2005 #1s

1006. ‘Over and Over’, by Nelly ft. Tim McGraw

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In this post-Lil Nas X world, mixing country and rap together is nothing new. But I recall this next number one feeling like a bit of a novelty at the time…

Over and Over, by Nelly (his 3rd of four #1s) ft. Tim McGraw (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 27th February – 6th March 2005

Not that ‘Over and Over’ is particularly ‘country’. It’s a gentle pop song, with a lilting guitar. The most country thing about is Tim McGraw’s raspy drawl, and the Stetson he wears in the video. At the same time, this isn’t particularly a rap track either. Nelly even sings. Sort of. So, having called this ‘country rap’, in the end we’re left with more of a smooth R&B record.

That novelty feeling is about the only thing I recall about this song, as it is relatively unmemorable. It starts off lowkey, with both men singing like they’re babysitting and are just getting the kid off to sleep, but never really picks up. It’s fine. It’s a nice enough slow jam. I’m just not sure why this had the legs to make it to #1. Was it the lack of competition, and low sales? Was it Nelly’s star power? Was it said novelty factor? Whatever it was, Nelly becomes the third act in a row to enjoy a chart-topping spring follow-up to an autumnal lead single #1.

Looking into it a little more, country rap (also known, quite wonderfully, as ‘hick-hop’) had originated back in the late ‘90s. So perhaps we can view a record like this as being a breakthrough moment for the genre, with it making #1 in the UK and Australia, and #3 in the US. It is interesting that it made the top in Britain, and not America, but – like reggae – C&W has been an intermittently popular genre in the UK since the charts began.

Not only did this blending of genres lead to some of the huge country-rap hits of recent years, it also led to ‘bro-country’, in which male country stars started incorporate rapping and syncopated beats into songs about trucks, guns, beer and the like. Tim McGraw himself could be seen as a forefather of that genre. Bro-country (thankfully) hasn’t made much of an impact in the UK charts, while this is by far the biggest of Tim McGraw’s British hits, and the only one to ever make the Top 40.

This was also the tail-end of a career high for Nelly who, although he would return to the Top 10, and to #1 one final time, wouldn’t manage hit singles quite as consistently with his subsequent albums. He was always an interesting rapper, one who seemed a bit removed from the bigger, more posturing personalities of say 50 Cent or Jay-Z, and one who seemed happier to embrace a pop sound on his records. Which is probably why he has several more #1s than those more illustrious hip-hop stars.

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1005. ‘Get Right’, by Jennifer Lopez

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Like ‘Goodies’ a few weeks earlier, this is a song I remember from the time, but that I haven’t properly heard since it left the charts…

Get Right, by Jennifer Lopez (her 2nd of three #1s)

1 week, from 20th – 27th February 2005

Unlike ‘Goodies’ however, it is not with fondness that I remember ‘Get Right’. I remember it being distinctly irritating. Perhaps, more than twenty years on, it is time to reassess?

But the high-pitched, looped horn riff is just as confronting as I remember it. It sounds like the mating call of an exotic bird. Not being nineteen, and not being determined to have strong opinions on anything and everything, I can sort of admit that it has a wonderful funkiness to it. It makes you move. Though it could have done with occasionally changing key, or varying notes slightly. Especially by the time the ‘solo’ comes along, and just it’s twenty seconds straight of the same bloody horns.

Not that the horns don’t have an illustrious history to them, as a sample from ‘Soul Power ‘74’, by Maceo & the Macks, AKA James Brown’s backing band. But the riff that makes up the entirety of ‘Get Right’ is a tiny fraction of the free-styling saxophone on that record, which had been trimmed to the sample used here by Usher, in an unreleased track named ‘Ride’.

What of J-Lo, belatedly appearing on her second UK number one, after so many of her classic early ‘00s hits had failed to make top spot? I’d say this song could be sung by anyone, really. While not a spectacular vocalist, I think Lopez is someone whose voice can be easily recognised. But not on this one, for some reason. She even sounds a little strained, as if maintaining this sort of intense funk for four minutes is beyond her.

So, consider this record reassessed. Partly, at least. I like it more than my teenage self did, though would still label it as something I’d have to be in the mood for. And there are certainly better J-Lo tunes that didn’t make it to #1. But her longevity is impressive, with three chart-toppers stretched out over a decade or more.

