UK Number One Singles: The 2000s

If the 1990s number ones can be seen as every genre sticking to their own group, then the 2000s saw genres mixing together, borrowing and swapping from each other and a blurring of the edges as to where one genre ended and another one began.

The start of the decade saw bubblegum pop acts trying to add other flavours to their sound. For their final album the Spice Girls tried to go down a more R&B route, which was similar to the path Blue and Liberty X tried from their start. The phase of nu metal saw rock music incorporating elements of hip hop. Linkin Park were probably the ones who had the most hits with that, though it was Limp Bizkit – ‘Rollin’ ‘ which got a number one. In the mid-2000s boybands started to pick up guitars, with Busted and McFly both gaining a few number ones, and in the last few of the decades rappers were releasing electro dance tracks, two notable ones being ‘Stronger’ by Kanye West and ‘Bonkers’ by Dizzee Rascal. You had indie guitar guys covering girlbands and vice versa.

There were also mash-ups and bootlegs, which were when DJs and producers mixed the backing of track of one song with the vocals of another, creating some interesting results. ‘Toca’s Miracle’ by Fragma was one which made it to number one in this form, though perhaps the most notable was ‘Freak Like Me’. Richard X took the music of Gary Numan/Tubeway Army’s ‘Are Friends Electric?’ and mixed it with the vocals of  Adina Howard’s ‘Freak Like Me’, and it was eventually released commercially as a very successful comeback single for the Sugababes.

There were some unusual pairings on number one tracks. Eminem sampling a love song by singer-songwriter Dido and reworking it into a dark tale of an obsessive fan with ‘Stan’ was one, and there was also a song created by piecing together recordings by 2Pac and Elton John – ‘Ghetto Gospel’. A more straightforward but still unlikely number one duet was rapper Nelly and country star Tim McGraw with ‘Over And Over’. In fact, pop music in general seemed to have a fluid style and a grab bag of influences. Animated act Gorrilaz and girlbands like Sugababes and Girls Aloud both incorporated lots of different styles to their sound, there were lots of reinventions, like Pink going from R&B to a rockier sound, and Nelly Furtado going from a quirky pop girl to an R&B princess. Christina Aguilera in general seemed to be trying her hands at being a pop chameleon.

The 2000s was also the decade of the reality TV winner, with many disappearing even quicker than they arrived, although a few such as Will Young made a decent career out of it. Some of the number ones of the 2000s had a flash in the pan publicity stunt feel. Despite some stiff competition from many kareoke-type cover versions, some dreary, bland forgettable ballads, some chavtacular ones like ‘Babycakes’ by 3 of A Kind, the worst has to be Crazy Frog, a infuritating, annoying overhyped ringtone that unfortunately became a big hit single as well.

The first decade of the new Millenium saw pop stars using music genres as a cocktail they wanted to mix everything into. I am interested to see how the trends of number one singles will develop from here. Here’s to the next 50 years of number one hits.

My pick of the bunch from the 2000s.

1) Arctic Monkeys – I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor

2) Coldplay – Viva La Vida

3) Spiller featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor  – Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)

4) Beyonce feat. Jay-Z – Crazy In Love

5) Eminem featuring Dido – Stan

6) Kings Of Leon – Sex On Fire

7) Lady Gaga featuring Colby O’Donis – Just Dance

8) Sugababes    About You Now

9) Evanescence – Bring Me To Life

10) Rihanna feat. Jay-Z – Umbrella

UK Number One Singles: The 1990s

The 1990s is a little harder to pigeonhole than most decades. It’s a little more fragmented. It’s not that the 1990s didn’t have identity, and it’s not that previous decades didn’t have diversity, it’s more that  popular music began to seperate into seperate niches rather than be part of one whole.

Part of this is because genres which had been bubbling under had crossed over to the mainstream. Dance/club culture had a big impact on the early half of the decade, with Snap!, ‘Killer’ by Adamski & Seal, ‘Mr. Vain’ by Culture Beat, ‘Dreamer’ by Livin’ Joy and ‘Let Me Be Your Fantasy’ by Baby D being among the strongest. In the late 1990s dance music had a slightly harder edge with Fatboy Slim, The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy topping the charts. Hip hop and rap had very much crossed over to the mainstream, to the extent that there were several million selling number one singles by rappers. These included ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ by Coolio feat. L.V, ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ by Puff Daddy & Faith Evans featuring 112, ‘Killing Me Softly’ by The Fugees, and ‘It’s Like That’ by Run DMC Vs Jason Nevins.

