Chez Wombat

(I should add that however much of a soft spot I have for it, Lonely beating Feel Good Inc. to number 1 is one of the biggest chart injustices ever x)

I mean it looks very nice and all, but I can't really not see this as a little awkward, especially so with the legal cases ongoing, the news of reshoots, pushback and the criticism from his own daughter. I can't see how they can honestly tell an effective story here when there was so much about him we'll likely never know and they legally cannot show as the Jackson Estate's involved. I'm sure it will be big and the discourse will keep it going for months, but I'm not really that interested. But honestly my main reason for that isn't even the subject (art from artist etc.) it's more that I'm sure it will be the Bohemian Rhapsody style typical, generic, crowd friendly music biopic which I just find so predictable and unexciting.

18. Akon - Lonely #1 for 2 weeks W/E 7th May-W/E 14th May #7 in EOY Here we are with the first number 1 for Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam...or just Akon x He arrived with two rather distinct breakout hits - two months before (a whole year after it's initial release in the States), Locked Up was his debut, marketed as a 'street record' and intended to build credibility , with some hard-hitting lyrics about the ongoing incarceration of young black people (apparently inspired by his own experience, but this was never proven), it peaked at number 5 here and the next step is to really break him commercially which is where Lonely comes in, a far more conventional love song taking a sample of Bobby Vinton's 1964 hit Mr Lonely and pitching it up to give it that Chipmunk Soul label that was popular for a while. This also made it fit in quite well with the growing ringtone landscape (more on that later x). Cynical strategy, but it worked perfectly, Lonely got to number 1 in nine countries and would pave the way for him to become one of the biggest hit makers of the next few years, getting several hits for the next four years. He would have a few hits through features in the early 2010s, but otherwise went almost completely quiet musically, focusing on philathropic works like Akon Lighting Africa, with many attempted comebacks after which did nothing and/or were postponed. His most prolific project post 2010 would be Akon City, a now abandoned crypto based project which...I don't have time to go into right now, but do look it up if you're not aware, it's a ride x I know a lot would rank this lower and I do get why this would be supremely irritating, but it is one I have a lot of nostalgia for. Helped by being on Now 61 which I spammed repeatedly that year, I can't count how many times I heard this on TV, radio, ringtones and watching amateur online parody videos and songs (the one that sticks in my mind is this random Indian parody replacing Lonely with Curry, which I found quite funny at the time and realise is so blatantly racist now, sorry, cancel me etc. x). I'll always look back on it fondly, but likewise with JCB, it's definitely not something I'd seek out much these days, but I'd still take this over most of his discography, which is all very throwaway and rancid lyrically as well as his voice really grating on me. I think he actually sounds alright here, quite soulful and restrained and I do like the idea of the song as an modern duet with a 50s ballad, I think it could've really worked if not for the Chipmunk sound effect, I don't mind it and does make it sound fairly unique as a ballad, and again as a pre-teen hearing a high-pitched voice like that was the sort of thing that humoured me, but it definitely ruins any kind of emotional connection he was going for and gives it more of a novelty feel that it probably didn't intend for (similar thing with Ironik's Stay With Me a few years later, which had a much darker subject matter). I completely get why this one is so maligned, but it's one of those classic time capsules that defines the year, so I can't hold a lot of resentment.

19. Oasis - Lyla #1 for 1 week W/E 28th May #31 in EOY Almost ten years on from their and Britpop's stratospheric peak, it's safe to say the Oasis juggernaut was certainly not quite what it was, off the back of a frostily received Glastonbury performance, this would be, to date at least, the year where they got their final number 1s before their initial split in 2009, though they didn't pick a bad end as it was the first where they had more than one in a calendar year. Lyla was the lead single from Don't Believe the Truth, their sixth album and first to not feature Alan White, their long time drummer after he left the band (possibly though not entirely related to a brutal brawl he got in with Liam which landed them both in prison and needing medical care), though the album was seen as a return to form after their last two efforts. The song itself duly became their seventh number 1, though Noel has never been particularly complimentary of it (and the choice of it as a lead fuelled tensions between the band and record label and led to them not renewing their contract initially) calling it 'not even the fifth best track on the album', 'specifically designed for pogoing' and 'poppiest thing since Roll With It', he has come round to it through when performing it live, though it still did not feature in their recent reunion tour. It's weird ranking a song from one of my favourite bands so low, but I don't think it's controversial to see Oasis released some really pedestrian work in the 2000s, and this was one of those. Saying that, I'd definitely take it over the Hindu Times and Go Let It Out. it's got all the classic big guitars, the 'far and neeeyaaaarrr' line from Liam is fine and the chorus is cool singalong stuff, but it does just feel like Oasis on autopilot like many songs of this era, there's just nothing here that they haven't already done better in the last ten years and it just sounds so blatantly like they were running out of ideas. It's decent, but nowhere near top of the list of songs I go back to, Thankfully have more positive things to say about their other one here x

