BillyH

Is that the one that was performed on Going Live? I'm too young to remember it when first shown, but there's an brilliant clip I've seen of them performing it and the camera cutting back to a horrified/disgusted looking Phillip Schofield, to huge laughter from the camera crew. The Rainbow remixes are completely new to me! Here's a great one of Pacman: _kHTOW4XToY

...and a bonus question that I'd love if anyone could answer me, which I've wondered about for a while. Nakatomi's 'Children of the Night' makes an extremely random appearance in the UK chart at #31, in w/e 26/10/2002. I've never worked out why, or what mix was used. Was it the original? Or was it some sort of Flip & Fill style trance mix which would fit the era better?

Various dance music genres have stormed the UK charts over the years, from house to rave to Eurodance to trance to garage to dubstep to D&B to deep house and beyond. But compared to a lot of countries in Europe, including Ireland and as far away as Australia, the gabber/happy hardcore genres never quite became the huge chart force they were in places like Germany and the Netherlands back in the mid-1990s. When they did sell, they'd generally be in the far north of the country and the Scottish Singles Charts are full of top 10 hits for the genre that missed top 40 when the rest of the UK is added back in. What made things more complicated is that some tracks were remixed into slower handbag-house style songs when given their UK release, e.g. Interactive's 'Forever Young' and Westbam's 'Wizards of the Sonic' which made the top 40 in the UK as very different-sounding Red Jerry remixes. And then around 2002-03, a huge amount of underground hardcore club hits got covered as pop-trance songs, usually by Flip & Fill. Does anyone remember any gabber/happy hardcore tracks, no matter how poppy, that charted in the UK in their original versions, not remixed? Early 1996 seems to have been the closest it came to reaching the UK mainstream, when Technohead's 'I Wanna Be A Hippy' somehow, brilliantly, charted as high as number 6, and is surely the biggest seller of the genre of this country: 4wSr7h_pjxs

Great quiz, nicely challenging at points! Stumbled on the last few and finished on 13/16. Got the two "How many top 40 hits" questions wrong, and, annoyingly, the Liberty/Liberty X question which I really should have known.

Cyrus and Bublé aren't British. Yes to the other four.

Justified and Ancient followed by The Prodigy's Everybody In The Place would have been two incredible #1s, both blocked off the top by Bohemian Rhapsody.

Fairly big #2 hit, but released by a credible indie group - rather than a fading boyband - it would have been a huge #1 and forever proclaimed as a classic. Instead a bit of an underrated gem. qz57Ucb02yo

All the UK releases of 2 Unlimited's singles right up to Faces differ significantly from the originals, and finding the UK edits used to be quite tricky but I think they're all on youtube now (search for the 'No Rap' versions). Even the albums were edited to be almost instrumental, it must have been really bizarre for them when appearing on the likes of Top of the Pops, especially Ray, to be miming along to an edit of a track that barely features them. Anita's first heard in the UK edit of Twilight Zone, but it's not until two years later with the release of Maximum Overdrive where Ray's verses are finally heard in full, and even that was still given a special instrumental edit on the No Limits album. The most infamous Ray edit - shortening two entire rap verses to the repeated shout of "Techno! Techno! Techno! Techno!" - is still to come!

Out of all the top 10 biggest sellers of every year of the 1990s, Insanity has to be the least well known and played today, surely? I didn't remember hearing it at all until 2006. And another one as mentioned which exists in a confusing set of different versions, both from the time and ones that seem to have been re-recorded later - recent compilations seem to use what's called the 'Old Skool Radio Edit' which sounds similar to the original but dates from 2007 with a new/soundalike vocal.

There's a great quote from a 1991 newsgroup, shortly after Charly was released, calling "The Prodigy" just another in a long line of faceless rave acts that'll be gone after one hit and never heard from again. If only they knew :P This is the start of an astonishing few months for dance music, up there with mid-1996 and 1999-2000 as a golden age. The rave explosion lasting the rest of 1991 into early 1992 features some of the best, weirdest tracks of the decade, ones that seem absolutely astonishing how high they were able to chart - dunno if we'll see 'The Bouncer' by Kicks Like A Mule here, but it's easily one of the oddest and most leftfield songs to ever make the top 10! For so many years I only knew The Prodigy as those dudes who sung Firestarter, I was amazed when I first heard their earlier stuff about a decade ago. Charly's awesome, their whole first two albums are - this must have sounded mindblowing in 1991 to anyone unfamiliar with rave listening to the chart! I think I'm right in saying that the Alley Cat 7" mix isn't actually available on CD, the only radio edit that isn't? Only the full-length mix is.

