Time for another instalment of ‘On This Day’, and how the 27th May has tied in to various number one singles over the years (links to my original posts for each one).
Starting off with the record sitting atop the charts sixty-seven years ago today…
Many of the 1950s’ biggest hits were boringly straight-faced declarations of love, done in a bombastic fashion. Thank goodness for Connie Francis’s classic tale of sass and schadenfreude, then, which is one of my favourite number ones of the decade. I love the bluntness of the closing line: I’m glad that you’re sorry now… ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ isn’t a fifties original however, as it dates all the way back to 1923. What’s amazing is that 1923 to 1958 is what 1990 is to 2025… Like Sabrina Carpenter covering ‘Vogue’, or something. All of which begs a discussion as to how much popular music changed between 1923 and 1958, and how much it hasn’t changed in the past thirty-five years. A discussion for another day, perhaps. Anyway, Connie Francis is still with us, aged eighty-seven, having only retired from music in 2018.
Meanwhile on this day in 1943, ‘ar Cilla was born in Liverpool. Proud achiever of eleven top ten singles between 1964 and 1971, the first two of which gave her a brace of #1 singles, before she moved more into TV. ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ was the UK’s biggest-selling single by a female artist through the entirety of the 1960s – a fine achievement considering some of the legendary divas she was up against.
Next up, a Stones double-header. For not only was ‘Paint It, Black’ number one on this day in 1966 (meaning that the coolest comma in rock history had its moment in the sun), but on May 27th two years earlier newspapers were reporting that eleven fifth-form boys had been suspended from Woodlands Comprehensive School in Coventry for having ‘Mick Jagger haircuts’. Donald Thompson, their headmaster, decried the boys’ hair as ‘long and scruffy’, and that they could return to school only ‘with a neat Beatle cut’. We can clearly see what side of that great rock rivalry Mr Thompson was on…
Finally, on May 27th 1977, just in time for Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee, the Sex Pistols released the number one that never was. In my Should Have Been a #1 post on ‘God Save the Queen’ I erred on the side of caution, not committing to sensationalism without proper evidence like a proper, upstanding blogger. This time, though, I’m just going to come out and say it: ‘God Save the Queen’ was the best-selling single the week of the Silver Jubilee, but was kept from the top by some very selective book-keeping. (For one week only, records bought in a shop owned by the label they were released under didn’t count towards the chart. It’s as if they knew Virgin’s Sex Pistols might sell quite a few singles in Virgin Megastores…)
It seems I’m not alone, as many sources have retrospectively awarded the Sex Pistols a number one, and the furore over it now seems incredibly quaint. How society has changed in forty-eight years… And hey, being blocked from number one by the establishment is way more punk than actually getting there. I’m sure Johnny Rotten and co. weren’t at all bothered.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
The God Save the Queen controversy doesn’t seem quaint to me at all. I think it’s disgusting that they spoke about their monarch like that and wouldn’t have been too upset if they’d been chucked in the clink.
Maolsheachlann
Well, I’d say that’s pretty much the reaction they wanted when they released the record… Is it that bad? ‘She ain’t no human being…’ Sure she heard worse in her time.
Saying anybody isn’t a human being is pretty horrible. Saying it of your country’s monarch, who has a particular claim of respect because she represents your nation’s traditions and history, just seems really cheap and sensationalist, as you suggested. How far do you go for a reaction and is it justified just to shift units?
The claim that the UK was a “fascist regime” at this time is obviously poppycock.
And besides all this, whatever one thinks of the monarchy (and I am all for it), everybody acknowledges that Queen Elizabeth II was a devoted, hardworking, upstanding woman– she didn’t deserve an attack like this.
Maolsheachlann
Of course it’s all nonsense really, the ‘fascist regime’ and the ‘ain’t a human being’. It’s just provocative and silly. ‘No Future’ was the song’s original title, and that seems a little more of a sensible statement about society and the economy in the ’70s. Making it about the Queen was for publicity, and it worked.
I respected the late Queen, though my respect doesn’t extend to many of the royal family’s younger generations. And I’ll stand by GSTQ sounding quaint now, considering there was a Top 10 single a couple of years ago calling Boris Johnson a ‘c*nt’…
It’s my birthday today and it’s nice to know that I share a birthday with Paint It, Black and God Save The Queen.
Cilla not so much… 😉
Cilla’s not a bad pop star to share a birthday with! I’ve got the aforementioned Johnny Rotten, and Justin Timberlake, sharing mine.
I do like the way these ‘On this day’ posts straddle the decades all at once and bring such a varied batch of oldies together. My initial thought about ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ was that it must have been quite ahead of its time even in 1958, let alone 1923, when most songs about romance were of the ‘moon in June’ variety, as opposed to a ‘yah boo, you had your way, now you must pay’ wag of a stern finger tune. (If you get my drift). Well done Cilla for getting in the record books, the Stones for trendsetting haircuts (and crikey, their hair was much longer three years later), and the Sex Pistols for their pinching that classic rock’n’roll riff from The Move and Eddie Cochran. It amused me to read recently that Glen Matlock (OK, he’d been sacked and replaced by Sid Vicious by then, but still got his name on the label for co-writing the song) later bumped into Roy Wood somewhere and admitted he nicked the two-note bit from ‘Fire Brigade’. ‘I did notice,’ was Roy’s deadpan reply.
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Haha I like that story. But then did Roy Wood, or even Eddie Cochrane, invent that guitar lick? Sounds like the sort of thing that had been arround since someone first picked up a guitar.
I was thinking the same thing about Who’s Sorry Now sounding lyrically quite modern for the ’20s. But actually, things were a bit more permissive in the 20s and 30s than in the more Conservative post-war era: like the pre-code movies, Mae West, dirty blues records and all that. So perhaps it’s more surprising for the 50s than it is for the 20s, really.
My dad had a bunch of Connie Francis albums where she sang in Italian. I guess she was very popular in my grandparents house because of that.
That’s cool. Yes, she recorded a lot in Italian. ‘Mama’ got to #2 in the UK, and is largely sung in Italian, I believe.
good varied choice there! Connie francis is back in vogue right now, Pretty Little Baby has been big on TikTok last few weeks and is in the UK sales/download chart. OK a couple of hundred downloads will get you high in that chart, but it’s Connie’s first appearance! Cilla in the 60’s was fab, Anyone Who had A Heart is the definitive version still, The Stones’ most-popular record (justifiably) and the Sex Pistols record which I never got to hear at the time. I have the album and I have to say I still think GSTQ is over-rated, the other singles were way better, especially Anarchy In The UK, now that was a statement of intent if there ever was one! GSTQ was more opportunistic, but I do believe in facts and if facts say it was the best-selling record then Rod’s dull double-header should have been knocked down a spot!
Yes I think Anarchy in the UK is their crowning achievement, while Pretty Vacant is also a better punk single that GSTQ. But for sheer provocativeness, which after all was the Sex Pistols’ whole point, it’s hard to look past it.
A diverse group here. You know which one I love…Paint It Black which I think came from a period of the Stones that is their most overlooked. I love their pop/rock period sometimes better than their blues/rock period…Brian Jones added a lot to that band. Cilla Black…she did have a really good voice.
The Stones in the 60s is all good. I don’t think they put a foot wrong. Even their short lived psychedelic phase was decent, though you can tell it wasn’t really their thing.