Indie rock saw the phenomenon of Britpop, with the often mentioned chart battle between Oasis – ‘Roll With It’ and Blur – ‘Country House’ ending with Blur beating Oasis to the top, though Oasis would go on to have more number ones overall.  The Manic Street Preachers famously got to number one with ‘If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next’, a song about the Spanish cival war. The Verve are mostly remembered for ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’, but their number one was ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’. There was also the idea of ‘pop’ as a genre of its own, that is bouncy, sugary pop, with Take That and the Spice Girls jointly having the most number ones of the decade, not to mention Britney Spears crashing straight in at number one with the often covered ‘…Baby One More Time’.

But if there’s something that does unify the whole decade, it’s that there are a LOT of songs from films, adverts and TV shows. This is why you get the likes of Mr. Blobby, the Teletubbies and Flat Eric (he was that yellow furry thing in a jeans advert. No? Well it was ridiculously overhyped at the time).  That’s not even getting to the film soundtracks. Cher’s version of ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’ was from Mermaids. Maria McKee’s ‘Show Me Heaven’ was from Days Of Thunder. ‘Unchained Melody’ was from Ghost. Bryan Adams – ‘Everything I Do I Do It For You’ from Robin Hood Prince Of Theives. Wet Wet Wet’s version of ‘Love Is All Around Me’ from Four Weddings And A Funeral, Whitney Houstons version of ‘I Will Always Love You’ from The Bodyguard, R Kelly’s ‘I Believe I Can Fly’ from Space Jam, and Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’ from Titanic. While you did get some uptempo ones, like Will Smith- ‘Men In Black’ from, er, Men In Black, and Jamiroquai getting their only number one with ‘Deeper Underground’ from Godzilla, a lot of the film themes were big bombastic ballads with a serious tone. In general, pop singers pouring their hearts out was a popular trend, a lot of them reaching number one and staying there for months. This saw the 1990s setting chart records that have at the time of writing yet to be broken. The aforementioned Bryan Adams track stayed there for 16 weeks, and the decade saw the biggest selling single ever, that is Elton John’s Candle In The Wind, released in tribute to Princess Diana after her sudden, tragic death.

The 1990s number ones were a bit of a pic’n’mix, so he’s my pick from the mixed bag.

1) Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger

2) No Doubt – Don’t Speak

3) Madonna – Frozen

4) Shakespear’s Sister – Stay

5) The Beautiful South – A Little Time

6) The Manic Street Preachers – If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

7) Olive – You’re Not Alone

8) Sinead O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U

9) The Prodigy – Firestarter

10) Spice Girls – 2 Become 1

UK Number One Singles: The 1980s

The 1980s has a bit of an advantage on other decades, in that generally the things people like about it are the same as the things people don’t like about it. I don’t much like terms such as  “guilty pleasure” and “so bad it’s good”, but the 1980s did cheesy and overblown so damn well and was proud of it. While it’s often said to have had a feeling that “greed is good”, there is a bit of a “go out and GET IT!” feel to some of these tracks, with Survivor’s ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ and Irene Cara’s ‘Fame’ being good examples of this, and the shamelessness of it goes in its favour. The bright, multicoloured style of much of the 1980s is still appealing today, although the gaudy clothes, heavy make-up and sprayed hair and perms – and that’s just the blokes – look peculiar at times.

The 1980s was a great decade for electronic music, from synthpop to the beginnings of dance/club music, and in terms of great pop songs being number one hits, it was very strong. The artist who had the most was Madonna. She would become known as the Queen of Pop, and it’s fair to say her star was born here. She has some of her very best work here, with ‘Like A Prayer’, ‘Into The Groove’ and ‘Papa Don’t Preach’. Even the ones that aren’t as well remembered these days ‘True Blue’ and ‘Who’s That Girl?’ are quite good. While he had been around for some time, this was the decade the self-proclaimed King Of Pop Michael Jackson became a superstar, with ‘Billie Jean’ arguably being the song that cemented it.If the 1970s had a large number of comedy records, the 1980s… had a few too, but what it stands out for is having a lot of charity records, with the Band Aid – ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ setting a standard that, to be honest, the others didn’t live up to.

