BillyH

26/08/00: Britney Spears - Lucky 4vvBAONkYwI Since that first number 1 early last year, it's safe to say that Britney (I don't even need to write the surname) is today one of the biggest popstars on the planet - chances are there's a host of babies born today who share her first name. Her second album was released in the summer and lead single was the slightly underwhelming 'Oops I Did It Again', essentially a huge Baby One More Time retread and leading to lots of 'Oops, The Same Song Again' jibes. Second single is much better, another Max Martin-penned song but a very clever one about the dangers of mega stardom and fame. Hopefully now she's recorded this, the fictional story as given in the song won't affect Britney herself and any future potential meltdowns are not forthcoming.

50. TOVE LO FEAT. HIPPIE SABOTAGE - STAY HIGH (HABITS REMIX) (New Entry) Peak: #6 (April 2014) SYM-RJwSGQ8 This just missed the top 50 in my first draft of the list, but weeding out a few songs from the old that I realised didn't belong anymore have sneaked it in to the full. An immensely atmospheric track that caught me by surprise when it randomly appeared in the top 20 earlier this year, one that despite charting in April fits the cold winter months much more and while it lost some play for me in the summer it's sounding good again now. Definitely one of the best of 2014 but not *the* best, as you'll see in the rest of this countdown!

Bloody hell. 2015? Twenty-fifteen?! How did it get to the middle of the decade so damn quickly? The dawn of the decade - a time when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister, David Tennant was (just about) Doctor Who, tuition fees were £3,000 a year, Ukraine was a nice place people went on their holiday etc etc seems like a few days away, and it feels absolutely terrifying to think that we're the same amount of time away now as the start of 2005 was then. I was a partying, drinking, hedonistic and optimistic twenty-one year old at uni when 2010 began. Today I'm a slightly more bitter, much older (but to be honest not really more responsible) 26 year old who spends more time at work than raving it up in clubs these days, listening to most "modern day" music and grumbling that it wasn't like this back in the good old Gaga days of pop. But that's not important. Midway through both those milestones, in the equally far off summer of 2012 (you know, when the Olympics were on, UKIP were an irrelevance and everything briefly seemed a bit brighter for the future) the 23, almost 24 year old me counted down my 25 favourite songs of the decade so far on this forum, a thread that can be seen here. We were a quarter of the way through the decade so 25 seemed a fitting number, and, as we reach the halfway mark, I thought I'd challenge myself a bit more and try a top 50. If I keep to this schedule then look out for a top 75 in the summer of 2017, and, if I'm not completely disallusioned with the popular music scene, a top 100 to welcome in the year 2020 :P Compiling the list ended up being a bit trickier than I first thought. Obviously any songs released after July 2012 are going to be new entries, but it's not just a simple case of adding 25 new tracks to the old list. Old songs have changed positions - songs I may have mildly enjoyed then I now adore, and so have shot up the chart or even appear for the first time. Or, in some cases, songs have taken freefalls down as their initial novelty has long worn off, as I found when I realised that some songs as high as top 10 in 2012 are now completely out of the top 50! I'll let you know which ones have moved up or (way) down from the previous. As before I'm starting from the w/e 16/01/2010, the first week to actually include entries released in the new decade, and anything released up to New Years Eve 2014 is eligible. I'll aim at one post a day, although I'll be in and out of the UK so sometimes I'll post a few at a time. Starting things off today with number 50!

It says how old I'm getting that I didn't think that long had passed since Invaders Must Die, when in fact it's now been longer since then than the gap from Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned to IMD :mellow: I'm not sure if they'll be able to replicate the two top 10 hits they scored in 2009, that was an age when legacy acts could still chart high on physical sales with the likes of Madonna/Kylie/the Pet Shop Boys all still doing well back then. I just hope that they don't 'do a Tiesto' and release an album of generic chart-friendly crap. IMD was a great return to form even if it clearly lifted a lot of elements from the then-huge Pendulum.

05/08/00: Bomfunk MCs - Freestyler (3 weeks) 71ICco_C2GQ The second number 1 from Finland in the space of just two months! Could they join the Dutch as a future musical powerhouse of the 21st century? From hard trance to hip hop here as this wonderfully catchy, garage-influenced hit makes it way to these shores after hitting #1 pretty much everywhere else that, as ever, isn't America. Little have any idea what the hell the lead rapper's going on about but I'm fairly confident the chorus is "Yeeeesss! Craig from the top of my dome!" whoever he is (David?), and mention has also been made of the line "Who the f*** is Alice, is she from Buckingham Palace?" which I've heard isn't in the version released in the UK but it's present and correct on my copy.

