BillyH

My worry is that if NHS Choir get it, then it's going to just continue the belief that only charity singles or "campaigns" will ever get the Christmas #1 and so we'll have another decade or two of major artists not bothering and unexciting #1s. I can see a whole succession of various choirs for various charities all singing various covers of various songs being planned out for the rest of the decade as I type, basically replacing the X Factor in all but name - and you can bet Simon Cowell would still be involved somehow, given it's clearly a winning formula. Stand by for The Choir Factor hitting ITV screens in a year or two. And before anyone makes the obvious point that it's raising money for a good charity, yeah of course that's a good thing - that's not what's bothering me! It's just speaking from a UK chart perspective that this all used to be so much more fun and interesting...

I've seen at least one music channel show all the Christmas #1 videos except Mr Blobby, and bafflingly instead playing Take That's 'Babe' and crediting that as 1993's #1. Either they didn't have the Blobby video, counted the wrong week (Babe was #1 the week before) or just decided to pretend it never existed.

A fantastic bit of progressive house that managed to go top 20 just before Christmas 1995, hugely underrated track: lrOHKz5xqIY

The first one I actually remember was pretty awesome - the battle of the two Mikes (Jackson vs Flowers Pops) in 1995. Earth Song's a great #1 but the Mike Flowers version of 'Wonderwall' would have been hilarious - it managed to win in Scotland! Bob the Builder stopping Westlife in 2000, ending what would have been a ridiculous run of #1s for them. 'Proper Chrimbo' beating The Idols in 2003, even if the #1 itself wasn't my ideal choice as The Darkness would have been amazing. Rage Against the Machine getting it in 2009, not even just cus of Joe but because it's the most wonderfully bizarre Xmas #1 of the century. Plus the Pet Shop Boys just sneaking into the top 40 with It Doesn't Often Snow At Christmas (in one of the only years it actually did!), that was a brilliant chart in general. Controversial one maybe, but 'Surfin Bird' going top 3 in 2010 - it's actually a really fun track used brilliantly on Family Guy and it was great to finally see it go top 40 here. It ended up being played at a lot of Christmas parties I frequented that year so it provides fun memories of that freezing cold winter. Bieber might add another to this list very soon!

Still the most exciting Christmas #1 build up this decade!

If that choir gets Christmas #1 then stay tuned for Gareth Malone becoming the next Cowell and releasing one of these every bloody year for the next decade or so.

Oh come on, no charity singles or "campaigns" this year please, just give the #1 to Justin and call it a year.

Re the order, btw - don't do 1-2-3-4-5-6 (and now 7) as the surprise twists of the originals are meaningless when they're already revealed in the prequels. 4-5-6-1-2-3-7 (production order) isn't ideal either, thanks to that jarring jump in time from 3 to 7 and the general quality drop from 6 to 1. The best order is 4-5-1-2-3-6-7. The best two movies first, an extended "flashback" after the big revelations of Episode 5 containing all the prequels, a short jump back to Return of the Jedi to finish the original trilogy and then Episode 7's huge return to form. Some suggest skipping episode 1 altogether and just jumping from 5 to 2, but I'd still check it out to see what the fuss was about. And then presumably 8 and 9 whenever they're released!

I saw a midnight show of this in Australia this morning. Best Star Wars since Empire is absolutely right. I was so worried they were going to screw it up - I'd seen all six at the cinema going right back to the Special Editions in 1997, and the prequels all on the day of release, so there's no way I could miss this. To my relief they did an awesome job, the perfect mix of childhood nostalgia for the oldies plus enough action to get the new fans on board. Reviews are already extremely strong so if the positive word of mouth spreads enough - like it did for Skyfall - this could be one of the highest grossing films of all time! Definitely worth the watch :D

That happened to me way back in 2007 with Sean Kingston :( Unless you count that baby sun-face thing in Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh. Interesting to see the X-Factor festive domination looks to be at an end. I genuinely didn't see a time when we'd ever have a non-charity, non-reality track for Christmas #1 ever again - even if X Factor went I assumed someone would knock together a quick charity single using some old song and a few mildly-famous singers every year. 'Love Yourself' isn't anywhere near an all-time classic but it's still probably the worthiest Xmas #1 since Mad World in 2003 for me. Even if I was firmly on Team Darkness that year :P

The Dex & Jonesey mix released the following year is one of my faves of all time. Brilliant track. It did confuse me when I bought a second hand copy of Now 32 and heard that weird radio mix though! Happily Now 34 has the better one.

That's a new mix to the one I'm used to hearing in Australia, Silento isn't on the original: rpLITtLRltw Still one of the first tracks that came to mind for me, if it gets enough promo it'll be a UK hit with ease - even if they add Tinie Tempah onto it or something.

Alive could be the next You Don't Own Me then - top ten hit in Australia (just) eventually making it equally big in the UK.

