BillyH

It's been seven years since Rihanna's massive ten week run at #1 with 'Umbrella' and Leona's seven week run with 'Bleeding Love', since when no song has spent seven weeks or more at the top - 'We Found Love' did six as part of a Sandé Sandwich, but that's the closest we've got and even that was three years ago. Back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, the weekly turnover at #1 reached a ridiculous peak with most songs lasting one week and only the occasional one lasting 2. At the time I pretty much convinced myself the days of long #1s were over, but then as CD sales slowed we had tracks like Where Is The Love, Amarillo, Crazy and the two mentioned earlier all sticking at #1 for ages through the mid noughties. So will that happen again? Even huge songs like Get Lucky, Blurred Lines etc haven't managed it.

1: WHIGFIELD - SATURDAY NIGHT vyIAfEqA220 And a fantastic #1 to end a very mixed chart. Simply the name 'Whigfield' is a bit of a 90s punchline today but this really is one of the best dance-pop tracks of the decade, with or without the dance routine that I have no idea how to do to this day. It's hard to listen to it with fresh ears as I remember it well from the time, the BBC were using it as backing music on Saturday night trails for years and my main happy memory with this is in some cheesy Central London club circa 2011, so it's never really been away for me in the last two decades but even listening to the youtube link above, I still love it. Now that's power. Thanks for reading all and hope I've introduced you to the odd new song or too, in my case I'll be playing that Sophie B. Hawkins one again now!

2: Corona - The Rhythm of the Night lySs-83GuJo THANK GOD. This has never been one of my favourite Euro Anthems but after the last few songs this sounds like the greatest thing ever made, and I've made sure to attach the proper Rapino Brothers remix which was used for the UK release of the single rather than the original '93 mix. Both are better than the god-awful Bastille shite from last year.

3: Luther Vandross & Mariah Carey - Endless Love ouNJFKbNP50 Ok I'm now craving something upbeat as the top 10's been disappointingly downtempo so far. "Myyyyy loovvvvveee..." slowly sings Luther and I'm asleep already. Like Boyz II Men this might be good for a chilled-out car or train journey home, and maybe if the rest of the chart was relentless Eurodance this would stand out as something special, but I can't imagine anyone bothering with the Radio 1 chart show this week as it's all just so dull, serious and long. Mariah is and will always be lovely, though.

4: Wet Wet Wet - Love Is All Around h3gEkwhdXUE Sigh. So this beat the following songs to #1: Big Mountain - Baby I Love Your Way (3 weeks) All-4-One - I Swear (7 bloody weeks!!) Let Loose - Crazy For You (2 weeks) Red Dragon - Compliments On Your Kiss (1 week) Kylie Minogue - Confide In Me (1 week) ...and the damn thing's still above all of them this week, seemingly brought by those fed up with pounding Eurodance or early Britpop and going for the nice men in suits singing that song in that funny Hugh Grant film they saw the other day. It outsold everything because it was one of the few early 90s tracks to really crossover to a generally non music-buying audience, and particularly as it approached double-figure weeks at #1 people started buying it simply because its unstoppable presence at the top was becoming a story in itself, those wondering just how long it was going to last and what would ever replace it. It sounds like a bloody depressing time to be following the charts, thankfully this was the end of an era for this sort of thing until it briefly resumed with Gnarls Barkley and Rihanna during the post-CD, early-download slump. The song itself is overrated, and overplayed, particularly on the Magic music channel to the point where any time I see the video I imagine a big Magic logo in the top left hand corner today. Any of those #2s would be better.

5: Bon Jovi - Always 9BMwcO6_hyA What happened in September 1994 for everyone to be in this weird serious mood? Barely anything so far, with the obvious exception of M-Beat, can be described as "upbeat" and instead it's all ballads owning the top 10. And so to this one, sounding very 80s but in 1994 you could perhaps just get away with that - Erasure were still getting #1 albums as late as that, after all, although maybe not groups like Roxette. The very definition of a 'power' ballad, Jon Bon screams out the chorus at every opportunity and once again it all sounds a bit ridiculous now - but then most of their biggest hits do, particularly Livin' On A Prayer. It's their biggest ever hit in the UK beating any other track you can think of, peaking at #2 behind oh bloody hell we'll get there I promise. As grand as it is, I don't think it's the best song called 'Always' released that year as that would go to Erasure's much more understated synth effort.