15/07/00: Matt Darey's Mash Up Presents Marcella Woods - Beautiful (3 weeks) 8to8yw_zgpQ A dance force under many different names over the last few years, Matt Darey's only recently started releasing singles under his real name and for this has brought in the talents of Marcella Woods for vocals, sister of fellow trance DJ Michael Woods. And as the title suggests this is indeed beautiful, Marcella giving her all over a cosmic explosion of the now standard trance synths. With the sound building in power with seemingly every release, you have to wonder what heights it will eventually peak at before everyone inevitably gets bored of it at some point in the future.

01/07/00: Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power of Love 2000 (Rob Searle remix) (2 weeks) Lu6Nv8V8YCs I now wish at the start of the year I'd have placed bets on which artists would get to number 1 over the next twelve months, as the likes of the Pet Shop Boys, Santana and now these guys few would have predicted. To be fair in this case it's not actually a new release from them at all, indeed I feel a bit sorry for Rob Searle as he's sidelined at the end of the title when this is very much his work on remixing their 1984 ballad. And, erm, it's certainly a difference which has divided people, many no less than horrified as to what the hell's happened to the track but I and others adore it. It's a bit like Ferry's version of Adagio for Strings at Christmas but a smaller gap between original and remix, again it starts off with the mostly unaltered original and then builds into a immersive electronic masterpiece. And Holly Johnson's vocals still sound good sixteen years on. Which version will truly last in the years to come isn't sure, perhaps the original in the winter and this remake for hot summer days to come - a song that, thanks to Rob Searle, now sounds good in all seasons.

They've definitely had X Factor winners on there before - Leona did it back in 2006, presumably in recent years Cowell doesn't see it as worth bothering with. Maybe he's just still annoyed that they wouldn't let him buy the rights to the show.

Mousse T's 'Horny' - "I sent a message through the internet but it rejected" sounds about a hundred years old now, as does Eminem shockingly stating two years later "I should download the audio on mp3!" in The Real Slim Shady. In a couple of decades they'll probably be playing 'Selfie' by The Chainsmokers in history lessons.

Joining in the fun with my version of a 3-disc Now for officially The Best Year Ever In The History of Music, so epic that I don't even need to name the year: 1. Britney Spears - Baby One More Time 2. Steps - Tragedy 3. Alice Deejay - Better Off Alone 4. Vengaboys - Boom Boom Boom Boom 5. Phats & Small - Turn Around 6. S Club 7 - Bring It All Back 7. Cartoons - Witch Doctor 8. Ann Lee - 2 Times 9. Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5 10. Eiffel 65 - Blue (Da Ba Dee) 11. Adam Rickett - I Breathe Again 12. Jennifer Lopez - Waiting for Tonight 13. Shania Twain - That Don't Impress Me Much 14. Christina Aguilera - Genie In A Bottle 15. B*Witched - Blame It On The Weatherman 16. Backstreet Boys - I Want It That Way 17. Five - Keep On Movin' 18. N'Sync - Tearin' Up My Heart 19. Alena - Turn It Around 20. Cuban Boys - C vs I 1. Baz Luhrmann - Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen) 2. New Radicals - You Get What You Give 3. Divine Comedy - National Express 4. Blondie - Maria 5. Terrorvision - Tequila 6. Fatboy Slim - Right Here Right Now 7. All Seeing I feat Tony Christie - Walk Like A Panther 8. Len - Steal My Sunshine 9. James - I Know What I'm Here For 10. Semisonic - Secret Smile 11. Travis - Why Does It Always Rain On Me 12. Bran Van 3000 - Drinking In LA 13. Sixpence None The Richer - Kiss Me 14. Macy Gray - I Try 15. Supergrass - Moving 16. Texas - In Our Lifetime 17. Wiseguys - Ooh La La 18. Garbage - The World Is Not Enough 19. The Beautiful South - How Long's A Tear Take To Dry? 20. Blur - Tender 1. ATB - 9pm (Til I Come) 2. Chemical Brothers - Hey Boy Hey Girl 3. Mr Oizo - Flat Beat 4. Wamdue Project - King of My Castle 5. DJ Sakin & Friends - Protect Your Mind 6. System F - Out of the Blue 7. Veracocha - Carte Blanche 8. Gouryella - Gouryella 9. Binary Finary - 1999 10. Yomanda - Synth & Strings 11. Paul Johnson - Get Get Down 12. Bob Marley vs Funkstar Deluxe - Sun Is Shining 13. DJ Supreme vs Porn Kings - Up 2 Tha Wildstyle 14. Dope Smugglaz - Double Double Dutch 15. Chicane - Saltwater 16. Agnelli & Nelson - Everyday 17. Ayla - Ayla 18. Solar Stone - Seven Cities 19. Aphex Twin - Windowlicker 20. William Orbit - Barber's Adagio for Strings (Ferry Corsten mix) I would literally wear out the CD from overplay.

Two months ago I was in Prague in the Czech Republic, and there's a music shop in the city centre that's still trying to sell off CD singles of Helping Haiti!