Underrated as hell!! Always loved that bizarre "WHY DO PEOPLE GET OFF ON BIGOTRY, INTOLERANCE AND RACIAL INTOLERANCE" line. The usually reliable Everyhit.com has always made a mistake with this track by listing it as a 1994 release, which I believed for years despite how clearly earlier the track sounded.

EDIT: Nvm, dumb question easily answered with a Google.

That'll be a reaction to the cram-on-as-many-as-possible last two volumes, which got people annoyed due to how tightly some were edited to fit. Although it'll be funny if they're still edited with all that extra space :P I only know five of these, which makes me feel extremely old and depressed :( But it looks like a varied enough volume and good to see Love Me Like You Do finally make it if a little late.

I'm rare in preferring the 1997 mix! I think simply because it's the version I first heard and fell in love with it, it's the one that supports the vocal the best I think. The originial to me lacks something, the 2006 mix was a weird pointless watered-down version of the '97 one and Florence's annoys me.

More and More got held back way too long over here, it would have been huge had it came out late 1992/early 1993 (like it did around Europe) but didn't get released in the UK until the following November by which time it already sounded a bit old in terms of what was being released by then. #23 isn't too bad though. Eurodance was definitely a major chart force well into the mid-90s.

Extreme and Mr. Big both did this within a few months of each other in 1991-92, two metal groups releasing a gentle acoustic ballad (More Than Words/To Be With You) and getting their biggest hit by miles.

One of the best songs of the decade, it dates from the CD era (2002) and the single was a limited edition that was released and deleted on the same day, hence the low chart run. Definitely worth a listen! SneuvKIkM3A

I've got two "golden ages", spanning around Nows 42 to 48 and 69 to 79 - one a host of late primary school anthems, the other soundtracking my drunken uni years. It's a slow, slightly depressing fizzle out since then with songs I actually know, let alone like :P Looking at my iTunes, I've gone from having basically all of Now 79 copied on my iPod to just two songs with Now 90. I guess I'm just getting old.

Awesome, many memories of being 14 and sweltering in that summer's heat :D 2003 was an astonishing year for music despite the low sales, something for everyone. Fly On The Wings of Love playing as I type!

It's always the problem with these kind of lists, as looking at that without the knowledge of the huge changes the last 15 years have seen you'd assume that somehow songs released in the last four years were much more popular and loved than the entire decade previously. If Happy were released in 2004 it would have sold about half a million, maybe just approaching a million on downloads. Whereas if something like Outkast's Hey Ya were released now we'd be seeing over 1.5 million with ease.

I'm not sure, but I imagine it would have been a gradual change. Record companies might have just slowly started sending the station CDs instead of vinyl copies of their singles through the late 1980s/early 1990s, and with different labels switching at different times there was probably a year or two when some would be on vinyl and some CD. The first #1 not on 7" vinyl was Culture Beat's Mr Vain in 1993, and the first #1 not on vinyl at all was Celine Dion's Think Twice in 1995.

Now 55 is the heatwave album, as most of disc 1 especially reminds me of drowning in 30+ degree warmth that summer :P The cover for it helps too. Now 64 and some of Now 85 are the other warm weather Nows.

+15 Delerium feat. Sarah McLachlan - Silence +14 Junior Senior - Move Your Feet +13 PPK - Resurrection +12 Of Monsters & Men - Little Talks +11 Peter Bjorn & John feat. Victoria Bergsman - Young Folks +10 Loreen - Euphoria +9 MGMT - Kids +8 Puretone - Addicted To Bass +7 Kevin Lyttle - Turn Me On +6 Lana Del Rey vs. Cedric Gervais - Summertime Sadness +5 Gladiator feat. Izzy - Now We Are Free +4 Vance Joy - Riptide +3 Lady Antebellum - Need You Now +2 Robyn & Kleerup - With Every Heartbeat +1 G.R.L - Ugly Heart

'Dance Floral' by Terry in the Jungle (or 'Terry in the Jungle' by Dance Floral, I've never quite been sure) which peaked at #78. I actually remember the video getting some airplay when I was seven and wondering what the hell was going on and why that bloke from Auntie's Bloomers was singing some weird song. Amazingly, the remix is on youtube under the unassuming title of 'Terry Wogan': WGwBRJx1qf8

Brilliant example - I too thought this would be big, but it had the misfortune to be released in two extremely underwhelming, crappy summers (2007 and 2008), just peaking at #40 in the 2008 re-release. The video's the 2007 original, the re-release used a subtle remix by Mirwais, which either improves or destroys the song depending on your view: b8jSyWRGk8k