This week, we’re celebrating the ‘unluckiest’ chart acts of all time. The four bands/artists with the most Top 10 hits, but without a number one…
Next up… We’re going way back in time, to a man who was present on the very first chart back in 1952.
Nat King Cole – 15 Top 10 hits between 1952 and 1987
‘Pretend’ – #2 in 1953
Pretend you’re happy when you’re blue… Nat’s silky tones wrap themselves around this self-help guide of a song. Not sure many modern-day mental health professionals would recommend simply pretending yourself happy and in love. But folks were made of sterner stuff back in the fifties, and apparently they could just sing themselves happy on demand. Cole may not have a number one single to his name, but chart-toppers like Marvin Gaye, Johnny Preston and Alvin Stardust have recorded versions of ‘Pretend’.
‘Smile’ – #2 in 1954
A year later, Nat was at it again. One word title, reaching #2, insisiting that You’ll find that life is still worthwhile, If you just smile… This one is much better known, to me at least. In fact, if someone asks you to name a ‘classic’, or a ‘standard’, then there’s a chance you might name ‘Smile’. The tune was written by none other than Charlie Chaplin, in 1936, before words were added in the fifties. It’s been covered by everyone from Michael Jackson (his favourite song, apparently), Judy Garland, Michael Buble (obviously) and Lady Gaga.
‘When I Fall in Love’ – reached #2 in 1957, and #4 in 1987
Completing his hattrick of #2s, another classy ballad. Nat King Cole did release uptempo tunes (I love ‘Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer‘), but the British public loved him best when he was crooning his heart out. This one, from the movie ‘Istanbul’, tips over into ‘boring’ territory, I’m afraid. But I’m in a minority, it seems, as it also made #4 on rerelease thirty years later. By that time Cole had been dead for two decades – he passed away aged just forty-five, from lung cancer. If he’d lived longer, who knows, he may have been even higher up on this list, or may even have featured in the main countdown…
Nat King Cole might have recorded a version of Michael Jackson’s favourite song, but up next we’ll feature a lady with a slightly more concrete link to the King of Pop…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Not quite as unlucky as all that, though, even though he never lived long enough to enjoy the fruits of his later success. ‘When I Fall in Love’ owed its 1987 top five reissue to EMI spotting a chance when they saw it, after Rick Astley’s cover version was tipped as the likely Christmas No. 1 that year, while a few years later the Allied Dunbar TV commercial helped to make ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance’ a Top 30 hit. And his 1946 recording of ‘Route 66’ still seems to be something of a standard these days, though never a UK hit. The other best-known version of that song? Strange but true…side one track one of the first Rolling Stones album.
Ah that explains the re-release of ‘When I Fall in Love’. There were so many classic re-releases around that time, and there’s usually a reason behind them… It’s unimagineable now in the download and streaming era that people actually had to wait for a vintage song to be re-released before they could get a hold of it!
That man could sing…his voice and the songs were top quality. Unbelievable he didn’t have a #1.
He could sing the phone book, as they say… Or at least they did say, when phone books were still a thing…
Yes he could…one of the smoothest voices I’ve ever heard…him and Sam Cooke
Amen…
LOL!
Billboard. Humph. Their rating systems make me crazy. Ever looked at this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_music_artists
Rihanna & Madonna are up there with The Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Queen, Led Zepplin & Pink Floyd???
And, WHO is Drake? WHO is B’z? WHO is Robbie Williams? Aretha Franklin is at the bottom of the list? I’m not a big CSNY fan but, where are they? The Billboard gods are whacked as far as I am concerned.
Haha I’m not sure you can argue with sales data… Though it has become murky since downloads and streaming, I guess.
Drake’s been huge over the past 10 years, though he’s not my cup of tea at all. Robbie Williams is one of the UK’s biggest selling acts, but he never crossed over to the States. B’zs… Yeah no idea. Turns out they are literally ‘big in Japan’! And say what you will about Madonna, but she has had forty odd years of pretty consistent hit making!
You have a point there with the streaming thing.
Madonna likes to shock. The older she gets, the weirder she gets. She doesn’t even look like herself, anymore. Her Ray of Light period, when she was raising her kids, was her most normal behavior. Music after that was her “country” side, I suppose.
I always have Max’s words in my head…”leather wings.” LOL!
Nat was a fave in our house when growing up, his silky vocal style was and is pure class. As a kid it was all about Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Summer and his on-screen duets with Stubby Kaye in the classic comedy Western Cat Ballou, still an all-time fave movie for me. I sort-of got to experience Nat in concert via his now also-sadly-late daughter Natalie Cole, who’d done dance hits in the 70’s and 80’s and switched to orchestral versions of her dads songbook in the early 90s, most notably Unforgettable as a duet, a hit in the UK and the album did well enough to tour with an orchestra for only Nat songs, she had him on video for Unforgettable.