As I mentioned, this isn’t the first forgotten number one of 2005, and we’ve barely made it to spring. ‘Goodies’ was a nice rediscovery, as was ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own’, which would surely be a great Pointless answer when listing U2 #1s. Once again we have to recognise that poor record sales were allowing for some interesting chart-toppers. Is this the most forgotten period in UK chart history? In fact we’re in the middle of a run of eleven one-weekers – the second longest such run in chart history – and I’d also challenge anyone to hum the chorus of our next number one…

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1004. ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own’, by U2

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U2 end a seventeen-year chart-topping career with an understated, and perhaps forgotten, little gem.

Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own, by U2 (their 7th and final #1)

1 week, from 13th – 20th February 2005

Understatement is all relevant, of course, and for many acts this would count as a bombastic power-ballad. By U2’s standards though, it is gentle and stripped-back. It had been written around five years earlier, about Bono’s father, who died from cancer in 2001. (The line: It’s you when I look in the mirror, And it’s you when I don’t pick up the phone…taps so sharply into many father-son relationships.) According to the band, the song went through a lot of workshopping, away from a traditional Irish sound to something more contemporary. And I’m glad they spent the time to bring it to fruition.

It still has a folksy feel, especially in the intro, which reminds me of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Man of the World’. Bono’s vocals are impressive – possibly his best performance on any of their chart-toppers – especially in the middle-eight, in which the song switches to something more predictably soaring. The Edge’s guitar chimes in trademark fashion, and we get briefly swamped in over-production, before ending on a sparser note.

I suppose it would be a lot to expect the biggest band in the world™ not to give in to that glossy sheen, when they have unfettered access to the best equipment and producers, but I would be interested to hear an even more restrained version of this ballad. Not that this gets spoiled by the production, not at all, but it’s a tempting thought. We have the low sales climate of early 2005 to thank for U2 enjoying two #1s from the same album for the first time, and their first chart-topper that isn’t a lead single. Not for the first time in the last couple of years a grim situation for the record industry has led to some interesting chart hits. This is also one of the longest-titled number one singles, from one of the shortest-titled chart-topping acts.

Actually, despite often being down on U2, and Bono in particular, I have enjoyed almost all of their six number ones, with one notable exception. Not counting their feature on ‘Take Me to the Clouds Above’, I would rank them thusly, in ascending order. ‘Beautiful Day’ >>>>>>>>>>>> ‘The Fly’ > ‘Discotheque’ > ‘Sometimes You Can’t Make It on Your Own’ > ‘Desire’ > ‘Vertigo’. Because, at the end of the day, rock bands are at their best when they rock.

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1003. ‘Like Toy Soldiers’, by Eminem

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In which Eminem redeems himself after the execrable ‘Just Lose It’. A bit, at least…

Like Toy Soldiers, by Eminem (his 6th of eleven #1s)

1 week, from 6th – 13th February 2005

Things I like about this song are: A) The clever title. It is ‘like’ ‘Toy Soldiers’, the 1989 #5 hit for Martika that it samples. While Eminem’s acolytes that he refers to in the lyrics are like toy soldiers for him, in his many beefs with various other rappers. B) The sample I think is inspired, and it lends a soaring quality to the chorus. C) The added marching drumbeat, and the fact that Martika’s voice is pitched slightly faster and higher than the very plodding, power-ballad original. It improves it, in my opinion.

The fact that it’s taken six chart-toppers for Eminem to make such prominent use of a sample is surprising, given hip-hop’s love for ‘borrowing’ beats. Musically some of Eminem’s #1s have been a little lightweight, even a bit rinky-dink (‘Without Me’ is great, but it’s all about the lyrics not the production); while this one is way more impressive musically than lyrically.

So yes, what I don’t particularly like about this record are the lyrics. Not because they’re offensive, or provocative. More because they’re boring. They’re a five minute explanation of a disagreement between Eminem, 50 Cent, and Ja Rule. As a teacher, it sounds a lot like hearing a naughty kid try trying to explain why something isn’t their fault and how life is unfair: We actually tried to stop the 50 and Ja beef from happenin’, Me and Dre had sat with him, Kicked it and had a chat with him, And asked him not to start it, He wasn’t gonna go after him, Until Ja started yappin’ in magazines how we stabbed him…

I mean. I really couldn’t care less. Grown men – very rich grown men – acting the fool like kids in a playground. Anyone over the age of fifteen shouldn’t be allowed to have ‘beef’ with anyone. Grow up. By the end of the song, Eminem is calling for a truce in whatever rap battles have been going on, how he’s going to be the bigger man. And yet. Any five-second Google search throws up any number of post-2005 beefs that Eminem has rapped about.