6: Kylie Minogue - Confide In Me nlpgfb1xXwM Her star had been slipping since the start of the decade, but, briefly, it looked like a Kylie comeback was on when this radical change of direction was a huge #2 behind...well, what do you think? Not really remembering this from the time, I can only wonder what people were thinking when the previously bubblegum popstar came back with this string-heavy, overtly sexual track. Indeed to this day it's one of the few Kylie tracks that some claim it's "cool to like" although I rather disagree there, being a bit of a major fan of everything she's done including this. Her vocals, particularly on the chorus, are stunning. The whole track is great but while this did well the novelty sadly wore off after this, and Kylie didn't truly return until she went back to more simplistic pop for her 2000 comeback.

7: Boyz II Men - I'll Make Love To You fV8vB1BB2qc Another so-OTT-it's-a-bit-silly track but my god was this big, particularly in the States where they were basically adored as gods for a few years with their massive multi-week runs at #1. I used to really dislike this, maybe not quite as much now as I can see it's well put together and the Boyz do put a lot of effort into their vocals, still not something I'd play regularly though.

8: M-Beat feat. General Levy - Incredible -0oNU5wJEP0 Shock of the week as the big new dance craze of 1994 - "jungle" - provides its first and only top 10 hit, keeping the hard breakbeats of rave but combining them with ragga vocals for a sound that was all over that summer's Notting Hill Carnival. This, actually, is probably the poppiest jungle ever got, Mr Levy barely shutting up throughout the song with his 200mph rapping and providing something harder than most dance tracks in your average 1994 top 40 but one with enough commercial appeal to cause one of the biggest chart surprises of the year. Much better is Shy FX & UK Apache's 'Original Nuttah' which piles on the energy even more and is something of a breathtaking listen even today, but although equally as huge underground that only peaked at the other end of the top 40. General Levy's career ended up being brief thanks to some ill-thought out comments about him "running jungle" which had him disowned by pretty much every other DJ on the scene, although M-Beat had a few more crossover pop-jungle hits over the next couple of years.

9: Youssou N'Dour feat. Neneh Cherry - 7 Seconds wqCpjFMvz-k God this is all performed so deadly credibly and seriously that it becomes unintentionally funny at points, particularly with the moody black and white video. That slow trip-hop breakbeat backing track is pretty damn good though, and there's some nice bits here but I can't take this seriously at all. Unsurprisingly a huge hit in France with its part-French vocals and pretty much big everywhere except America, it's one for a slow car ride home during the middle of the night.

10: R.E.M. - What's The Frequency, Kenneth? jWkMhCLkVOg I found R.E.M. to be a very hit & miss group, occasionally producing something brilliant - Losing My Religion, "Calling Jamaica", underrated 2003 track Bad Day, and, erm, Shiny Happy People - but there's a lot of unmemorable dross to plow through like this to get there, this is a dull few minutes of nothing that mystifies me as to how the hell it got in the top 10.

