Severin

I absolutely love the year I was given - it's right in my ballpark and I felt there were so many options to choose from but just a cursory glance gave me no choice. One song stood out miles above the others and HAD to be submitted. My only fear is it might be too well known

Stand By Me is a corker. Liked it before 1987 and still like it

#9 please

Interesting read as I've just been catching up on this. 1987 was something of a pivotal year for me. I was 15 and becoming increasingly disillusioned with the contet of the charts and it was therefore the year I went full tilt into looking for alternatives in the Indie charts. Naturally I subsequently hated almost all of the songs that hit number 1. I was, at the time, full on Goth/Punk/Metal and very closed minded about almost anything else. However, has time mellowed those opinions? Ferry Aid - Didn't care much for The Beatles (old people music) but respected them. Didn't care for this version. Still don't Boy George - Never haved liked Culture Club and hated this at the time. Ambivalent about it now but grateful it lead me to Ken Boothe's take. Steve 'Silk' Hurley - Loathed this with a passion that is hard to describe. and House was very much the enemy in our circles. Re-appraisal came when educating my daughter on the history of music. It's an absolute landmark release in Dance music. I no longer hate it and although I don't really like it much, I can't deny it's vision and importance The Firm - It was mildly entertaining, immediately annoying, daft rubbish back then. It still is but I just roll my eyes at it now. Jackie Wilson - One I actually bought. A great song and a brilliantly made video. Madonna - I'd begun to find Madonna annoying by 1986 and this continued a run of singles I really didn't like having to hear. Often forget this exists. Los Lobos - Didn't mind this. It's a good cover of a fun oldie. Wouldn't get anywhere near my personal #1s that year but was ok. M/A/R/R/S - Detested this as much as Jack Your Body and I even quite liked AR Kane which made it feel worse. This was everywhere and infuriated me every time I heard or saw it. Nowadays I've long since came to realise it's brilliance and what a game changer it was back then. Rick Astley - S/A/W were just setting off on a monster run of conveyer belt lightweight Pop songs with a terrible production style (to my ears) and this really did grate on me. It's actually a really soild song with a good vocalist under it all and I was always smile when i get Rickrolled. Plus he's a lovely fella isn't he? This is a great read so far Jester. Always like to get a take on what others thought of years gone by.

February Pos/Artist/plays 01 Gaye Bykers On Acid 56 02 Kate Bush 45 03 Prince 43 04 YONAKA 39 05 Siouxsie & the Banshees 36 06 Arcade Fire 33 07 Kim Dracula 30 08 Saint Agnes 29 09 Bloodworm 26 10 Prince & the Revolution 23 11 Simple Minds 20 12 Nitzer Ebb 19 13 CARNE 17 14 CLT DRP 17 15 Delilah Bon 15 16 The Mission 15 17 Cassyette 13 18 Desperate Journalist 13 19 Lambrini Girls 13 20 Poppy 12 21 Taylor Swift 12 22 Eville 11 23 PROJECTOR 11 24 R.E.M. 11 25 The Sisters Of Mercy 10 26 WREX 10 27 Black Rose Moves 9 28 City Dog 9 29 Infected Rain 9 30 Jesus & the Zealots 9 31 Prince & the New Power Generation 9 32 fakeyourdeath 8 33 KNIFE BRIDE 8 34 Misfits 8 35 Tigercub 8 36 Die Spitz 7 37 Stitched Up Heart 7 38 Die So Fluid 6 39 False Advertising 6 40 Frozen Soul 6 The Year to Date Pos/Artist/plays 01 (1) Kate Bush 162 (+45) 02 (06) Siouxsie & the Banshees 110 (+36) 03 (05) Lambrini Girls 90 (+13) 04 (07) Delilah Bon 87 (+15) 05 (02) Heartworms 81 (-) 06 (03) The Cramps 81 (-) 07 (04) HotWax 80 (-) 08 (09) Simple Minds 90 (+30) 09 (50) Gaye Bykers On Acid 79 (+56) 10 (28) YONAKA 76 (+39) 11 (32) Saint Agnes 64 (+29) 12 (08) Garbage 63 (-) 13 (10) The Clash 60 (-) 14 (11) Gaffa Tape Sandy 59 (-) 15 (12) The Damned 55 (-) 16 (13) L7 52 (-) 17 (21) KNIFE BRIDE 51 (+8) 18 (22) Die Spitz 49 (+7) 19 (14) Johnny Cash 49 (-) 20 (15) Joy Division 47 (-) 21 (16) Killing Joke 47 (-) 22 (17) The Lords of the New Church 46 (-) 23 (20) Ministry 45 (+1) 24 (NE) Prince 45 25 (18) Red Lorry Yellow Lorry 46 (+1) 26 (24) Bambie Thug 44 (+4) 27 (23) Manic Street Preachers 44 (+2) 28 (19) Marilyn Manson 44 (-) 29 (NE) Prince & the Revolution 43 30 (29) Bruce Springsteen 40 (+4) 31 (25) Cranes 40 (-) 32 (26) Joan Jett & the Blackhearts 40 (-) 33 (27) GWAR 38 (-) 34 (41) The Sisters of Mercy 38 (-10) 35 (34) congratulations 35 (+4) 36 (30) Joan Jett 35 (-) 37 (31) LOA LOA 35 (-) 38 (45) PROJECTOR 35 (+11) 39 (39) Rob Zombie 35 (+6) 40 (33) Faith No More 34 (-) 41 (NE) Arcade Fire 33 42 (NE) CARNE 33 43 (RE) Eville 32 (+11) 44 (35) Midnight Oil 31 (-) 45 (36) The Beatles 31 (-) 46 (NE) fakeyourdeath 30 47 (NE) Kim Dracula 30 48 (44) LN 30 (+5) 49 (37) Motorhead 30 (-) 50 (38) Fields of the Nephilim 29 (-) Dropouts Pet Shop Boys 28 (-) The Prodigy 26 (-) Depeche Mode 25 (-) Sick Joy 24 (-) Sleeper 24 (-) The Jesus & Mary Chain 24 (-) Eat Your Make-Up 23 (-) Former Entries Die So Fluid 23 (+6) Kid Kapichi 23 (-) Beastie Boys 22 (-) Goodbye Mr Mackenzie 20 (-) Shadow Project 20 (-) Beastmilk 19 (-) Chappell Roan 18 (-) Korn 18 (-) Eurythmics 17 (-) Birdeatsbaby 15 (-) Iggy Pop 15 System of a Down 15 The Libertines 15