There are some memorable one hit wonders. Some are remembered very fondly, such as ’99 Red Balloons’ by Nena and ‘Japanese Boy’ by Aneka. Then there are those which crop up regularly on those 100 Worse Hit Number Ones Of All Time list,  such as Joe Dolce Musical Theatre, St. Winifred’s School Choir and Renee & Renato. There are also a handful of tracks which you probably couldn’t get away with in any other decade, like Phil Collins covering The Supremes, Kajagoogoo and songs that were an odd combination of being schmaltzy in a rather smug way, Jim Diamond and Chris De Burgh tracks being the worst offenders.

My pick of the bunch:

1) Madonna – Like A Prayer

2) The Jam – Going Underground

3)  Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse Of The Heart

4)  The Bangles – Eternal Flame

5) Black Box – Ride On Time

6) Madonna – Into The Groove

7) Blondie – Atomic

8) The Human League – Don’t You Want Me

9)  John Lennon – Imagine

10) David Bowie – Ashes To Ashes

UK Number One Singles: The 1970s

The 1970s is often characterised as being all about punk and disco, but punk songs never quite made it to number one (although The Sex Pistols came close).  There is a fair amount of rock, but it’s the fun shiny glam rock by T-Rex, Sweet, Wizzard and Slade.  While there are a lot of disco tracks and ones which incorporated elements of disco, it doesn’t appear in the list of number ones as much as you might expect, although there are classics of the genre like ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor and ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer.

What you do get a lot of is pop music that at times gets a bit too cheesy, chirpy, twee and middle of the road. My parents teenage years were the 1970s, and whether distaste for some of these tracks is me unconciously rebelling against that or maybe it’s disappointing after the decade being built up as a golden age, or perhaps some of this stuff  is simply not my cup of tea. But the 1970s number ones don’t have the timeless quality of the 1960s ones. That’s not to say that they are bad, but they are unmistakeably 1970s. Some of it has dated badly because it is uncomfortable to listen to nowadays, the Gary Glitter ones for obvious reasons. Others are because they have a couple of lines that are very un-PC nowadays, the Johnny Mathis Christmas number one being an example.

There is a lot of hair and teeth. Big afros, long hair, moustaches, beards, and the teeth come courtesy of The Osmonds. What is surprising is the sheer amount of novelty comedy records. ‘Grandad’ by Clive Dunn, ‘Amazing Grace’ on bagpipes, The Wurzels ‘Combine Harvester’, Windsor Davies & Don Estelle, Typically Tropical. ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas is pretty good, and Benny Hill’s ‘Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)’ is funny, which is all it was intended to be.

But this decade shouldn’t be mocked. The act with most number ones in was ABBA, who showed everyone just how classy pure pop music can be. There were some seriously subversive songs reach the top spot which broke new grounds in terms of number one singles, such as ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Kate Bush, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen, ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie, ‘Are Friends Electric’ and ‘Cars’ by Gary Numan, and ‘Another Brick In The Wall Part II’ by Pink Floyd.

My pick of the bunch:

1) Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights

2) Pink Floyd – Another Brick In The Wall Part II

3) Blondie – Heart Of Glass

4) David Bowie – Space Oddity

5) ABBA – Dancing Queen

6) Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

7) Jimmi Hendrix Experience – Voodoo Child

8) Gloria Gaynor – I Will Survive

9) Barry White – You’re The First, The Last, My Everything

10) The Buggles – Video Killed The Radio Star

UK Number One Singles: The 1960s

The 1960s was a fantastic decade for pop music. Listening to tracks from this time you can hear the influence that they had on decades to come.  A lot of the songs from the 1960s have stood the test of time so well and are still played today. Motown acts like The Supremes and Marvin Gaye, bands like The Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, and singers like Dusty Springfield have clearly inspired later artists.   Future decades have actually dated worse than the 1960s. It’s an exaggeration to say that every song that made it to the top of the charts was a classic, but it comes very close. Even the novelty hits, like Lonnie Donegan’s ‘My Old Man’s A Dustman’ aren’t that bad.

