made her overseas debut later that year and by 09 the Guetta Revolution had begun.

I realise how late I am discovering this, but given that they're responsible for one of the most overplayed and annoying songs of all time almost three years ago (R****r B*)...I really, really like Rockabye, it sounds like a Europop hit circa 1997-8 at points. Glad it hit #1!

Wes - Alane was another Box-helped hit, think all these were too - Alizee - Moi Lolita, Scooter - The Logical Song, XTM - Fly On The Wings of Love, O-Zone - Dragostea Din Tei, Dana Rayne - Object of My Desire. Anything radio would sneer at for being too 'cheesy' basically, early noughties radio seemed much more focused on indie-rock acts of the era. As mentioned you were often sick of the song by the time it first hit the charts, I remember Justin Timberlake's 'Rock Your Body' had airplay for weeks and weeks before it first charted to the point where it reminds me of the Easter holidays but it wasn't released until the end of May!

Ok, most of this has already been said by others as I've been writing the below, but here's my post on the subject anyway :P Music would first hit radio and TV weeks before the scheduled release date, gaining significant airplay and promotion until their eventual CD release. In the first week or two, CD singles would often be discounted - around 99p or £1.99 - before rising to around £2.99-£3.99 later on, and later still usually offered in a clearance sale for a pound or less once the songs had well and truly left the chart and stock needed to be cleared. Music channels played a huge role, particularly 'jukebox' channels such as The Box which used a then-novel model of calling up a telephone line (later also text messaging) to 'request' songs which would then be placed in a queue, playing any time from immediately after calling (off-peak times with few viewers, such as the middle of the night) or around half an hour to an hour(!) later (peak times such as the school holiday season). A fair few hits can owe their surprising UK success to major airplay by music channels, particularly Eurodance/pop tracks from the continent that UK radio would often ignore. Saturday morning kids television was a huge boost for artists at the time too, one of the biggest was a programme called CD:UK which aired on ITV in the mornings and featured a variety of musical acts, by now attracting a much better audience share for its timeslot than the more well-known Top of the Pops was managing on Friday evenings. Acts would appear on various kids shows, perform their new single, do phone-ins with viewers (in the pre-Twitter days the only way to contact your pop icons!) and announce competitions where viewers would win their new single or band merchandise etc. This all helped a lot towards promotion and building an audience for a hopefully high chart position when the single is released. The model could easily have carried on forever, but the early noughties saw a steadily growing boom in illegal mp3 downloads that by 2004 had become extremely widespread and led to a major slump in single sales compared to even just the start of the decade. From a personal point of view, I was first 'introduced' to mp3s by some tech-savvy friends around the summer of 2000, and gave up buying CD singles altogether around the end of 2002/early 2003 once our home internet speed was fast and reliable enough to download a good collection. Downloads were added to the UK Singles Chart in April 2005 and a whole new era of music purchasing and consumption began.