20: Warren G & Nate Dogg - Regulate To get halfway across a top 40 today and only now encounter a rap track (unless you count Roxette) would be completely unthinkable, but this is still the pre-Gangsta's Paradise days when only the occasional novelty rap single would chart well. This did brilliantly to get all the way to #5 for the time, it's a laid-back, cool track which still sounds good today. Nate Dogg passed away in 2011, the third person in this top 40 so far no longer with us which for just twenty years is bleakly unusual. 19: Gun: Don't Say It's Over Was Scottish hard rock briefly a thing or something? This joins Almighty as the second one so far, this group had a top 10 covering Cameo's 'Word Up' earlier in the year and here they are with single #2 from album Swagger, predictably not doing as well but more top 40 hits continued for the next few years. It trundles on without having anything particularly hookwise to stick in your head. 18: Suede - We Are The Pigs Read any music magazine in 1993 and they couldn't get enough of Suede, hailed as the shining faces of the scene that eventually became Britpop but by now Oasis and Blur were steadily gaining ground and today it's them get most of the credit. This first single from the Dog Man Star album sees them with something of a departure from the optimistic, poppy Britpop sound and instead things take a much darker tone - one that failed to pay off successfully at the time as this stalled at #18. Today everything from Dog Man Star is adored, I'm not yet sure if I prefer the likes of The Wild Ones or New Generation to this yet. 17: Let Loose - Crazy For You Possibly the pop hit of the year, the first hit and definitely the most remembered for the short-lived pop-rock trio. Gloriously infectious, uplifting, summery, and that brilliant bit at the end when one of the band goes completely mad and decides he wants to be Brian May, squealing the guitar all over the shop, it's the best track in the top 40 so far. And to think it only peaked at #44 when first released in 1993? Madness, although the original (much lower budget) '93 video is worth a youtube for the slightly demented spoken intro they jettisoned for the re-release. 16: Sophie B. Hawkins - Right Beside You Bit of an unusual one as, unlike her native United States, it's her biggest hit here beating 'As I Lay Me Down' and the possibly more well-known 'Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover' from '92. Something this has but the others don't is that rolling fairly Euro-esque dance beat, which might explain why this did a lot better here than in the States where it only reached #56. It also peaked as high as #2 in the Netherlands. All three of them are unexpectedly brilliant, almost underrated singles that deserve a bit more airplay than they get. 15: Michelle Gayle - Sweetness It became a bit of a cliché back in the 90s as EastEnders would see one of its young stars leave the square in a blaze of glory to start, erm, a singing career? In this case she had at least some singing experience beforehand, and indeed kept getting top 20 hits until as late as 1997, which surprised me until I read her Wikipedia discography. I don't think this is anything special but it is at least a nice bit of summery pop. 14: Red Dragon with Brian & Tony Gold - Compliments On Your Kiss A huge pop-reggae track of summer 1994, I thought for years that it was a cover version but only recently found out that it's an original, the two Gold singers teaming up with DJ Red Dragon, and creating a major #2 held off by something we'll see later. The distinctive 'bom-ba-bom bom' backing, the steel drums, everything about it sounds wonderful in the heat and perhaps did particularly well by just how warm summer 1994 was, the hottest summer for a few years although 1995 would go on to be even warmer! 13: The Prodigy - Voodoo People One of my favourite groups of all time, but a track I don't remember hearing until 2005 when I read it was being remixed. First hearing this soon after I assumed it must be the remix as surely something as good and pounding as this wasn't from as old as 1994? Actually it was!! And I was astonished, more than anything so far this is slightly mindblowing for the time with its hard, relentless rhythm and acid techno synth stabs. And when I did finally hear the 2005 remix, done by Pendulum, fair play I thought as that's just as good in a drum & bass sort of way. 12: Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - Stay (I Missed You) A one-hit wonder from America who got attention from her distinctive "librarian"-esque style, standing out with her basic look, black-rimmed glasses and a minimalist music video to complete the sell. Even without all that, this is a nice mid-tempo ballad destined for easy-listening radio until the end of time. 11: Cyndi Lauper - Hey Now (Girls Just Want To Have Fun) This one's always confused me a bit, a bizarre reworking of the 80s pop anthem possibly attempting to cash in on the pop-reggae boom, but apparently was the result of her getting bored with the original and messing around with it during her recent tour. Better than the original it certainly isn't, but enough of the original is there for this to be a massive hit on both sides of the atlantic and peaking at #4 over here. It didn't lead to a comeback, despite her producing the occasional fun track since - 2008's 'Into The Nightlife' standing out especially although it only peaked at an irrelevant #168 here.