The big stars of the 1960s UK chart were of course The Beatles, who the topped the charts 17 times, more than anyone else in the decade. Not only that, but a couple of artists like Joe Cocker and Marmalade got to number one with Beatles cover versions.

Towards the end, as there was more experimentation going on in ’60s music, there are some interesting, if a little bizarre songs making it to the top. 1969 has a cartoon band (The Archies),  a song about a dystopian future (‘In The Year 2525 (Exordium & Termninus)’ by Zager and Evans), a sexual French language duet (‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’) a song that would come to be associated with werewolves (‘Bad Moon Rising’) and Rolf Harris singing a song written in 1902 about the American civil war. Edit 5th of July 2014 – But after what has since come to light about Harris, that last fact is disturbing now, especially as the song is also about childhood.

I knew about Cilla Black’s ’60s popstar beginnings and that Ken Dodd has a million selling single (‘Tears’), but I was surprised that Des O’Connor had a big number one hit, and that Wendy Richard of Are You Being Served? and Eastenders fame appeared on a number one single before either of those existed (‘Come Outside’).

One of the worst songs is actually an Elvis Presley one. A lot of songs from his back catelogue that are considered classics didn’t make it to number one in the UK, and like any artist that becomes a massive star he recorded his fair share of stinkers, the dreadful ‘Wooden Heart’ definitely counting as one of them.

My favourite track is, strangely enough, the other track that is apparently a contender for Margaret Thatcher’s favourite song of all time, ‘Telstar’ by the Tornados. A gorgeous intrumental track named after the satellite, it also has the honour of being the first US number one by a British group.

My pick of the bunch:

1) The Tornados – Telstar

2) Dusty Springfield – You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me

3) The Beatles – Help!

4) The Beatles – A Hard Day’s Night

5) Rolling Stones – I Can’t Get No Satisfaction

6) Marvin Gaye – I Heard It Through The Grapevine

7) Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’

8) The Animals – The House Of The Rising Sun

9) The Supremes – Baby Love

10) Louis Armstrong – What A Wonderful World

UK Number One Singles: The 1950s

I think I can understand what older people mean when they say that music was better in “their day”. For one thing, it’s human nature. Everyone tends to believe that the culture they grew up with was THE best. But listening to the number one singles of the 1950s I can see what they mean on another level. However, it’s more because I can empathise with them rather than because I agree with them. It’s a completely different world to what I’m used to, I’m not sure how much I can relate to it and the only songs I recognise are ones that were used in adverts or from films.

Overall, they are a little… dull. I feel churlish dismissing it in such a way, especially as we’re talking about a time when my parents weren’t even born until the last few years of it, but just as a personal opinion the 1950s is the decade that I’ve always found the least appealing as far as pop music is concerned. But it would be very wrong to dimiss it outright. After all this was the birth of the pop singles chart as we in the UK would come to know it. It has some Early Installment Weirdness. For one thing, at the start it was normal for different to artists to record the same song and release it at around the same time, competing for who would have the bigger hit with it. There are also a few occasions where there was a joint number one, meaning two songs were tied for the top spot some weeks. In one case these two things overlapped, when Frankie Laine and David Whitfield’s versions of ‘Answer Me’ were at the top at the same time. It was also kind of a primordial soup stage for pop music, with rock’n’roll being the evolutionary shift that ended up setting the standard for most of what was to come.

The rock ‘n’ roll songs here are among the ones I like best from this decade, and surely everyone has room in their heart for Doris Day singing ‘Secret Love’ and ‘Que Sera Sera’. As for my least favourite, I have to go with the horribly cutesy ‘How Much Is That Doggie In The Window’ by Lita Roza.  Liza Roza herself hated it and only sang it once to record it and never again.  It’s apparently a contender for Margaret Thatcher’s favourite song of all time though.

My pick of the bunch:

1) Bill Haley & The Comets – Rock Around The Clock

2) Elvis Presley – Jailhouse Rock

3)  Jerry Lee Lewis – Great Balls Of Fire

4) Connie Francis – Stupid Cupid

5) Perry Como – Magic Moments

6) Doris Day – Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be Will Be)

7) Doris Day – Secret Love

8) Vic Damone – On The Street Where You Live

9) Kitty Kallen – Little Things Mean A Lot

10) Perez Prado – Cherry Pink (And Apple Blossom White)