Friday 25 January 2013

Numbers up to 1

OK, bowing to popular demand, I'm going to take another little break from writing about individual songs, as I've conducted another exhaustive study so that you don't have to.

This one is extremely satisfactory, actually. Much more so than pretending I'd heard every album ever in order to list the Greatest Albums of All Time. In this case, I was inspired by looking up recent hits when doing my post on 'With Every Heartbeat' by Robyn. I realised that, though I, like a lot of people my age, have become dismissive of the pop charts and of what a Number 1 single is worth, there were still plenty of Number 1s of the last 10 years that I like in some way.

And the Number 1 single really is the definition of the pop side of pop music - it is the song that most people in the country are into, at that given point, like it or not. And, you know what, Britain's taste really is not that bad.

Like I said, this study was much more satisfactory than the one on Great Albums. There are an infinite number of albums, there have been just over 1200 UK Number 1 singles since the dawn of the chart in the early 50s, and I've heard the vast majority. So I can decide and I can assess. I was born in 1978 so some of my understanding of before that might be limited, but I have at least read an awful lot about popular culture before that. My understanding of the context of those songs may not be perfect, but it's not worthless.

So, I really spent my time on this one. I went through every single Number 1 and chose those ones I liked or knew were really worth something - I tried to be as objective as possible (oh i know i always say that!). I ended up with about 240 i would assess - pleasingly, there's a pretty good spread across the decades. You might say there shouldn't be, that Number 1s in the 60s and 80s were way better and more meaningful than they are now, which is kind of true, but the thing is there is a much quicker turnover over the last 20 years or so, so there are simply more to choose from, so no wonder there were still a few good ones in there.

I decided upon my criteria, and again, I think the criteria for something like this can be more satisfactory than for what is a great album. I called them
IMPACT
POPULARITY
X FACTOR
CATCHINESS
ARTISTRY
but those words incorporate various other things, so a song's impact can be very different from its popularity (eg Everything I Do I Do It for You). "X-Factor" left some room for personal taste, i was just thinking about things that might make a song special to my ears.

An apology in advance - my main aim in this was to avoid having a list of "The Nation's Greatest Number 1" which had 'Bohemian Rhapsody' near the top. Here, for example is the recent official poll. But I failed, as you will see. Despite having not been able to suffer my way through 'Bohemian Rhapsody' for the best part of 20 years (after a brief, infantile love for it) I could not, in all conscience, ignore its claims. And if anyone should complain, heaven forfend, that personal prejudice has led to a pretty low showing from Elvis, it's in fact that, surprisingly, a lot of the really great Elvis songs (Hound Dog, Heartbreak Hotel, Love Me Tender, Suspicious Minds) didn't get to Number 1.

Anyway, my results may disappoint, who knows. I'm going to list a full 100 (because there really have been a lot of good ones, and it would be churlish not to), and again, where songs have scored the same, I'll just use my own taste to separate them.