January Jan 13 2026 - BABYTEETH, is this ok?, Carva - Green Door Store, Brighton, England Jan 24 2026 - Gaffa Tape Sandy, H_ngm_n, All Better, Ahsoka, Really Big Really Clever, Self Torque - Hope & Ruin, Brighton, England Jan 30 2026 - HotWax, SLAG, Half Happy - Kola, Portsmouth, England February Feb 04 2026 - VUKOVI, Saint Agnes, Flesh Planet - CHALK, Brighton, England Feb 13 2026 - HotWax, Jeanie and the White Boys - CHALK, Brighton, England Mar 17 2026 - YONAKA - Resident Records, Brighton, England Mar 26 2026 - Gaye Bykers On Acid, Scant Regard, Magnetic Empire - Green Door Store, Brighton, England Total sets so far - 21

Lambrini Girls of course

I could have gone on posting comments but i stuck to the bigger names and made sure to include the one driver who still has positive things to say. The rest were more of the same

It seems that reports say the FIA are acknowledging the problem and listening now to the drivers. Some of the driver's comments this season - Carlos Sainz “We, as GPDA, have warned the FIA that these accidents are going to happen a lot with this set of regulations, and we need to change something soon, if we don’t want them to happen. “It was 50G, I heard, just imagine what kind of crash you could have in Vegas, Baku, etc. “I hope it serves as an example, and the teams listen to the drivers, and not so much to the teams and some people who said the racing was okay, because the racing is not okay.” Lando Norris “Honestly some of the racing, I didn’t even want to overtake Lewis. It’s just that my battery deploys, I don’t want it to deploy, but I can’t control it,” Norris said when asked by Autosport. “So, I overtake him, and then I have no battery left, so he just flies past. This is not racing, this is yo-yoing. Even though he [Hamilton] says it’s not, it is yo-yoing.” “When you’re just at the mercy of whatever the power unit delivers, the driver should be in control of it at least, and we’re not.” “Well, the problem is, it deploys into 130R. I have to lift, otherwise I’ll drive into him, and then I’m not allowed to go back on throttle. If I go on throttle, my battery deploys, and I don’t want it to deploy because it should have cut. But because you lift and you have to go back on [throttle], it redeploys.” “There’s nothing I can do about it. There’s just not enough control for a driver, and that’s why you’re just too much at the mercy of what’s behind you. That’s just not how it should be.” Max Verstappen "It's still terrible. I don't know, if someone likes this, then you really don't know what racing is about. It's not fun at all. It's playing Mario Kart. This is not racing. Look at the racing. You are boosting past, then you run out of battery the next straight. They boost past you again. For me, it's just a joke." Lewis Hamilton "It's the best form of racing, and Formula 1 has not been the best form of racing in a long, long time. You just couldn't follow. You finally have a car, out of all the cars that I've driven in 20 years, this is the only car that you can actually follow through high speed and not completely lose everything that you have, and you can stay behind." Fernando Alonso "No fun in the race, what fun is there in overtaking by accident? The overtakes we have now are unintentional. "It's no longer about doing anything different." Charles Leclerc “I honestly cannot stand these new rules for qualifying… it’s a f**king joke!” “It’s very frustrating because, coming into Q3… at least myself and how I approach qualifying since forever, you go into that last lap and you try things that are a little bit of whatever you’ve tried before,” he said. “When you do that, the system needs to re-optimise everything while you are driving, basically. For some reason, whenever I get to Q3, I start losing time in the straights. “So I make time in the corners, I lose time in the straight. This is very frustrating, because you never really put a lap together, because you’re always compromising one thing for another, and that’s a little bit frustrating, but it’s the way it is for everybody." Oscar Piastri "At a circuit like Shanghai, it is very harvest-rich, so you don't have a problem with super clipping or needing to lift and coast, but you've got other problems because you can't harvest as much as you want everywhere. "There is nothing you can do about that as a driver, so we're kind of learning, and the difficult part is, even sometimes, if we know there's something that we want to do differently, we can't do anything because it has to be programmed in or there has to be a code change, so it is complex." George Russell "The 9MJ to 8MJ of energy was 100% the right decision. Arguably, we could have gone even further. "It would have increased lap times a little bit, maybe in the order of one second a lap, but having this really high peak top speed and then de-rating and super-clipping down to quite a slow speed into the first corner, as an example, would have been less extreme. So, I think we can afford to drop it, but generally, it was the right decision to change." Kimi Antonelli “On tracks like Monza the risk of running out of the battery already on the main straight is concrete. It will also be necessary to change the way of driving in curves, perhaps in some cases by dosing the accelerator more to be able to better manage the battery and save it. It could be possible to bring small ‘simulators’ to the track… to facilitate the training of the drivers and the habit of driving the car in a very different way. This is not the best of regulations.”