30: Blur - Parklife Our first look at Britpop and one of the most memorable tracks in the chart so far, one I did briefly enjoy but the slightly OTT wacky-cockney vocals irritate me a little these days and I'd put this well below other big Blur singles. 29: Shampoo - Trouble In a rather empty British pop market outside the behemoths of Take That and East 17, this pop duo briefly gained major hype but only really had this one big track, one I remember quite well particularly from the following year when they re-issued it after using it on Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers the Movie. Being next to 'Parklife' I echo my thoughts on that song, liked it back then but it sets my teeth on edge a bit these days. Notable also for popularising 'Girl Power' ages before the Spice Girls conquered the planet with the same slogan. 28: Bad Boys Inc. - Love Here I Come One of the many boybands around this time who tried their absolute best to "be" the next Take That but failed by quite the margin, they did at least get a #8 hit with earlier single 'More To This World' but by now low top 30 was as best as they were getting, easy to hear why as this sounds like a dull Take That album filler with nothing special about it. 'More To This World' was a deserved top 10 though, a surprisingly tuneful track and much more interesting a listen. 27: Crowded House - Pineapple Head I keep only remembering them for 'Weather With You' and 'Don't Dream It's Over' but this Australian band charted a lot here between 1987 and 1996, this is a really nice bit of acoustic guitar-pop although one of their lowest charting top 40 singles - along with, ridiculously, 'Don't Dream It's Over' even though it's one of their most famous songs. That one did at least chart two places higher on a 1996 reissue. 26: Almighty - Wrench A song so unknown to me I've no idea what genre it's going to be - a boyband? Grunge? Eurodance? A few seconds in and the screeching guitars give things away pretty quickly, a fairly astonishingly heavy rock track for the time and their joint biggest hit. Has its fans but not my thing, maybe blast it out of a rock club on a drunken Saturday night though and it might feel like the greatest thing ever. 25: Snap! feat. Summer - Welcome To Tomorrow A constant dance group in the charts during the first half of the 90s, their style evolved from the breakbeat-heavy techno of 'The Power' to by now a lighter Eurodance sound, with even Turbo "Serious as cancer" B long-gone by now. It's a breezy listen but all the, ahem, 'power' has gone from the act and it all feels a bit wimpy and baseless, this was at least a major hit peaking as high as #6 but it was all downhill from here. For a group called 'Snap' this neither snaps, crackles or pops. 24: DJ Miko - What's Up 4 Non Blondes' 1993 anthem covered in dance form just a year after the original, but surprisingly not as offensive as it could be, much better than the 'Atomic' remix earlier as the (much harder) Eurodance beats compliment the track oddly well - this time they work together with the boomed-out vocals rather than trying to do their own thing entirely, and has a nice slow bit in the middle too. I suppose the equivalent of this today would be Calvin Harris remixing, I dunno, Passenger's 'Let Her Go' or something. 23: All-4-One - I Swear Cheesy as hell but embarrassingly adorable, this seems more remembered today by being the unfortunate #2 for weeks and weeks behind, well, you'll find out later. But it's melodic, it's got a lot of heart behind it (and a killer keychange) and I think it deserved to be a big seller, helped by the fact that it's had nowhere near as much overplay than the song that beat it to #1. They had a equally big follow-up in the states but it only got to #33 here, making them another one-hit wonder. Bonus comedy points for the random deep-voiced guy at 2:44 who sounds like the producer just having a laugh and singing over the band, his solitary "And I swear!" not fitting the rest of the voices at all. 22: The Grid - Rollercoaster Annoyingly underrated dance group who made some fantastic techno anthems in the early 90s - this, 'Texas Cowboys' etc - but they only ever had the one big single and this wasn't it, it was 'Swamp Thing' that added some novelty banjo to the mix and became a big European-wide hit. But even without the banjos they still produced some stonking stuff, this at least sneaked into the top 20 at #19 and got as high as #11 in Ireland. Wonderful twisty-turny-techno fun. 21: China Black - Searching Mostly famous for being one of Princess Diana's favourite bands, this is another bit of pop-reggae that exists in a couple of versions, again I'm not sure which is an original and which the remix - one is a lovely pop track, the other an inferior mix with an distracting piano thudding over the top. I'm hoping the first is the original and the other is some inferior remix, as one's much better than the other though neither are massively brilliant. Good on a summer's day though.

