BillyH

I listened to a lot of dance music in the mid-noughties and I still assume a lot of them were massive hits from how much I heard them, when they didn't make top ten - 'Love Generation' as already mentioned (which was colossal around Europe), Axwell's 'Feel The Vibe' (#16), Freemasons' 'Love On My Mind' (#11) and Joey Negro's 'Make A Move On Me' (#11) all stand out.

Mariah should make a song for every special day, St Patrick’s Day, International Women’s Day, Talk Like a Pirate Day etc.

But which triple-#1 set is better - 2 Become 1, Too Much & Goodbye, or We Built This City on Sausage Rolls, I Love Sausage Rolls & Don't Stop Me Eatin'? It's a tough one for me, the Spice Girls songs are unrivalled classics of the 1990s but the emotion and poignancy of the Sausage Rollogy bring tears to my eyes at times.

In a parallel universe, 1990’s hot summer was defined by the massive #1 “Margaret Thatcher is a ******* ***** *****” by Adamski feat. Guru Josh, The KLF and Cliff Richard. Or maybe the 2003 banger “Tony Blair is a ******* Liar” by Busted feat. Sean Paul, Delta Goodrem and the Fast Food Rockers?

I’m very flattered to see that post has been remembered all this time! If it doesn’t get to number 1 I should just create that EDM “You’re a C***” song myself, or whatever the current dominant musical style is :lol:

Looking at the most popular Christmas songs on the various music platforms this week, it's a fairly different list to what you'd expect back in the 1990s or earlier - some songs have become far more popular than they were in the past, and others (with one extreme example) have dropped a lot in popularity. Here's a few I've noticed: Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas Is You really was one of the lesser-known festive songs in the late 1990s/early 2000s, it got a lot of airplay in its first year and then was played less for a while in comparison to more established hits. The turning points seem to be both the film Love Actually in 2003, and the advent of downloads a few years later when it was finally able to rechart again without needing a CD re-release. Tell anyone twenty years ago it would be by far the number 1 song every Christmas and few would have believed you! On the other side, ask anyone twenty years ago what is the number 1 Christmas song, and many would say Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody. This really was the king of festive releases for ages, it was constantly re-issued throughout the 1970s to 1990s and very much felt like the most famous festive track of the modern pop era. It's still definitely well-known, but it's slipped a lot in popularity in the last decade or so and many others now chart higher and are played more. Maybe it's immense airplay for 30 years after release started putting people off by the time the download/streaming eras arrived, paving the way for other songs (most notably Mariah) to gain more popularity. And on the extreme side, Gary Glitter - Another Rock and Roll Christmas was unescapable from release in 1984 right up to some point around the turn of the millennium when it stopped receiving airplay completely due to some rather horrific revelations involving the singer. It didn't disappear overnight - the cast of Blue Peter sung it in a festive special in 2001 (a few years after Glitter's career ended, which somewhat surprised me at the time) and I've heard it in recent years in the form of cover versions, but the original hasn't been part of many Christmas playlists for two decades or more now. Any others that come to mind?

I wouldn't count any of these as they charted via new remixes - one very subtle (Are You Ready for Love) and the others completely different from the original. A Little Less Conversation was a new remix credited to Junkie XL, It's Like That was a radical rework by Jason Nevins and Living On My Own was a new Eurodance remake by the No More Brothers.

I find that fascinating in a way that shows just how much Eurovision's changed over the years. If a similar error happened today with the cueing of the backing track going wrong, I highly doubt any artist/s would just look annoyed at each other and storm off stage until it gets fixed - they'd stay on stage, make a joke about it, get the audience to cheer them on for the second attempt etc. In 1990 not only was there no phone voting but the studio audience was entirely made up of VIPs and delegates with no public tickets available, so you're essentially watching a closed-off jury contest that just happens to have some cameras pointed at it - making Azúcar Moreno's grumpy reaction a little more understandable to modern eyes. In the 2016 dress rehearsal, Iveta Mukuchyan's earpiece completely failed to work and despite looking a bit shaken and frantically gesturing backstage during the opening instrumental build, she still completed the song and cheerfully apologised to the audience afterwards - even though she was still virtually perfect despite the circumstances. Similarly SuRie still completed her performance two years later despite the infamous stage invasion making her miss out most of a chorus.