F1 got very lucky yesterday as the new rules threw up almost exactly the kind of problem that the drivers have been warning about. Had Bearman and Colapinto had that same incident at Jeddah (for example) things could have been much, much worse. We can now no longer ignore the inherent added danger that the new rules add to races. Everything bad about these rules was on show this weekend - High speed challenging corners that are now taken at far less than top speed, drivers deliberately keeping it 'slower to go faster' during qualifying, the meaningless passes (Verstappen's wave to Gasly was funny and depressing at the same time) that look exciting to the untrained eye and the super-clipping throwing in an unnecessary risk of a serious incident, all just for the show. Qualifying at Suzuka is normally brilliant but it's no longer exciting to watch the cars flat out through the Degners or 130R because they're entering the corners so slowly. Qualifying is no longer worth the time to watch. The driver skill, the total commitment making a difference has largely been lost, except perhaps at the starts. Monza is going to be awful but perhaps Monaco might work better for racing. Horner, Verstappen and others warned about this 3 years ago and Liberty preferred to court Audi and Porsche (who pulled out anyway) for marketing reasons but this is making the sport look like a pantomime circus. Fortunately driver discontent is getting more attention with the majority voicing their disapproval. On the plus side it was great to Antonelli win, even if he was very lucky and I enjoyed watching Leclerc put Hamilton back in his box this time. Without Kimi and the Ferraris the season would be even worse.

Audi team principal Johnathan Wheatley has left the team with immediate effect. Mattia Binnotto will assume his role. Wheatley is expected to be announced as taking over at Aston Martin, therefore relieving Adrian Newey of his role there. Newey's role as team principal was always intended to be temporary whilst Andy Cowell was seconded at Honda. However, the situation regarding the Honda engine has necessitated a longer term switch..

I've seen plenty of suggestions online that some drivers, particularly Max, are only complaining because they're not winning but here he is in 2023 saying exactly the same thing he is now.

FIA director Nikolas Tombazis has confirmed that no changes to the regulations will be considered until Miami, which suggests that several of the options are still on the table. How any changes might be received by Audi, Ford and Honda remain speculation for now. Additionally, the team principles' post Shanghai meeting to discuss these regulations was postponed until after the Japanese GP. However, following continued concerns, the drivers are said to have brought forward their next planned 'secret' meeting to before the next race. Following the leaked details from the previous one, according to Alex Albon, there is a broad consensus among the drivers.

Never before have the regulations so completely neutralised the driver talent factor. Teams have certainly given former champions duff cars (Hamilton, Alonso, Vettel, Villeneuve, Senna, Piquet etc) but the driver always had the ability to make a real difference. That's no longer much of a factor. Today was better than last week for sure but 90% of 'overtakes' today could be seen coming a mile of and were about deploying battery coming out of a corner rather than bravery under braking and driver skill. Cornering is way too slow with super clipping and when the computer's algorhythm is deploying your power for you we have gone too far. Hell, the software put Piastri in the wall last week because it read the situation wrong! And it undid all of Alonso's good work today. 11th to last in one lap because of the battery. There are good things in the new regs - smaller cars, tyres, the aero - but the engine rules are fundamentally flawed and were designed purely for commercial reasons, not sporting ones, just to get Audi onboard. Not sure it's a price worth paying. They should have taken their kead on this from Indycars PtP system which works really well. If the teams can out develop these rules fast we might find it works out in the end. I'm not convinced but then the newer generation of fans just seem to want to see cars passing each other with a button press. It's just doesn't fit the prestige and levrl of driving excellence that should be F1.

Conversely, I find it a great shame that one of the all time great drivers is forced to bumble about in a mid tier car that has no significant way to allow him demonstrate his skills. The new regs really do neuter the drivers ability to make the difference. Wouldn't be at all surprised to see Verstappen and Alonso quit the sport this year.