It's September 1994 and a terrifyingly high quantity of this forum weren't even born. The internet consisted of a couple of thousand websites mostly consisting of plain text, with the occasional low-quality GIF if you were lucky - and it was the sort of thing discussed on 'Tomorrow's World' rather than anyone actually having it. The Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive battled it out for console supremacy, shows such as 'Noel's House Party' and 'Gladiators' owned the Saturday night TV schedules, oh and a bloke called Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party. Me? I was turning six years old, gaining, to my delight, the computer game 'Outrun' on our Commodore Amiga computer that was as old as me. Ask me to name anyone in the charts back then and I'd probably confidently give you the likes of D:Ream, Aswad, the Pet Shop Boys and (erm) Jimmy Nail - basically anyone who'd been on 'Live & Kicking' in the last few weeks and indulged in some comedy banter with Trevor & Simon. I'm probably already confusing anyone under the age of about 20 so I'll stop there and, as with my 2009 lookback a few days ago, give you my thoughts on every track in the top 40 as I turn the age of 26. Unlike 2009 I won't know many of these so a few I'll be listening to for the first time. Including this one, starting things off at number 40: 40: Naomi Campbell - Love & Tears In the early 1990s the charts were in crisis. So called 'house' and 'rave' music was pushing old-fashioned singers and bands out of the charts and opening the floodgates up to random DJs with computers, samples and sped-up James Brown drumloops, turning the once-mighty Top of the Pops into something of a joke as it became a string of boring looking blokes stood behind a couple of turntables and computer monitors hitting the occasional button every now and again. When they changed the rules of the show so that everyone had to "sing" live, it became even more ridiculous as said DJs would recruit some randomers to shout "Woo! Yeah!" a few times and sing/bellow out all the samples live, leading to amusing if baffling performances that sounded nothing like the song that was actually in the charts. Adding to a growing games console market and the very rich splashing out on satellite television, it genuinely did seem like the singles chart was becoming something of an irrelevance, particularly with the vinyl record selling in less and less numbers. By 1994, the compact disc - and the cassette single - were gaining in popularity over the still disappearing vinyl. Bands and faces were reappearing thanks to the emerging Britpop scene. Sales were slowly rising back to a level not seen since the 1980s, but you still had a chart mostly filled with so-called "faceless" dance music. Hence the presence of novelty singles like this - acts you wouldn't normally consider would ever release a song all suddenly being hunted down by managers in order to try and tempt some casual buyers to stick a few singles in their shopping basket. Footballers. WWF wrestlers. The Thunderbirds. Super Mario. Mr Blobby. And, here, the biggest supermodel on the planet has a go. To be honest, this could have been a lot worse. But I'm slightly taken aback by how well this is done, a sort of new-agey midtempo track in an Enigma/Deep Forest way that was briefly all the rage earlier in the year. And Naomi, while not given much, doesn't sound that bad either given they've made the sensible descision to keep everything in a tight vocal range with no abnormally high or low notes. It's average but pleasantly so, though #40 was as high as this got and the album this came from (featuring tracks such as T Rex's 'Ride A White Swan' and Zoe's 'Sunshine on a Rainy Day') only #75, after which Naomi stuck with her supermodelling. 39: Robert Palmer - Know By Now And if you don't know the name, you'll know his really huge 80s hit 'Addicted to Love', especially if you watched TV adverts a lot from around 1994 to 2000 as a Halls Throat Soothers advert set in a lift used the track for years. Know By Now was the biggest hit from the album 'Honey', the last to be a success. It's a nice listen but god this is outdated for 1994, it's massively rooted in the late 80s and not the best move if you want to prove yourself as a credible popstar for the 90s. Forgetting that and imagining it's still 1987, it's a pleasant bit of midtempo easy listening. Sadly Robert died in 2003, aged a far too young 54. 38: Aswad - Warriors As mentioned earlier, Aswad seemed to stick in the mind of younger me and it was almost certainly because of their comeback Summer '94 hit 'Shine' which fitted in perfectly with the pop-reggae scene that was huge around this time. Unfortunately for them the novelty wore off quickly and this follow-up only got as high as #33. Shame as it's another bit of fun, summer pop-reggae but maybe September was a bit too late to release it as by now everyone was returning to work. The CD single's worth a listen for the brilliant 'Jungle Warrior' mix, transforming the song into a breakbeat-heavy genre of dance we'll see a bit more of later. 37: Jam & Spoon feat. Plavka - Find Me (Odyssey To Anyoona) A fantastic bit of early chillout trance which was a major #1 hit in Finland of all places, along with a #6 peak in Italy. It did well to get as high as #22 here, sounds very ahead of its time and could have easily come out as late as the early noughties if you stuck a stronger beat over it. Sadly no longer around as 'Spoon', aka Mark Spoon, died in 2006. 36: Blondie - Atomic (Diddy Remix) The 1980 classic with a bom-diddi-bom Eurodance beat plonked over the top and all sorts of other unnecessary nonsense over it, drowning out Debbie's finest vocal hour in drumbeats and whizzy synths and coming across as somewhat insulting. A good remix could have been made of it but my god this isn't it, please just stick to the original. 35: D:Ream - Blame It On Me Now seemingly just remembered as both a New Labour reminder and That Band Brian Cox Used To Be In, D:Ream really were given a lot of attention at the time as being - gasp! - dance music with faces instead of samples and DJs, Peter Cunnah and co adorning the pages of Smash Hits magazine in absence of much else. Everyone remembers Things Can Only Get Better, follow-up 'U R The Best Thing' is perhaps even better, this is one of the more obscure ones and goes for a midtempo ballad theme. It's nothing special, maybe good for the occasional chilled listen. 34: Stiltskin - Footsteps Ask anyone to name #1 acts of the 90s and these guys might be lumped in with Partners in Kryme, Olive and The Tamperer feat. Maya as the most obscure - 'Inside' was on a Levi's advert in the days when anything they used would be an instant huge worldwide hit, that one gaining extra hype as it was the first time they'd used a new song instead of digging up an old one. This is their second single, as with Inside it's another bit of average grunge-rock, a genre that never quite hit the heights here as it did in the UK. Unfortunately for them this was a case of being too late for a scene, Britpop was already starting up and #34 was as high as this got, casting them into one-hit wonder territory. It's not a genre I've ever enjoyed (except for the obvious 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' love) and while there's some good bits here it mostly bores me. 33: Orbital - Are We Here? The original for this is over fifteen minutes long, but lucky a video edit exists. Like Jam & Spoon earlier it's rather ahead of its time as this is a very early bit of top 40 drum & bass, although they'd have probably called it rave or jungle at the time. Echoing, wispy vocals (from a young Alison Goldfrapp who'd go onto have much bigger success) and a strong synth lead throughout means this ends up being a rather captivating listen, although sneaking a quick peek at the full fifteen-minute mix it's simply a teaser for a much more multi-layered, complex piece. 32: Livin' Joy - Dreamer Yep, already! A minor hit in late 1994 ended up being one of the biggest dance hits of 1995. While adored by many - and I'm normally a sucker for this sort of upbeat dance music - I wouldn't quite give this one the acclaim it usually gets, nicely above average but there was a hell of a lot of better dance music released around this time that I think deserved #1 more. I've always also been a bit confused by two very similar mixes of this, one apparently the original '94 mix and the other remixed in '95 - the difference is in the middle, where one slows down for the second verse and the other carries the beat going. Search 'dreamer livin joy' on Youtube and the first two results of this (one a video, the other audio) are the two different mixes and I think I prefer the one that slows down in the middle. 31: Roxette - Fireworks I keep forgetting just how big Roxette were for a few years in the early 90s as all they seem to play today is (the admittedly brilliant) It Must Have Been Love. Unfortunately 1994 was when they suffered an alarming dip in popularity, perhaps because as with Robert Palmer this sort of late 80s pop-rock just wasn't the cool sound anymore - despite getting top 10 hits the year before and not doing too badly with 'Sleeping In My Car' at the start of '94. This is ok, and Per Gessle's weird rap voice is always amusing to listen to, but low top 40 is probably about right. 30 to 21 coming soon!