Imagine the power LadBaby feels knowing that anything he releases, any Christmas, will always be number 1. Forever. He could just cough into the microphone for three minutes this year (“Coughage Rolls”) and it would still outpeak Mariah, depressingly.

Donald Trump is releasing a cover version of The Winner Takes It All, it's just been announced. Profits go to a charity set up to try and keep him as president. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lx-O0qY9YY

Al Martino - Here In My Heart is quite explicit at points (“I need your love so badly” - wow, easy tiger!) so possibly a 12A for that. Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody is as violent as a Tarantino film (killing a man, spitting in someone’s eye etc) so an easy 18. Aqua - Barbie Girl is a 15 at least due to the “Undress me everywhere” line and some explicit references to hanky panky, to name just a few. And Eamon - F*** It (I Don’t Want You Back) was mostly bought by and enjoyed by people with the minds of children so that can have a U rating.

It's one of those rare Eurovision songs that's managed to gain a wider audience outside of the Eurovision fanbase (thanks to social media), many probably don't even know it's from the contest. It happened back in 1999 with Precious - Say It Again, it had a ton of radio play and became a top ten hit to the point where many were genuinely surprised when it appeared on the recent upload of that year's contest, having no idea it was a Eurovision song until now.

Ulrika Johnsson was on stage during the bits when Wogan was commentating, mostly the voting. Terry appeared at the start, middle and end of the show, and of course there was no "green room" host then, just a few cameras pointing at the contestants every now and again. Norton's approaching 60 which would normally perhaps be seen as too old for a presenter, but he's so well known around the world from his chat show they'd still have him host I presume - probably him, Rylan and a female co-presenter (Mel?). Wogan was 59 when he hosted.

My first "purchases" involved buying packs of VHS tapes, calling up The Box to request songs and recording the videos onto tape :lol: I had a mixtape from 1999 featuring Steps, The Cartoons, Fatboy Slim and that Thank ABBA for the Music medley that was around at the time! My uncle made me one too a couple of years later that was full of his then-preferred genres of pop-punk and nu metal :D CD wise I bought the occasional charity single so I could say I'd donated (like Gareth Gates - Spirit in the Sky) but only really started buying them in 2007, about the last year where you could go into one of the big music stores in London and find a massive wall with the entire top 40 on CD, and several shelves of back catalogue from earlier months and years (for some reason you could still buy 'Angels' by Robbie Williams' at this point, and I don't think it was a re-issue, they just had that much stock of it). I was also starting to use iTunes around this time but the quality was much lower than CDs so I'd priortise the physical purchases. By the end of 2009 most music shops outside of London had long binned their single section and even the big ones in Oxford Street only had a small corner of them at the back, and when iTunes upgraded their bitrate at the end of that year (plus a Norwegian friend telling me about this cool new thing called Spotify and giving me an invite code to use it) there was no need to keep buying them anymore. Just before New Years Eve 2009 I bought what I think were my two last - Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' and Wiley's 'Take That', both of which I thought were destined to be massive number 1 singles everyone was going to remember forever. I was half right anyway :lol: I've posted these photos before but they're pretty interesting, one is from the long-gone Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly Circus (then briefly called 'Zavvi' in its last few months around) in March 2008, and the last time I saw a wall of CD singles as the next time I visited they'd been relegated to a smaller part of the store: http://i.imgur.com/Tehoihh.jpg And here's the also long-gone HMV in Oxford Street in February 2012, by then the only place I knew still selling singles, and, erm, half of them are two/three years old (Helping Haiti/Tinchy Stryder etc) and mostly just random charity releases: http://i.imgur.com/BqOBtiS.jpg Was genuinely amazed when I went to Germany six years ago and found pretty much their entire chart happily on CD single still - they carried on a lot longer there!

I didn't realise how collectable some of these are! Was having a house clearout and found cassette copies of Now 53 and 58 - both I bought back in the late 2000s for a pound or so each, at a car boot sale and in WHSmith when they were clearing out the last few tapes they had in stock. They just sold for £28 and £41 each on eBay!! I think it's just the 2000s tapes that are collectable - I've got lots from Now 44 and earlier but they only seem to go for a few pounds each as there's loads of those, they become a lot rarer later on. Similar with 1980s CDs and 1990s vinyl copies.

