Good morning, pop-pickers! I’m revamping my semi-regular ‘Never Had a Number One’ feature. Instead of featuring a randomly chosen, #1-less, artist for a post, I’m going to start counting down the Top 40 very biggest acts that have never featured at the top of the UK singles charts.
I’m basing it on worldwide sales (in both singles and albums), and have used the ever-trusty Wikipedia as my main source. All the acts to appear in this new feature have sold at least 75 million records across the world. I’ll cover all the Top 40 in eight parts with five acts in each (plus six honorary mentions for acts who have sold loads but have never charted in the UK).
We’ll do it in ascending order, and this first part features the lowest-selling of the bunch (all around the 75 million worldwide sales mark). Starting with…
40. Barry Manilow
Biggest hit: ‘I Wanna Do It With You’ (#8, in 1982)
It is frankly amazing that this was not only Barry Manilow’s biggest UK hit, but his sole Top 10 single in Britain across an entire fifty-year career. I had never heard this song before, but I like it: unashamed soft-rock with cute retro flourishes. And a cracking sax solo. I admire the British public for making this his biggest hit, ahead of schlock like ‘Mandy’, or ‘Copacabana’, and admiration for the British public is not something I’ve had much of recently.
39. Bob Marley
Biggest hit: ‘Sun Is Shining’ (vs Funkstar De Luxe) (#3, in 1999)
A couple of surprises here too. First, that Bob Marley is so far down this list, and that his biggest UK chart hit was a dance remix released almost twenty years after his death. I did a post on Bob Marley a few years ago, so head over that way if you’d like more information on his non-charttopping career.
38. Kenny G
Biggest hit: ‘Songbird’ (#22, in 1987)
Some smooth, smooth jazz now. This list skews towards the US, because that’s where most records have historically been sold. Kenny G was remarkably, some might say bizarrely, popular in the States, and ‘Songbird’ made #4 there. Which is frankly amazing, and can only be explained by thousands of companies buying the record to use as their on-hold music. I have frequently tried to explain why some eighties music leaves me cold, and can offer no better explanation than pointing towards syrupy dross such as this.
37. Bob Seger
Biggest hit: ‘We’ve Got Tonight’ (#22, in 1995)
Another ‘much bigger in the US’ act: roots-rock icon Bob Seger. He released his first single in 1961, but had to wait fifteen years before charting in Britain, and another twenty years for his biggest hit. ‘We’ve Got Tonight’ had been recorded in 1978, and turned into a bigger hit for Kenny Rogers and Sheena Easton in 1983. A re-release in 1995 took it to #22 for Seger, and it finally made the UK Top 10 when covered by Groanin’ Ronan Keating and Lulu in 2002.
36. Alabama
Biggest hit: ‘Feels So Right’ (#91, in 1984)
More Americana now, from a band literally named after a State. Yee-haw! Alabama can count themselves lucky to feature, qualifying thanks to their solitary week’s appearance on the UK singles chart, at #91, in 1984. (KISS are the act they kept out of the Top 40, if you were wondering). They may have had little impact in Britain, but have a staggering thirty-two #1 hits on the Billboard Country Chart.
Hope you enjoyed the first part of this new feature, even if it was hardly a selection of classic records. Manilow and Marley in particular are much further down the list than I’d expected. Part 2 – very rock heavy – will be along in a couple of months!
Of course, these rankings can be disputed, and could be completely wrong. It’s near impossible to know exactly how many records an act has sold in every record shop in every country around the world, and downloads and streaming complicate things further. Wikipedia bases their ranking on ‘claimed sales’ rather than ‘certified units’, and for many artists the latter is much higher than the former. For example, the Beatles (who unsuprisingly are top of the best-sellers list) have certified sales of 296 million, but claimed sales of between 500-600 million. Michael Jackson, second on the list with 400-500 million claimed sales, actually tops the list on certified sales of 297 million.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Not a fan of Manilow’s music but he see s like a nice bloke who doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Having been a fan of Bob Seger since the mid-70s and the Night Moves album, I think he’s never really received his due in Britain. Much as I love Springsteen, I feel both are as good as each other, and Bob should have been equally successful. I do look forward to the next instalments of this feature!
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Thanks. The next installment is very rock heavy, very US leaning. Which much of the list is, as its mainly big rock acts that have sold hundreds of millions of albums without managing a number one single. But it is music that I don’t get to feature much on the regular blog. Plus, I’m sure you already know who’ll be topping the list!
When I hear “Barry Manilow”, the first thing I always think is Mr. Vernon raiding his closet.
It pleases me a lot that some very successful artists never hit number one, and some nobodies do. It makes the world more interesting.
Maolsheachlann
The only injustice here is Bob Marley not getting a number one, but he remains iconic. Sun is shining topped my personal charts, it’s an exercise in how to re-work a back catalogue well – and improve on the original recording. None of the others have topped my charts either, so I’m with the UK record-buying public there. Bazza Manilow’s Could It Be Magic is his best record, and that is ancient melody steal, and I’d also add Jim Steinman’s Read ‘Em & Weep cover, and the cheesy classic Copacabana, but his output by and large is pretty bland.