Because, in hip-hop, beefing sells. All the posturing, the not backing down, the having your homies’ backs, is a huge part of the genre’s image. And I don’t want to sound too much like a middle-aged white guy (which I unmistakeably am), but I’ve never really seen the appeal of this side of rap music. And it leads to lop-sided songs like this, where I grow bored in the middle of every verse, as Eminem drones on about how nothing’s his fault, waiting for the far better chorus to swing by again.

‘Like Toy Soldiers’ brings to an end Eminem’s imperial phase. Seven #1s in less than five years, yet he won’t score another number one as lead artist until 2013. He won’t be absent from the charts – and in that time he’ll score one of the biggest non-chart topping hits of all time – but a mix of time away due to addiction and uneven output will mean he isn’t as untouchable as he once was.

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1002. ‘It’s Now or Never’, by Elvis Presley

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At the end of my last post, I claimed that ‘It’s Now or Never’ wasn’t particularly good. Which was a bit harsh, I suppose…

It’s Now or Never, by Elvis Presley (his 21st and final #1)

1 week, from 30th January – 6th February 2005

The problem I have with ‘It’s Now or Never’, both in its original eight-week 1960 run at number one and now, is that there are better Elvis songs which deserve to have been his biggest selling hit. ‘It’s Now or Never’ is catchy, eminently singable, and Elvis belts it out like no other; but it is essentially a novelty. It is an old Italian melody, ‘O Sole Mio’, tarted up as a pop song. It is better remembered nowadays as a Cornetto advert.

It also marked the launch of Elvis Mk II: the operatic, corny movie Elvis, who was being rinsed for every cent by Colonel Parker. Which in hindsight isn’t something to be celebrate. However, it also launched probably the most successful chart-topping run of any artist in British chart history. In just over two years (November 1960 to December 1962), Elvis scored nine chart-toppers, and racked up forty-one weeks in pole position. I’m sure I contended with all that in my original post on the song, published back in 2018. 

I’m also a bit down on ‘It’s Now or Never’ because this rerelease ensured that it was my nineteenth birthday #1. Which means it stands out like a sore thumb in my ‘Birthday #1s’ playlist… It’s far from being my worst birthday #1 – and maybe one day I’ll do a post on them – but I’d rather have had ‘Jailhouse Rock’ or ‘One Night’. Or even better, ‘Goodies’: an actual contemporary piece of music from January 2005.

‘Goodies’ withstanding, Elvis came very close to replacing himself at number one three times, with four consecutive number ones. Which it goes without saying would have been a record. In any case he became only the third artist to replace themselves at #1, after the Beatles and a posthumous John Lennon. But as winter turned into spring, and singles sales slowly picked up, none of his subsequent thirteen re-releases troubled top spot.

In fact, I remember at the time it was quite an interesting way to judge the overall health of the singles market. Assuming the Elvis rereleases always sold just over the 20k mark, the more singles that finished above him meant a more robust chart. From memory, I think the lowest he charted that spring was #5.

Here then ends the ultimate chart-topping career. Twenty-one of the buggers. Yes, some will complain that he has been helped by remixes and releases, and that without them he’d have remained tied with the Beatles on seventeen. But we have to treat these releases as ‘new’ #1s, with new packaging and new catalogue numbers. As we did when ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘My Sweet Lord’ returned to the top. It’s been an interesting interlude, this Elvisenaissance, that’s for sure. But as much as I do love a bit of Elvis, I’m glad we’ll be returning to more contemporary #1s after this. 

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1001. ‘Goodies’, by Ciara ft. Petey Pablo

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On to the next one thousand number ones, then. And after two weeks of Elvis oldies at the top of the charts, we are happily dragged back into the 21st century with this one.