I've always wondered about this! It made no sense that he'd apparently randomly had a top 40 hit several years previous which bore no relation to anything else he'd released. I've removed it from the Wikipedia page. It might have been the other way around. Several remixes of the theme from 'Baywatch' began circulating around clubs back in 2005, the Naughty Boy mix (basically just the vocals over Leftfield's 'Phat Planet' hence the name 'Phat Beach') got a lot of early airplay, then Sunblock appeared with a much more commercially friendly mix - and video - and hit the top 3. I don't think either of them actually originated the idea though and the vocals sound re-recorded on both, it was basically that year's equivalent of the multiple "Waiting for a Star To Fall" remixes back in 2004-5. There were a ton of remixes around though, this is back when your average uni crowd were born in the early-mid 1980s so Baywatch would mark a key memory of their childhood. I'm surprised no one's done a deep house remix of the theme from 'The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' yet...

It has been, earlier this year I think - they were played Snoop, John Lee Hooker and Outhere Brothers and had to guess the fourth.

19/22 as well! Was looking to get at least 20 and then got a few of the last ones wrong. Question 18 confused the hell out of me :P

Never the biggest fan of UK Garage, but When The Bassline Drops is actually genius - it manages to sound both to sound both modern and gloriously retro simultaneously, a great fusion between 2000 and 2015. Similar to Grace actually but referencing a different era! I wonder though who's actually buying it, as time's moved on enough so that today's 18/19 year olds hadn't even started nursery school during UKG's peak so I don't see how it's nostalgic for them - more those in their mid-twenties onwards who remember it from childhood. Maybe the great Oxide & Neutrino revival of 2016 is on its way.

So I managed to buy two tickets for the Family Final! I was going to go for the Jury one but that was a little more expensive, and I have like no money on me right now :P Checking again now both of those have also sold out tonight, as has the second semi final broadcast. What's the Family Final like, is it worth the trip up to Stockholm? I've somehow got to work out how to get there from Australia but I can worry about that in a few months, for now I've reserved (for free) a cheap hostel in the city centre while they're (just) still available. While it's not quite the real show, I'll still get to be in the stadium watching all the acts, and it'll mark 20 years since I watched my first Eurovision during Gina G mania in 1996!

Good time to post this happy hardcore gem from Germany, a huge hit over Europe during early 1995 and one of the few happy hardcore top 40 hits to reach the UK, peaking at #24 here. Rx_G-YrLgNQ

I convinced myself that Wiley's 'Take That' was going to be the first number 1 single of 2010. It got nowhere near - think it just squeezed into the top 20. Mega disappointed when I bought the CD single though and the radio edit had been completely butchered, cutting out most of the first minute of this video edit which is the best part of the song: VYWvnw_aLso And this one! J Majik & Wickaman's 'Crazy World' - no video ever made for it, no CD single released (only physical was a 12") yet managed to reach top 40 in summer 2008. Today I think this would be a massive #1 on Nobody To Love levels, but sadly released a few years too early. _7Hf2kh9Mz4

Oh, and another one - the complete lack of success of Sonny J's Can't Stop Moving. Seemed to be a smash in the making back in 2007 and didn't chart. Another attempt in 2008 got it to #40 at least but still felt underwhelming.

Sadly it was just a #2, but it's certainly still one of the most surprising UK #2s ever - up there with Laurie Anderson's O Superman. This had a huge amount of hype, it felt like a really big deal at the time - still quite mystifying but there was lots of newspaper coverage about Radio 1 not playing it and it turned into a major Christmas chart battle. If anything I feel sorry for Cliff that Westlife got the actual Xmas #1 after selling so much for so many weeks.

If you look at the list of US number 1s even up to the early-mid 2000s there's a fair few differences to the big UK hits, a lot of tracks I've never heard of. Since the late noughties the US #1s have mostly also been UK top 10 hits too, with the occasional exception like Buy U A Drank.

The one that always stood out for me is Nakatomi's 'Children of the Night' having one random week in the top 40 in October 2002, years after first being released in the mid-1990s. And this was before downloads so it would have been entirely on physicals. As an old 90s happy hardcore track it doesn't fit in with the Flip & Fill/pop-trance musical era of the time at all, but lots of old hardcore hits were being covered at the time so maybe it just rode the wave. Another was N-Trance's 'Set You Free' spending a week at #64 in January 2005, again before downloads. Did it have a remix/re-release or was there a store chain who found a load of old copies and sold them at a low price? Given how miniscule sales were that month it probably only sold a few hundred copies to get that high. EDIT: Looking at the top 100 that week (08/01/2005) there's actually a lot of old All Around the World hits at the bottom end (Shooting Star/Pretty Green Eyes/Come With Me, even Cafe Del Mar) etc so there might have been some re-releases going on.

A massive stack of CD singles of 'Angels' could be bought at HMV Oxford Street in London as late as 2009, at the same price as all the current hits. Not a re-issue or anything, still with the 1997 copyright date and what appeared to be unsold stock. Happened with a long-gone music shop in Battersea around the same time, hundreds of 'Candle In The Wind 97' CDs for 10p each(!) and last year in Prague I found a shop still trying to shift copies of Helping Haiti's Everybody Hurts...