Bob Seger and Alabama I’ve never got the appeal of – We’ve Got Tonight is his best track, that went top 5 for me, but even stuff like Hollywood Nights never got a high approval rating from me. Alabama never even got a token top 10. Kenny G? Songbird, and the rest is pleasant forgettable musak. British equivalents of soft jazz were better – see Shakatak – as they weren’t quite so coma-inducing.
I have a mistrust of claimed best-sellers/certified best-sellers as returns from some parts of the globe are hazy and some time periods ditto. Then there’s records sold vs records shipped and the whole downloading era confusion over single-track vs album sales and lost sales during the period when singles weren’t even released to boost album sales in the 90’s USA to further muddy waters, not to mention ebbs and flows of record sales due to the economy and cost of records. But the US certainly historically dominated album sales especially…..
I think that’s why these figures are so vague: 500-600 million. That’s a lot of leeway! The more modern acts’ figures may well be fairly accurate, especially if they’ve been releasing in the digital era. But I doubt sales reporting was very accurate in the 50s and 60s, when they were literally ringing up a handful of record shops and asking what had been sold that week.
Marley had a posthumous number one in NZ – he was big here. I guess some of the others not charting high indicates some good taste on the part of the UK buying public?
Hey now, “Copacabana” is a goddamn classic. Awesome song. I really like Barry Manilow. Him and The Carpenters are my favourite soft rockers of the 70s. Although several of his big hits are typical corny cheesy schlocky soft rock (and there is a place for that), Manilow brought some theatrically, personality and pzzazz to his music unlike a lot of 70s soft rockers. “Can’t Smile Without You” is one of my all-time favourite songs.
Bob Seger is probably my favourite of these artists, though it’s hard competition with Bob Marley (but I’ve prefer listening to Seger than Marley most times since I’m a rock guy and Seger rocks). He’s not really a root-rocker though. He’s a heartland rocker/traditional rock and roller. I’m a little surprised Seger didn’t have at least one Top 10 and I’m surprised his highest charting single is “We’ve Got Tonight” of all songs (very good song, but I thought “Night Moves” would be his biggest hit). I prefer Bruce Springsteen by a decent bit especially as a songwriter, but Seger is probably more fun to listen to since he has a more mainstream rock sound, and as much as I love The Boss, Seger is a better singer (lots of gruff bluesy soul in his vocals).
I have never heard an Alabama song. Definitely a band where 99% their sales are from the US, and from the South/Midwest the majority of those sales too. Kenny G is just musak for younger silent-generation/baby boomers, whatever.
I genuinely know very little about Bob Seger, to the extent that I started to write a paragraph about Pete Seeger – the folk singer – before thinking it very strange that he would have been in the best-sellers list and checking again… This whole list is very US dominated, and they do like their ‘meat and potates’ rock over there, which is a category I’d maybe put Seger under.
Yeah, his style of rock soundwise is definitely meat and potatoes, but Seger’s a very good songwriter. Well, during the 70s anyway. He kinda became very basic and generic rocker after the early 80s, as most rockers do once they hit middle aged. And he actually started out during the late-60s and he had a decent sized hit in the late-60s with “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” but only became mainstream in the mid-70s after his live album Live Bullet – a fantastic live album check it out if you want an overview of Seger as an artist and it contains one of his best songs “Turn the Page” which Metallica covered on their Garage Days – and his album Night Moves became big sellers. He just kept touring and touring and touring until he hit it big. He was a guy in his early 30s when he hit in big when most rockers at the time hit it big in their late-teens/early-to-mid-20s. Perseverance paid off.
Someone once said that Bruce Springsteen is what Americans think they are and Bob Seger is who they actually are. Bruce writes songs about being a blue-collar worker working 9 to 5 in a factory and going home and having a beer and listening to rock and roll while Bob Seger is actually if that guy in those songs became a famous rockstar and musician.
I can see why Alabama didn’t do well over there…but Bob Seger? I thought he would have done much better…this song isn’t the greatest of his but still. Just curious…I bet The Band over there didn’t do well either did they?
I don’t get it…like Slade and T-Rex…great bands and some really good singles and did nothing here. On the flip side…Tom Petty and I guess Bob Seger didn’t do well over there. Were they just not pushed? I read an interview with a guy from Status Quo…he said that they stupidly (his words) didn’t get an American rep when they were hitting big in the early 70s…he said Slade didn’t either. That caused low turnouts at concerts over here. I have to wonder if it was like that in reverse?
Apart from ‘The Weight’, I don’t think the Band had much chart impact, no. I think for some British bands that the US is just so big – how do you even start to make an impact if you don’t have a record label and promoters on your side?
When I read about that…I thought that made sense. You have to have management over here that will promote your gigs…they would go to gigs and hardly anyone would be there.