20. Nizlopi - JCB Song #1 for 1 week W/E 24th December #12 in EOY Now this really did come out of the blue. Nizlopi were a duo formed in Leamington Spa made up of vocalist Luke Colcannon and guitarist John Parker (the name based apparently on a Hungarian girl in member Luke's school he used to like), Luke Colcannon wrote this song at his parents' house based on a real life memory of when his father picked him up from school in a JCB Digger, and how this made him feel strong when he was bullied due to his dyslexia. Clearly being a bit of a hero for him, a plethora of imagery is likened to him like Bruce Lee and B.A Baracus and transforming into a Tyrannosaurus Rex. The duo being completely unknown at first, the song could only manage as high as number 160 when originally released in June. They didn't stop there though and the rising superpower that was the internet and online marketing worked it's magic on them, and they started to develop a cult following amongst their online fanbases and promoted the song heavily across radios, receiving particular airplay from Dermot O'Leary's Radio 2 show at the time, and eventually Animation studio, MonkeeHub, caught wind of it and released a rather lovely hand drawn animated video, which began to bring further attention to the song and made further buzz online being frequently shared via email (YouTube was born this year, though it's realisation wasn't quite there yet), even playing on ad breaks between TV shows and music channels. It was re-released in December and topped the charts, beating Westlife in the process, and was looking on course to be Christmas number 1, however even with two days advantage in sales, it couldn't compete the other rising superpower of X Factor. True one hit wonders in every sense, they only had one further song even making the top 100 (with another animated video which didn't quite have the same impact) and though they did release another album, they split in 2010, reuniting on and off until 2020, with Luke now working as a travel writer and John a freelance session double bassist. Their most interesting future link was that a then unknown Ed Sheeran was a guitar technician at their earlier gigs, and was influenced by their sound. I have so much nostalgia for this one, I remember first seeing the video on an ad break on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon or something and I was a bit mystified, but I did find it quite charming and I honestly still do. I always love hand drawn animation and it really captures the childhood whimsy of the song perfectly, purely as an animated video with a song attached, I think it still works really well, but without that video as a song? Hmmm, well I like that they added a garage rap to the end to diversify it at least, but this is another one of those acoustic, emotional singer-songwriter type songs, and there's no subtext here, this has just about as just about the most cloying and cheesy lyrics you could get, and WOW they are bad...'the engine rattles my bum like beserk', 'me and my dad havin' a top larrrf' 'My dad's B.A. Barakas only with a JCB and Bruce Lee's nun chuckas'. I was just about the right age to get the nice childhood sentimentality of the lyrics and it certainly works well for a younger audience, but nowadays, it's quite hard not to cringe. I can't bring myself to dislike it, it's the right sentiment and worked in that moment as something completely genuine that made everyone feel a bit more warm inside, just don't think about it too much as a song x

21. McFly - I'll Be OK #1 for 1 week W/E 27th August #52 in EOY Coincidentally, You're Beautiful is beaten by the song that finally knocked it off. This is the first of two number 1s to feature here for McFly, who were in the prime of their career at this point, with their fourth overall just a year after debuting. It is probably safe to describe this as a 'non-number 1', given it's plummet to 8th place the next week and exiting the top 40 a month after debuting, indeed the second week drops became a bit of a McFly quirk. Starting life as two songs where the best parts were put into one, the song was selected to give listeners a positive, encouraging message, the intro is similar to that of The Who's Won't Get Fooled Again, a named influence of the group and the single coincidentally contains a B-side of their cover of Pinball Wizard. As you can tell by my tangents, I don't have a lot to say about this one. I do enjoy McFly though and 5 Colours in Her Hair and Obviously were both solid jams, I wasn't 'indie' enough at the time to find them uncool and wasn't quite the right audience to be absolutely head over heels for them, but their songs were enjoyable and I do find some things I quite liked about this - the guitar intro is great, the false ending and harmonising work well and they are clearly in their element, but asides, there's nothing here that you haven't already heard from them, it's also a little faceless and watered down lyrically and lacking the character and personality of some of their better songs. It just elicits no strong reactions and while I can't say anything bad about it, I have no reason to come back to it either, so just before the top 20 feels about right for it. TL;DR drumroll It's OK x

Ooh I know some of these x Weird to think of Jump In The Pool as not being Friendly Fires' main hit, but that's how it goes! (Had to look it up to remind myself of what their 'hit' was).