The score is out of 100, and the top score was 95. Here we go


1 Billie Jean - Michael Jackson
2 Crazy in Love - Beyonce featuring Jay-Z
3 Good Vibrations - Beach Boys
4 Hey Jude - Beatles
5 Umbrella - Rihanna featuring Jay-Z
6 Bohemian Rhapsody - Queen
7 Satisfaction - Rolling Stones
8 Going Underground - The Jam
9 Paint it Black - Rolling Stones
10 Stand and Deliver - Adam and the Ants
11 Can't Get You Out of My Head - Kylie Minogue
12 Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
13 Somebody That I used to Know - Gotye featuring Kimbra
14 You Really Got Me - The Kinks
15 Rock Around the Clock - Bill Haley and the Comets
16 Stan - Eminem
17 Day Tripper/We Can Work it Out - The Beatles
18 Liike a Prayer - Madonna
19 Dancing Queen - ABBA
20 Great Balls of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis
21 That'll Be the Day - Buddy Holly
22 Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie
23 Crazy - Gnarls Barkley
24 Ticket to Ride - The Beatles
25 Come on Eileen - Dexys Midnight Runners
26 All the Things She Said - TATU
27 Back for Good - Take That
28 You've Lost That Loving Feeling - The Righteous Brothers
29 She Loves You - The Beatles
30 Do They know it's Christmas - Band Aid
31 Lose Yourself - Eminem
32 Baby One More time - Britney Spears
33 Don't You Want Me - The Human League
34 A Hard Day's Night - The Beatles
35 Town Called Malice - The Jam
36 The Promise - Girls Aloud
37 Someone Like You - Adele
38 Video Killed the Radio Star - Buggles
39 Yellow Submarine/Eleanor Rigby - The Beatles
40 I Bet You Look Good .... - Arctic Monkeys
41 I Feel Love - Donna Summer
42 Independent Women - Destiny's Child
43 Ghost Town - The Specials
44 Cars - Gary Numan
45 Prince Charming - Adam and the Ants
46 It Wasn't Me - Shaggy featuring Rikrok
47 Bleeding Love - Leona Lewis
48 Call Me Maybe - Carly Rae Jepsen
49 It's a Sin - Pet Shop Boys
50 A Brimful of Asha - Cornershop
51 Ignition - R, Kelly
52 With Every Heartbeat - Robyn featuring Kleerup
53 Two Tribes - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
54 Killing in the Name - Rage Against the Machine
55 Toxic -Britney Spears
56 Under Pressure - Queen and David Bowie
57 I Don't like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats
58 Heart of Glass - Blondie
59 Patience  - Take That
60 Mr Tambourine Man - The Byrds
61 West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
62 Sound of the Underground - Girls Aloud
63 If This Ain't Love - Spiller featuring Sphie Ellis Bextor
64 Three Lions - Lightning Seeds 
65 Geno - Dexys Midnight Runners
66 Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me) - Steve Harley etc
67 A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum
68 Leave Right Now - Will Young
69 Jailhouse Rock - Elvis Presley
70 Firestarter - The Prodigy
71 Country House - Blur
72 Space Oddity - David Bowie
73 Hit Me With your Rhythm Stick - Ian Dury and the Blockheads
74 Nothing Compares to U - Sinead O'Connor
75 Stay - Shakespears Sister
76 Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade
77 Relax - Frankie Goes to Hollywood
78 Careless Whisper - George Michael
79 Gangsta's Paradise - Coolio featuring LV
80 Imagine - John Lennon
81 I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor
82 Waterloo - Abba
83 Down Under - Men at Work
84 I Feel Fine - The Beatles
85 The Drugs Don't Work - The Verve
86 Sunday Girl - Blondie
87 Vincent - Don McLean
88 Metal Guru - T.Rex
89 Cum on feel the Noize  - Slade
90 What a Wonderful World - Louis Armstrong
91 Let's Dance - David Bowie
92 MMMBop - Hanson
93 Every Breath you Take - The Police
94 Help  - The Beatles
95 Things Can Only Get Better - D.Ream
96 Tainted Love - Soft Cell
97 Forget You - Cee-Lo Green
98 Everything I Do (I Do it for You) - Bryan Adams
99 Bad Romance - Lady Gaga
100 Without You - Harry Nilsson

 You all know most of those, don't you, so I don't have to provide links to them, do I? Just missing out on the Top 100 were some real crackers like Get Off My Cloud, Don't Look Back in Anger, Uptown Top Ranking, House of Fun ... so I was frankly very tempted to fiddle my scoring.

Anyway, any injustices in there? There could be even more Beatles in a way. I love late Beatles hits like 'Get Back' and 'The Ballad of John and Yoko' but perhaps they're less iconic as Number 1s.

I'm going to try and think of more lists/studies I can set my geeky mind to. I know that that's not what music is about, but hopefully it's informative and gets your own mind working a little.

2 comments:

  1. One likes to imagine there is, somewhere, a truly objective list of these things - we just need to find it. But in terms of objective measures, did you factor in details such as number of copies sold, or number of weeks at No 1 / in the charts at all? In themeselves, these things aren't entirely objective, either, but I find when making lists its nice to be able to include independent stats that can add to the surprise at the final reckoning.

    Irrespective of this, what a great list. It feels true and right in many ways, especially in that it seems at a glance to have reasonably equal numbers of entries across the decades.

    Also it should be made available as a multi-cassette album that you can't buy in the shops, call this number NOW album.

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  2. Hello - yes, i did directly factor those things in - that's kind of why Bohemian Rhapsody was such an unstoppable beast - that fact that I loathe it became almost irrelevant in the face of both its influence (first video etc) its enduring love from drivetime rock fans and, most of all, that it was Number 1 for so long.
    Of course, there were big Number 1s that didn't get a look in, like the Elton John, Love is All Around, Is This the Way to Amarillo, etc, but i think i can stand by my executive decision!

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