Oh yikes, I've just removed that from the Wikipedia Now 76 page - looks like some random IP address in June changed both that and the article on the song and claimed it was #1, along with the article on Lady Gaga's G.U.Y. to the same thing!

France is filled with a lot of French language hits that will push English ones further down the charts. On the flipside of the thread, most of the biggest-selling hits in French history haven't charted in many other countries. All the ones I can think of are, as many have already mentioned, huge European hits that were huge everywhere except the UK - biggest is La Bouche's 'Be My Lover', #27 in UK but a big #1 or top 5 hit in most of the rest of Europe.

AND THE NUMBER ONE IS....! Oh what. 1. PIXIE LOTT - BOYS & GIRLS T7y1MdlXclM Ok, it's a fun pop track, I'll give it that and not the worst #1 of the year. But a bit of a letdown after many of the songs we've had in the top 40 so far, I'd forgotten this was ever a #1 in the first place. I did like 'Mama Do' at the time and really liked follow-up to this 'Cry Me Out', and was oddly impressed by her at 2010's V Festival where she sung a mad medley of a ton of then-current chart hits leading to the bizarrely brilliant moment when she started covering Tinie Tempah's 'Pass Out'. But this one's...it's ok. It's not a bad song. It's not mindblowing chart awesomeness. It's....it's a shrug but one with a half-smile. The perfect 5 out of 10. As a final treat here's the full top 75 as posted on Buzzjack at the time. Thanks for reading and it's stupidly late so it's off to slumber for me :P 1 73 2 Pixie Lott Boys And Girls 2 3 5 David Guetta feat. Akon Sexy Chick* 3 1 2 Jay-Z feat. Rihanna & Kanye West Run This Town* 4 N 1 Mika We Are Golden 5 5 13 Black Eyed Peas I Gotta Feeling 6 4 3 Dizzee Rascal Feat. Chrome Holiday 7 N 1 Mini Viva Left My Heart In Tokyo 8 2 2 Sugababes Get Sexy 9 N 1 Muse Uprising 10 7 7 Little Boots Remedy 11 6 51 Kings of Leon Sex On Fire 12 8 6 Tinchy Stryder feat. Amelle Never Leave You 13 9 10 Beyonce Sweet Dreams 14 10 4 Esmee Denters Outta Here 15 29 6 The Temper Trap Sweet Disposition 16 13 8 Sean Kingston Fire Burning 17 11 5 Calvin Harris Ready For The Weekend 18 14 8 Mr Hudson feat. Kanye West Supernova* 19 18 6 The Ian Carey Project Get Shaky 20 20 3 Nneka Heartbeat* 21 12 2 Wale feat. Lady Gaga Chillin 22 15 4 Just Jack The Day I Died* 23 17 9 JLS Beat Again 24 16 2 Booty Luv Say It 25 N 1 Shakira She Wolf* 26 19 7 Lily Allen 22 27 51 40 Jason Mraz I'm Yours 28 22 12 La Roux Bulletproof 29 31 5 Lady Gaga Lovegame* 30 26 20 Lady Gaga Paparazzi 31 21 12 Pitbull I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho) 32 N 1 U2 I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight 33 23 2 Jamie T Chaka Demus 34 25 5 Jeremih Birthday Sex* 35 28 14 David Guetta feat. Kelly Rowland When Love Takes Over 36 27 11 Cascada Evacuate The Dancefloor 37 33 18 Black Eyed Peas Boom Boom Pow 38 24 3 Biffy Clyro That Golden Rule 39 34 17 Daniel Merriweather Red 40 N 1 Livvi Franc Feat. PitbullNow I'm That Chick* 41 35 14 Noisettes Never Forget You* 42 N 1 You Me At Six Kiss And Tell 43 59 5 Pitbull Hotel Room Service* 44 N 1 Bananarama Love Comes 45 41 35 Lady Gaga Poker Face 46 40 14 Pixie Lott Mama Do 47 32 7 Flo-Rida feat. Nelly Furtado Jump 48 30 2 Friendly Fires Kiss Of Life* 49 37 17 Dizzee Rascal Feat. Armand Van HeldenBonkers 50 36 50 Kings of Leon Use Somebody 51 45 26 La Roux In For The Kill 52 N 2 Mariah Carey Obsessed* 53 42 17 Keri Hilson feat Kanye West & Ne-Yo Knock You Down 54 48 12 Florence & The MachineRabbit Heart (Raise It Up) 55 39 14 Jordin Sparks Battlefield 56 52 15 Kasabian Fire 57 R 8 Jamie T Sticks n Stones 58 R 1 Jennifer Hudson And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going 59 47 21 Tinchy Stryder feat. N-Dubz Number 1 60 58 7 Taylor Swift You Belong With Me* 61 50 9 Chicane Poppiholla 62 61 5 Keri Hilson Energy* 63 55 16 Agnes Release Me 64 N 1 Deadmau5 Feat. Rob Swire Ghosts 'n' Stuff* 65 54 10 Chipmunk Feat. Emeli Sande Diamond Rings 66 N 2 Kelly Clarkson Already Gone* 67 57 23 Calvin Harris I'm Not Alone 68 53 16 The Veronicas Untouched* 69 56 15 Pussycat Dolls Hush Hush* 70 66 13 Michael Jackson Man In The Mirror* 71 N 1 4 Strings Take Me Away* 72 60 9 30H!3 Don't Trust Me 73 38 2 The Prodigy Take Me To The Hospital 74 44 5 Bloc Party One More Chance 75 49 5 Peter Andre Behind Closed Doors* * Downloads Only

