The Guardian recently compiled a list of the 100 greatest UK number one singles. As a Pet Shop Boys fan I was pleasantly surprised that West End Girls was chosen as the chart-topper but of course it's all circumstantial; had Vienna by Ultravox, Common People by Pulp, God only knows by the Beach Boys, Born slippy by Underword (all number twos), not to mention Blue Monday by New Order (a wonderful record and I think still the best-selling 12-inch record of all time, the list would look very different. Or would it?
I was actually more intrigued by the bottom end and my first thought was, well, we've had a lot of shit number ones, maybe we are dipping into best of the worst territory. But Whigfield? Well, she was the first debut act ever to enter the charts at number one back in 1994 but other than that, er... Craig David, Justin Bieber? Really? In fairness you could argue that it's actually quite a refreshing list - no straight bats, a mixture of classics stretching back to the 1950s flirting with frantic beats post millennium - but I quickly realised that there were some significant omissions, ranging from 'brave' (Britpop) to shameful (in my opinion, obviously).
So here it is: a top 10 of what could have and/or should have been in that top 100. Admittedly it's a difficult criteria to break down. Should I go with 10 songs that people in general would likely go with and say 'oh yeah' or just songs that I particularly like and say 'screw you'. In the end I thought, sod it, just pick 10 songs and see what happens...
10. Olive: You're not alone (1997)
A classic from the eerie drum and bass, trip hop scene in the mid-1990s that spent two weeks at the top. Behind the ravey synth stabs is a touching song about longish distance love. It's been covered many times, the most recent being one of those annoying, 'tear-jerking' versions that appear in an advert or a charity plea (think also Everybody wants to rule the world by Tears for Fears, True faith by New Order, and Rick Astley's Together forever as three examples) to make people think it's the original version. Give me hands in the air every time.
9. Soul II Soul featuring Caron Wheeler: Back to life (1989)
A very weird omission, to the point where I kept having to read the top 100 in case I'd missed it. Quite an influential act, given their unique drum programming that led to commentators and musicians alike calling it 'the Soul II Soul beat' for a while. The perfect transition into the 1990s and a four-week spell at the top. They pulled out of Top of the Pops with this song after the producers insisted that Wheeler had to mime. She refused and that was that.
8. The Beautiful South: A little time (1990)
A difficult choice because people tend to associate the Beautiful South with Song for whoever (another number two hit) so would they remember this one? Well they bloody should...
I've had a slightly awkward relationship with the Beautiful South over the years. Their Carry on up the charts greatest hits album is one of the best collections of songs around but I went off them after seeing them at the Birmingham NEC back in about 1995. The songs were great but Paul Heaton came across as a bit of a twat, smoking on stage, talking smug bullshit and doing some unnecessary vocal gymnastics. Even worse, in the row in front were endless grinning couples swaying left and right and I thought, do I really want to be like them?
Ironically this is a rare song where Heaton isn't involved (other than writing it). He takes a backseat while the other two vocalists, David Hemingway and Breanna Corrigan, duet in a heartbreaker detailing the break-up of a relationship due to non-commitment. The final verse is particularly touching with Corrigan walking away with a 'here's what you could have had' type of narrative. Anger, sadness and defiance in less than three minutes. Just one week at the top.
7. Shakespeare's Sister: Stay (1992)
A shocking omission for this classic and slightly disturbing duet, which sounds like a straightforward love battle but the video suggests it might relate to a life or death situation. The first two gentle verses sung by Marcella Detroit gradually build before being gatecrashed by Siobhan Fahey's explosive entrance in verse three to bring this song fully into life. I first wondered whether it may have been omitted due to its length at number one (8 weeks) and the subsequent listener fatigue factor but Believe by Cher (7 weeks) and Queen's Bohemian rhapsody (14 weeks in total over its two separate releases) were there so no excuses.
6. Simply Red: Fairground (1995)
Once upon a time, Simply Red burst out of their coffee table cosiness and made an interesting record, a floorfiller sampling the thumping beats of Give it up by The Goodmen with an ambient soundscape. It's a shame this was more or less a one-off (the other candidate being Sunrise in 2002, which shamelessly but brilliantly sampled I can't go for that by Hall & Oates to create a fresh soulful pop song) because there was potential Everything But The Girl-esque reinvention there. Fairground shot straight in at number one (the first of four weeks) on the day I arrived at the uni digs in Nottingham.
5. Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds: Three lions (1996)
Just a year later Simply Red were at their worst with We're in this together, the 'official' Euro 96 song, so bland that chances are you've forgotten that fact; certainly the song anyway. Thank goodness for Three lions: a rare football song that - unlike most England anthems over the years - reflected the real mentality of most England fans: hope and idealism rather than expectation. 'Three lions on a shirt, Jules Rimet still gleaming, thirty years of hurt, never stopped me dreaming.' Perfect.
Funnily enough, the two songs in some senses reflected Euro 96. As great as the atmosphere was throughout the country, the football itself was average. No real classic matches and the documentaries relating to the tournament were over-romanticised with what-ifs, if-onlys and whys. There's a poem about that somewhere. Having said that, England's defeat to Germany coincided with the end of the first year at uni so there was a sort of correlation in sadness. The country out of the competition and us students knowing that the campus was no longer ours.
Of course you might be asking about the equally brilliant World in motion, which was also ignored by the Guardian, but I decided to stick to one football-based song.
4. Backstreet Boys: I want it that way (1999)
If you are allowed to include Will Young, Justin Bieber, Take That and East 17 (I do like the latter two) in the top 100 then there's no excuse for leaving this song - a guilty pleasure classic - out, to the extent that I had to check whether it actually made number one. It did, albeit for a solitary week. I actually quite liked them in general, with Quit playing games, As long as you love me and Shape of my heart being other, er, favourites. I also remember singing along to Show the meaning of being lonely every day on the way to work (alone in my car obviously). The one problem with the Backstreet Boys was that - a bit like Stock, Aitken and Waterman - the production was very similar on each song, so small doses and all that.
3. Oasis: Don't look back in anger (1996)
It's always fascinating writing these sorts of blog posts because sometimes you discover stats or information you were unaware of. For example, none of Oasis's eight chart-toppers stayed there for more than one week, which is absurd given that they were probably the biggest band in the world at that point. Chart behaviour had changed by then and there was a rapid turnover in terms of number ones but even so...
It's a good song but was always playing in some shape or form during my first year at uni and it drove me bonkers. But post-uni I once sang it, and two other Oasis songs, with a live band that included at least two of my friends in a pub owned by my best mate's family. The first two songs were disastrous, largely because the speaker monitors were facing in the wrong direction so I couldn't hear myself sing and was spending too much time fiddling around with the microphone. The reaction of the crowd was silence. This song, despite being arguably the most difficult, went bizarrely well and actually received some warm applause. We leapt off the stage: leave when you're sort of winning...
2. Ace of Base: All that she wants (1993)
In a top 100 filled with a bias towards pop gems rather than predictable singer-songwriters, the absence of this record, a three-week chart topper that is basically the dictionary definition of 'Europop' with its bouncy synth reggae beats, is another puzzle wrapped inside an enigma, etc.
I first discovered this song on MTV, which was at that point a European feed, and this and many other songs - What is love by Haddaway and 74-75 by the Connells being two other examples - were out long before the UK release. And this meant I was often bored of them by then. But in the battle of the Swedes (discounting Abba), Whigfield got the nod. Never mind.
1. Madness: House of fun (1982)
To prove I did listen to music before the 1990s, here is the biggest miss of the lot. Regarded as the best 'singles band' by some - despite this song being their only chart-topper (two weeks) - Madness were the sort of band everybody liked in some shape or form, whether the tunes, the wacky videos, or their Top of the Pops performances, my favourite being Our house, which featured a stage setting as a living room. And Madness had a darker side too with songs like Embarrassment, which confronted the issue of mixed race prejudice.
I was only five when House of fun came out and although I'm not going to pretend to analyse it in talking head format, when you are that age and a song called House of fun comes on the radio, you aren't going to ignore it are you, just like I didn't ignore Hit me with your rhythm stick. Weirdo.