22. James Blunt - You're Beautiful #1 for 5 weeks W/E 23rd July-W/E 20th August #4 in EOY Before he became the king of self-deprecation, Blunt had a fairly unique past. Far from starting from nothing or gigging at pubs, Blunt, born into a family with a long history of military service, served as a captain of the British Army. His most notable involvement being in the Russian occupation of Pristina Airport in the aftermath of the Kosovo War in 1999 which had it gone differently, could well have started World War III. The Russian Army had occupied the airport ahead of a planned NATO deployment, after some delay, NATO commander at the time, Wesley Clark ordered British troops to block the airport and attack. Allegedly being questioned by Blunt, his commander, Mike Jackson refused the order. The situation was eventually resolved peacefully before escalation. It’s not known exactly how much Blunt was involved in the decision, although he has said he would’ve also refused had Jackson obeyed (credit to CocoMango at RateYourMusic as well as wiki for that factoid x). Probably yearning for something a bit more peaceful, Blunt left the army in 2002 after six years serving in the force to focus on his music career. While he was posted in Kosovo, he took his guitar to hang on the tanks and would write many songs as well as perform for the troops. He was signed by EMI and gradually, adopting that acoustic David Gray/Damien Rice-esque sound that was (and continues to be I guess) quite in vogue, You’re Beautiful was eaten up by commercial radio and stayed at number 1 for five weeks all throughout the summer and enchanting (I guess?) and repulsing everyone in the process. It got to number 1 in nine countries, including the United States, a rarity for that genre. He would never have a hit of this magnitude again but had a fairly solid career over the next decade and is still releasing albums as of 2023, as well as spending his time in Ibiza and the Swiss Alps, nice x Blunt knows exactly how people feel about this song and pretty much shares the feeling and is very open to mocking himself on Twitter (but I’m sure he appreciates it ensuring his bills are paid for his life x). He has always been surprised by the song’s success and features in weddings and easy listening as it probably wasn’t written with that in mind. Allegedly about an ex, the song is certainly deceptive in its appearance, sounding like the most MOR thing to have ever MOR’d, it’s actually a rather creepy story of an unreliable narrator seemingly unable to live with himself after seeing his previous lover with someone else, ‘’I’ve got a plan’ and 'I'll never be with you' are sung charmingly but read very differently when taken in context of someone totally hopeless, and especially when taken in tandem with the calm yet sinister video which culminates with Blunt jumping off a cliff in the snowy mountains. There are a few other quirks to the song – the false start which was a genuine mistake and left in the final track and the rather stunningly out of the blue swearing on the line ‘She could see from my face I was f***ing high’ (changed to ‘Flying high’ for the radio edit), I was shocked when I first heard this but does make sense and add to the creepy feel of the whole song. Overall, certainly a song I can appreciate more now it’s not omnipresent and I liked it a lot more than I did at the time, but I still can’t call it good. It's clever lyrically but also smarmy, and taken just musically, the chorus is supremely irritating and it’s just dull acoustic radio fodder and while Blunt certainly wasn’t the first to try this, the British public’s love of these emotional male singer-songwriter acoustic songs would only continue over the next decade and I just find this type of sappy, unadventurous music so difficult to enjoy. I enjoyed a few more of his songs more, justice for Carry You Home and Stay the Night x

Indeed, the reason I decided not to do an extra rank of the number 2s of this year is that so many of them were Elvis reissues I barely remembered 😅I wouldn't say anything truly worthy missed number 1, however cynical an exercise it was, I'd have been wary to see the sales if they didn't. Anyway, here's a non-Elvis track...

30; Lankum - Go Dig My Grave 29; Mitski - My Love Mine All Mine 28; Nabihah Iqbal - This World Couldn't See Us 27; Billie Eilish - What Was I Made For? 26; Daughter - Be On Your Way 25; Fat Dog - King of the Slugs 24; Romy - Loveher 23; Lana Del Rey - A&W 22; Peggy Gou - (It Goes Like) Nanana 21; Olivia Rodrigo - Vampire 20; Heartworms - Retributions of an Awful Life 19; Olivia Rodrigo - Bad Idea Right? 18; Last Dinner Party - Nothing Matters 17; Nothing But Thieves - Welcome to the DCC 16; Dua Lipa - Dance The Night 15; Olivia Rodrigo - Get Him Back! 14; Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding - Miracle 13; Doja Cat - Paint The Town Red 12; Beatles - Now And Then 11; Adrianne Lenker - Ruined 10; Chappell Roan - Hot To Go! 09; Kenya Grace - Strangers 08; Beyoncé (feat. Kendrick Lamar) - America Has A Problem 07; PinkPantheress - Boy's a Liar 06; Fifty Fifty - Cupid 05; George Clanton - I Been Young 04; Kylie Minogue - Padam Padam 03; Alessandra - Queen of Kings 02; Snow Strippers - Under Your Spell 01; Zach Bryan & Kacey Musgraves - I Remember Everything