As much as it pains me to say it, no. There's a core few hundred thousand people who will simply buy every winner's single, time after time, year after year - even Sam Bailey's because the man on their TV told them to. That core audience is bigger than the majority of weekly #1 sales for any other week of the year. If a charity single is released in the Military Wives/Justice Collective style, they'll know weeks in advance and simply move the X Factor release to another week so they still get their #1. It will end when Simon wants it to end, and even if the very concept of talent show TV completely disappears in our lifetime, the Christmas #1's just going to be a permanent dumping ground for identikit charity singles until the end of time or when the concept of a weekly chart is discontinued. The fun is long gone, never to return. ...saying all the above, had you asked me in circa 2007/8 if we'd ever have a non-charity/reality million-selling #1 again, my answer would also have been an easy no, so...

What really annoys me about all these so-called 90s-influenced deep house hits is that they're just so inferior to the music they're inspired by. They use a couple of vaguely 90s-inspired synths but use them in a bland, basic and generally piss-poor way and yet everyone falls over themselves with praise as if they're the best thing in years - worst of all, some of them are actually outselling their inspirations which just feels all wrong. Plus the euphoria's generally gone, it's all way too chilled and radio-friendly for me. This is ok, but I wouldn't go as far as many of the replies in this thread.

Plus it's playing every weekend morning over Christmas in cinemas, sort of how Despicable Me 2 was this time last year - which had a mildly popular Pharrell Williams song in it.

The astonishing one for me is still Impossible. I still can't quite believe how big that was given the show had properly passed its peak by then, what made it so big in comparison to the other two post 2010?

There's been a bit of a backlash to both, I think. Especially so in Band Aid's case.

Last proper 100% everyone-knows classic: Mariah in 1994, and even that only really kicked off in the download era. Last major festive hit the majority will know: The Darkness, 2003, but in airplay terms it's still not up there with the usual suspects. Coldplay and Leona, time will tell. Both get a bit of airplay but don't seem established enough yet.

Bring Me To The Horizon just played at Wembley a couple of nights ago, and given the thousands of people who were there it's probably given Drown a huge boost. It is incredible to see a rock track like that so high, can barely think of any others since the golden days of the mid-noughties!

I wasn't keen until about 1:07, and then yeah, fair play, this is awesome :) There's been so few mega hits over the last couple of years I've actually enjoyed so it'll be awesome if this does buck the trend and becomes a deserved #1!

I think Take That would have been a 100% definite for Band Aid 10, making it four times in a row for Robbie!

1999 would have been a bouncy Alice Deejay style pop-trance remake, with the main instrumental riff made to sound like the one on ATB's 9pm Til I Come. 2009 would have been a urban electro-pop extravaganza pretty much sounding like Young Soul Rebels' 'I Got Soul'. The intro would have been slightly altered so that it now began with someone shouting "RED ONE", maybe Cheryl or Alexandra.

A Band Aid 10 would have been fascinating. Who would have been on it? Britpop was rapidly emerging but hadn't properly reached its commercial peak yet, plus I can imagine the likes of the Gallaghers telling Bob where to stuff it. Then there's the idea of a ridiculously epic Eurodance 2 Unlimited/Cappella/Corona etc fusion, but very few of them come from the UK and even if they did it would perhaps put off the older buyers. So you'd be left with a lineup similar to this I think: Take That East 17 D:Ream Eternal Wet Wet Wet Gabrielle Annie Lennox Erasure Aswad UB40 Michelle Gayle Can't imagine it any more than average with a lineup like that.

Where the hell is the annual "[Female Name] and the [Noun]"? Florence and the Machine? Marina and the Diamonds? Esben and the Witch? Niki and the Dove? Petition for George the Poet to change his name to George and the Poet and KEEP THE TRADITION ALIVE.

Everyone's well and truly given up on the very idea of anything being Christmas number 1 that isn't a) X Factor or b) a Band Aid-style charity supergroup. No one else is bothering anymore as there's this unshakeable belief that the golden age of the Christmas song lasted from 1973 to 1994 (or Slade to Mariah), everything since either being a ironic pisstake (The Darkness, Geraldine) or cover versions. You won't get, say, One Direction recording a brand new Christmas song in the way Wham did 30 years ago, it's not seen as credible or profitable anymore. Huge credit to Leona and Coldplay for being the only two in the last decade to make a proper effort, but even they weren't truly massive hits - ask anyone to name Christmas songs and you'll probably have at least twenty mentioned before One More Sleep and/or Christmas Lights come up. Hopefully time will be kind to them.

I wonder actually which one is rarer as my copy is the 'swear version' too - you'd wonder perhaps if actually it's the non-swear version that's harder to find, as everyone would have bought Now 49 in the first week or two, surely?