I've booked my flights to/from Amsterdam already, using the EasyJet flight credit I got for my cancelled 2020 ones :lol: I'm not staying in accomodation this time as the hotel/hostel prices are a joke, so I'll arrive early in the morning and leave early in the next, there's 24 hour trains from Rotterdam back to the airport. In Kiev three years ago I only paid £6 a night - the cheapest options in Rotterdam are in the hundreds of pounds already! I didn't get a ticket for this year, but either I'll (somehow) get one next year, grab a Family Final one or just accept defeat and watch it in the Eurovision Village like many do :)

LOL that's one of the worst covers ever, sorry you got that :lol: I was born in late September 1988, so mine's gonna be something awesome like Kernkraft 400, or Lady (Hear Me Tonight), or... ...ah crap.

Ah cool idea! Especially because my #1 is one of the best songs of all time :D Wondering how far I'll get until I reach a song I've never heard of, I predict about #26... 1 (1989): Black Box - Ride On Time :dance: :w00t: :cheer: 2 (1990): The Steve Miller Band - The Joker :D 3 (1991): Oceanic - Insanity :cheer: 4 (1992): Snap - Rhythm Is A Dancer :wub: :wub: 5 (1993): SWV - Right Here :wub: 6 (1994): Kylie Minogue - Confide In Me :wub: :wub: 7 (1995): Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You :lol: 8 (1996): Spice Girls - Wannabe :lol: 9 (1997): Tina Moore - Never Gonna Let You Go :dance: 10 (1998): Savage Garden - To The Moon And Back :wub: 11 (1999): Fragma - Toca Me :D 12 (2000): Vanessa Amarosi - Absolutely Everybody :yahoo: :w00t: 13 (2001): Ian Brown - Fear <_< 14 (2002): Puddle Of Mudd - She Hates Me :dance: :lol: 15 (2003): Gareth Gates - Sunshine :lol: 16 (2004): The Corrs - Angel :huh: (never heard it! Didn't realise they were still relevant this late...) 17 (2005): Oasis - The Importance of Being Idle :yahoo: :dance: 18 (2006): Janet Jackson & Nelly - Call On Me :huh: (nope...rap/R&B version of Eric Prydz?) 19 (2007): Kate Nash - Foundations :puke2: 20 (2008): Jordin Sparks feat. Chris Brown - No Air :puke2: 21 (2009): Paloma Faith - New York <_< 22 (2010): Eliza Doolittle - Pack Up :wub: :cheer: 23 (2011): Emile Sande - Heaven :) (probably the only one of hers I can stand, just one place below was Bad Meets Evil's 'Lighters' which is one of my all time faves) 24 (2012): Tulisa feat. Tyga - Live It Up :huh: (never heard of it...*again* one place below is 'Little Talks' which would have been amazing) 25 (2013): Passenger - Let Her Go :puke2: (and again just one place below is Rizzle Kicks 'Lost Generation'...wishing I'd have been born a year later now!) 26 (2014): Ed Sheeran - Sing :) (don't believe it...AGAIN you've got 'My Head Is A Jungle' one place below!! Amazed I'm still recognising the songs tbh) 27 (2015): Nero - Two Minds :o (I'd completely forgotten Nero actually had a chart hit this late!! Just about recall listening to it and not being too fussed tho) 28 (2016): Tieks feat. Dan Harkna - Sunshine :huh: (yeah never heard of this or about a third of this chart) 29 (2017): Marshmello feat Khalid - Silence :huh: (nope, or most of the surrounding songs by now - just eight in the whole top 40) 30 (2018): Ariana Grande - God Is A Woman :huh: (only three songs in the top 40 and they're Shotgun, One Kiss and This Is Me) 31 (2019): Stormzy - Sound of the Skeng :huh: (...and we're down to one song in the entire top 40, and it's 'Senorita') Well that ended up depressing :lol: Great run throughout the 90s though!