2: David Guetta feat. Akon - Sexy Chick N9hazmsUxrM Ladies and gentlemen, the 2010s, four months early. This was the start of the hit-the-same-few-synth-buttons-over-and-over-again dance craze that continues to this very day, and it's not one I liked at the time - I think it just confused me that a rapper was on a dance track, and the song sounded a bit of a slightly sleazy mess. What really grew me to like it was hearing it in clubs, when that synth lead in the chorus sounded brutally hard to the point where it echoed through you. Coupled with that insistent beat, turn it up loud and you'll realise why Guetta's a bit of a genius deep down. Could still do without Akon rapping bollocks over the top but it's still a powerful bit of dance pop, 'Titanium' totally blows this out of the water though although that's a few years away.

3: Jay-Z feat Rihanna & Kanye West - Run This Town yVA-xTBeHyM Nah. Didn't like it at the time, don't like it now. Tuneless, dull R&B on an album that's filled with way better tracks than this - On To The Next One, Young Forever, Empire State of Mind for god's sake, all of those I loved but this gets to #1 above all of them? Was it just rabid Rihanna and Kanye fans snapping it up on first release? But yeah, Empire State of Mind, that was the big defining end-of-2009 tune for me.

4: Mika - We Are Golden hEhutIEUq8k As La Roux was to 2009 and Alphabeat to 2008, I was obsessed with Mika all through 2007 and eagerly awaited his return. And it seemed like it had been a glorious success as he peaked at #4 with this comeback single...but then that was it. He's done well overseas but the UK was finished with him after this. Why? Maybe the novelty of his rapidly pitch-shifting voice wore off. Maybe this just sounded too dated and last-album in this new Age of Gaga. I still can't quite decide if I love or hate this, on some days it sounds brilliant and on others bits of it keep annoying me - the whispering, the shouting kids choir, etc. And that video? What the hell was he thinking?