The Human League - Love Action (I Believe In Love) Siouxsie And The Banshees - Arabian Knights U2 - Fire Soft Cell - Tainted Love Ultravox - The Thin Wall Rolling Stones and OMD just outside. Mainly songs I didn't know today so most of these are discoveries (or just did enough to stand out amongst the many naff medleys x)

Yeah I know I'm being a bit cheap here, but I am sticking to my self-imposed rule with recycles that it does sound significantly different from their last entry 😎I will say the vocals on the chorus are a little quiet so you may need to turn your headphones up when you listen x Sending some hype to Deandria from the other semi, I've heard that on 6Music and have actually considered sending it somewhere here, it's a really quirky, mysterious song, hope it can get through without my help x

(The next Elvis posts won't be as long as that, just wanted to set the context and give my thoughts on the exercise as a whole x)

23. Elvis Presley - It's Now or Never #1 for 1 week W/E 5th February #152 in EOY (if anyone knows where this or any of the Elvis reissues are in the EOY for the year, I'd be grateful x) So the Elvis reissues were always going to be difficult to rank when I picked this year, there were many angles I could go down - I could not include them at all as they weren't 2005 songs, I could rank them all at the bottom and play the 'Elvis is overrated angle' or I could just put them all in one place in the middle, however they were number 1 hits just as much as other songs here and as I'll cover below, it's not like the circumstances of them being there are particularly unique looking at recent chart history. And while I wouldn't call myself a superfan (the songs in his post-military career were pretty bad and a lot of what he was delivering was certainly not entirely original and more palatable for the audience coming from a white man) he was an icon for a reason as his voice, music and performing ability has been near unmatched in decades since and I genuinely really enjoy a few of his songs, so I will give them an honest assessment alongside the number 1 hits this year. I'm not going to go into the background of Elvis himself as you've got many literature and films that go into that, but it is worth discussing in this post his presence in 2005. 2005 would've been Elvis' 70th birthday and EMI marked the occasion by re-releasing all 18 of his number 1 singles, while this wasn't the first time this happened, the Beatles' label did a similar exercise in the 80s, the scale and publicity for this campaign was far wider than anything that had been before. It wasn't lost to the estate that the 1000th number 1 was coming up and this specifically tied in with that, and they achieved it, as well as the 999th and 1002nd (which this one was), in the process, it also got his total number 1 figure up to 21, a good few singles clear of nearest competitors, the Beatles (even though not counting repeats, kinda as it should be, they would now be tied). The sales were very low and at a time when physical sales were really drying up, and it certainly reads more than a little cynical so I can certainly see why some view this as quite a nadir for the singles chart. From an outsiders perspective to the conversation at the time, I certainly think it reads like a shameless corporate exercise devaluing the music and his legend, but I do also see it as an interesting gateway between the physical and digital eras. While it would be another 12 months before the musical new age would begin and downloads would start their take over, older songs getting to number 1 is something that would become a feature of the digital era in various ways that still persist and labels have learned how to exploit this, just in a different way to how it was done before, and while I do prefer newer music getting the spotlight, events like this are always unique quirks of the chart which are interesting to view if nothing more. There's much more that can be said for this, so I will just link to this very thorough 3 part series on the Popular blog to commemorate the 1000th number 1: https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2023/11/no-bird-can-fly-no-fish-can-swim-until-the-king-is-born Anyway, the song itself is one of Elvis' biggest hits and one of the world's best selling singles at 20 million copies. It is based on the 1916 composition O Sole Mio, Elvis first heard another song that used this melody - Tony Martin's There's No Tomorrow while on military service and was inspired by this to do his own version. He pitched the idea to his publisher who had songwriters write it in less than half than hour, in the UK, there was a copyright issue which meant it was delayed a few months but anticipation was so high that it managed a rare-at-the-time number 1 debut and stayed there for eight weeks in October 1960, and added to that tally 45 years later. Of course if you're in the UK, you'll more likely know it as 'Just One Cornetto' as many years of advertising has wormed that into my brain so that I can't really think of much else when I hear this, and that's ultimately why I've ranked this one the lowest as any intended effect it may have is dwindled so that the only feeling I get from this is wanting an ice cream. But even outside of that. it's your standard 50s/early 60s crooning number which just doesn't appeal to me much, however much I can appreciate the instrumental, his vocal talent and the backing singers. It's not as bad as some of his movie releases, but it's not a highlight in his back catalogue,

Got to love the Teletubbies, I was 5 at the time so around about the right age, although I kinda wish I could've experienced it at university age as it would've been a whole different experience x