Imagine if this was 20 years ago!! I suppose CD singles were still readily available in supermarkets then but there'd be a crazy drop in sales. Wasn't there an issue with Matt Cardle's 'When We Collide' regarding the snowy weather in December 2010? Probably the last time I can remember physicals actually having an impact on chart sales, and a few years earlier the closure of Woolworths did wonders for some songs as the CD singles were discounted to a few pence to get rid of them.

No luck for me getting tickets today - this year they didn't give any queue numbers, so you just had a generic "Waiting in queue" page until it changed to sold out. But I've been to all of them live from Stockholm '16 to Tel Aviv, so I don't mind missing out this time :) For both Kiev and Lisbon I was able to get my tickets by logging on the website about 1am the morning after they went on sale and picking up some returns from earlier in the day, so still possible - and I think every year tickets for even the live Grand Final have gone back on sale just before the show!

2020 - Mr Sausage Roll (feat. Amy McDonald, million seller), 2021 - Sausage Rolling In The Deep (feat. Adele, sells more than Candle In The Wind ‘97) 2022 - Life Is A Sausage Rollercoaster of Love (feat. Ronan Keating and B*Witched, breaks Youtube from too many views) 2023 - Another Sausage Roll Christmas (feat. Gary Glitter, LadBaby is banned from the charts forever)

It seems bizarre to think that I don't remember hearing this song at all until about 1999-2000 - it was big the year it was released (when I was slightly too young to be following chart music), but for most of the 1990s the kings of the Christmas songs were very much Slade and Wizzard, as they had been 20 years earlier. When it became the first song I downloaded on mp3 back in 2002, it still felt like an obscure forgotten classic that you'd only occasionally see on the odd music channel if they were having a festive marathon. I feel like 'Love Actually' (released November 2003) followed by the download boom was what got this very much onto the A-list, eventually ruling above everything by the end of that decade and into the next. Similar to how Fairytale of New York seemed to gain a lot more attention following two events - Kirsty MacColl's sad death in 2000, and the high-profile physical reissue of the song in 2005 which reached #3.

I met all three of them yesterday (I work at a venue where they performed Flowers last night) and they were all really nice :) Wish I could go back in time and tell the teenage me that!

A great year but I'm heavily biased by it being possibly the best year of my life :P I was 20/21 and basically lived the entire twelve months in an early-twenties partying/drinking wonderland, meaning absolutely everything from that year reminds me of good times. A few highlights from memory: * Going to New York in the April and hearing 'Right Round' and 'My Life Would Suck Without You' everywhere. * Seeing Dizzee Rascal live twice and hearing a new song at each gig - 'Bonkers' in the April (supporting The Prodigy) and 'Holiday' in the July (at Wireless). The set he did in 2013 supporting Muse was painfully bad in comparison as he'd ditched all but one of his pre-2008 songs for inferior newer stuff. * Eurovision becoming cool again with a genuinely popular winning single and top ten hit! Lordi and Verka were fun novelties but Fairytale realy stood out at the time as something that crossed over successfully to a non-Eurovision crowd. Would never have predicted Euphoria a few years later! * 'I Gotta Feeling' dominating clubs from Summer 2009 well into 2010 - at its peak you'd hear it at least twice a night and they'd even tease the opening notes in-between random songs :lol: By 2012/13 people were hating it but it seems to have made a comeback recently, possibly as the teenage clubbers of today remember it from their childhood (which makes me feel ancient!) * 'Empire State of Mind' was the big song of the autumn and the one that takes me back to starting second year, a rap song that everyone of all ages seemed to enjoy (even if they all thought the song was just called "New York" which caused some confusion with the Paloma Faith song at the same time). I still think Alicia's singing "I become a wet dream tomato" in the chorus :P And then Florence & The Machine's first album dominating every late 2009-early 2010 house party I went to, just as MGMT's album had the previous year!

It'll be the decade everyone grew up/was introduced to chart music so I can see the 1990s & 2000s fairly equally winning this! The 1990s for me, even though I only really started following the charts in Easter 1999 - almost all of my favourites are from that decade, although the late 1980s and early 2000s aren't far off! 1988-2004 is my favourite continuous era :)