5: Black Eyed Peas - I Gotta Feeling uSD4vsh1zDA So picture the scene. It's near the end of an alcohol-filled birthday night out with friends in the summer of 2009, and we're partying away in a small club somewhere in North London. The DJ decides to take a bit of a risk and play that new Black Eyed Peas song that's coming out, and I hear the song in full for the very first time. For the next five glorious minutes, it sounds like the greatest thing in the entire world. They're singing about us! About this night!! It's a moment I will always remember and my god was I in love with that song from then on. Listening to it at home (having sobered up) shortly after, I realised, actually, it was a bit of a letdown after Boom Boom Pow, wasn't it? Much safer, much more commercial, a bit too simplistic in its quest to appeal to youthful partygoers. But it didn't stop me dancing to it in every club at every opportunity, and this track got so big that DJs would deliberately tease crowds by playing a couple of the opening bars only to play a different song instead, increasing the anticipation until finally unleashing it at least twice in the space of one evening. And, despite being a summer hit, it got played (and played) all over again all through that year's Christmas and New Year parties, even recharting in January's iTunes Gift Card effect. By the summer of 2010 I'm over it. In a pub, a corner of the room is given over to someone's 30th birthday party and I see a lot of 'old' people (gimme a break, I was 21) badly dancing to it out of time. By 2012 it was a dangerous thing for any DJ to play this as half the dancefloor would leave in disgust, sick of the song they were by then. It's gonna take a few more years before I Gotta Feeling becomes something of nostalgia and time passes enough for it to become an enjoyable experience again, but you seriously cannot underestimate the sheer power this song had for the best part of a year after its initial release. And secretly? I still have a soft spot for it, as brutally as the overplaying killed it.

6: Dizzee Rascal - Holiday ANE9A5osUes Much has been written about Dizzee Rascal's descent from groundbreaking credible grime musician to mainstream cheesy pop star to something of a joke, this sees him at his commercial peak but long past his critical. 'Dance Wiv Me' disappointed me but 'Bonkers' and this I both really enjoyed, this one in particular produced by Calvin Harris and I remember first hearing it sung live when I saw him perform that summer. While first hearing a pleasant enough dance-pop track, the moment it really hooked me was that final minute. MY GOD THAT FINAL MINUTE. Out of nowhere it turns into a pounding, instrumental electro-trance masterpiece, something that could have easily have been ruined by other rappers insisting they carry on over the top of it ("Yeah! Let's go!" etc), Dizzee makes one of the wisest choices of his career and shuts up for it, leaving Calvin to work his magic uninterrupted. It really, really impressed me at the time and I still love it today.

7: Mini Viva - Left My Heart In Tokyo RvjML3-66SA No top 10 is complete without a one-hit wonder, this was meant to be Xenomania's Next Big Thing after Girls Aloud went on their break. This was their one and only big hit single, weirdly also doing well in Finland of all places but saw a sudden and rather unfair loss of interest when they returned with their next. It's an ok pop track, but it always seems odd listening to it for me as the mix I used to play all the time was the which I adored, to the point where I still think of it as the proper mix when it only appeared as a bonus track on iTunes + the CD single (still struggling on through 2009). It does seem a shame - they sound great, they have a distinctive look and could have easily lasted a few more songs.

8: Sugababes - Get Sexy nS8xiUlYNO0 So, erm, yeah. It is possible to enjoy this if you completely forget that this is the Sugababes and imagine it as some exciting new girl group breaking onto the scene, as it's a fun, catchy bit of electro pop that keeps things interesting by digitally messing with the vocals, and some amusement by paraphrasing the 1991 Right Said Fred song that would have gone completely over the head of anyone who doesn't remember it. The "If I had a dime" annoys me as they're not American, but otherwise it's a cool little song. For Sugababes it's an embarrassment, a group who'd previously stood out of the crowd and releasing noughties classics like Freak Like Me, Push The Button, About You Now etc (actually there's a slow, gradual transition from those three to this) suddenly sell out completely and make exactly the type of music - and sing the type of lyrics - they'd previously shunned. Adding to the fact that Keisha was the only original one left in the group by this point and you have to wonder how she feels about this change in d...oh yeah, she left the group immediately after this. And watching the video, with Amelle very much pushed as the centre 'face' of the group, you have to wonder what Keisha's thinking as she awkwardly sings about how "sexy" she is, perhaps wondering what happened to the days when she, Mutya and Siobhan formed the trio and feeling a bit out of place today. The new Sugababes (technically the new-new-new Sugababes) limped on for a couple more singles before disappearing after early 2010. Don't remember them this way.

9: Muse - Uprising w8KQmps-Sog Here's a band I knew little of at the time but in the years since have become one of my faves of all time, discovering all their previous classics I'd initially missed including the brain-blowing tracks on 2001's Origin of Symmetry. But five years ago, this was what introduced me to them, a fabulous Doctor-Who-meets-glam-rock stomper that builds up throughout until exploding at the end with that final singalong chorus. Now I've heard the rest of Muse's discography, yeah they made way better songs before this. But this is still fantastic and an excellent debut single for the Resistance era, different people have views on when they "lost it" as they shift from their heavy rock routes to synthy pop tracks, but there's gems on each and every one of their albums released to date.