Goodies, by Ciara ft. Petey Pablo (their 1st and only #1s)

1 week, from 23rd – 30th January 2005

It is a startlingly modern record, one of those that feels like a fast-forward button being pressed. ‘Goodies’ is crunk, or crunk&B, making this the second such chart-topper after Usher’s ‘Yeah!’ But whereas that song was very pop, with a dumb, hooky chorus; ‘Goodies’ makes the listener work a bit more hard to reveal its appeal.

At first it is sparse, with a Lil’ John-a-like rapping over an arrestingly annoying high-pitched whistle riff. It is not an intro that makes friends. But slowly elements are added: Ciara’s breathy vocals, the stabbing synths (the one element of the song that ties it to ‘Yeah!’), a twangy guitar line, and it develops into a fine pop song.

There are enough weird bits here for three or four songs, and it potentially could have been messy, but everything hangs together well. I particularly like the twangy riff (always a sucker for a guitar, whatever the genre) and the bridge, where Ciara switches to an impressively operatic falsetto. And Petey Pablo is an upgrade on Lil John: same southern drawl, less inane shouting.

It’s odd. ‘Goodies’ is not the type of record that is guaranteed to be a hit with me, but I remember it fondly from the time and listening to it now I am coming to the opinion that it is a lost classic. Maybe I’m just glad to have a proper pop song to write about, not the charity singles/X factor dross/Elvis re-releases that we’ve contended with in recent weeks, but I do think ‘Goodies’ deserves to be as well, if not better, remembered than our other crunk #1. It conjured up a steamy, southern US summer’s day in gloomy British January. And, for those who complain about the usual sexualisation found in this type of music, Ciara here offers a more wholesome alternative: If you’re lookin’ for the goodies, Keep on lookin’, ‘Cause they stay in the jar…

This was nineteen-year-old Ciara’s debut and, in the UK at least, biggest hit. It was the first of her five Top 10s, though she hasn’t particularly troubled the charts since the end of the ‘00s. In the US she remains more of a name, releasing her latest album just last year. For Petey Pablo meanwhile, this was by far his biggest British hit, his music career being interrupted by a spell in jail for bringing a stolen gun onto a plane.

‘Goodies’ was a day away from being my nineteenth birthday number one, and a good birthday chart-topper it would have been. Instead, I had to settle for yet another Elvis re-release, and not even a particularly good one…

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1000. ‘One Night’ / ‘I Got Stung’, by Elvis Presley

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(Drumroll please…) So, after fifty-three chart years, and eight and a half blog years, we arrive at the one thousandth UK number one single…

One Night / I Got Stung, by Elvis Presley (his 20th of twenty-one #1s)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd January 2005

And it’s a forty-six year old song, by a long-dead singer, setting a new record for the lowest sales of all time… 

At least, that’s one way to look at it. You could also spin it as a rocking classic, by the biggest star the world has ever seen, taking advantage of a time of year when sales are traditionally at their lowest to make history. Either way, it’s clear that many interesting plot points converge here. And that’s before we get to Elvis extending his all-time record of chart-toppers to twenty, three ahead of the Beatles.

As with ‘Jailhouse Rock’, perhaps the least relevant plot point is how this record sounds, because this record wasn’t sitting at the top of the charts for musical reasons. This was bought by collectors, not by new fans discovering Elvis’s music for the first time. You do wonder how the OCC felt about this. On the one hand, it was a newsworthy story: Elvis back on top for this big anniversary, which probably garnered more attention than if it had been, say, Steve Brookstein who claimed number 1000. On the other, they may have been embarrassed that the casual chart-follower, interest piqued by this landmark moment, would find Elvis on top in 2005, and wonder how the charts could still claim to have any relevance.

For what it’s worth, I’ve always liked ‘One Night’, one of Elvis’s last rockers before joining the army. Without checking what I wrote in my original post, I like its bawdy slowness, its very bluesy riff, and the fact that Elvis is on tip-top vocal form. ‘I Got Stung’ is more throwaway, though it barrels along at a hundred miles an hour, and opens with Elvis yelping the line Holy smokes and snakes alive! Great stuff, all in all.

So, fairly or unfairly, appropriately or not, Elvis scored Britain’s 1000th number one. It’s taken me eight and a half years to get this far, and I’d like to thank each and every one of this blog’s followers, readers and commentors for making the journey a pleasure. Whether this is the first post of mine that you’re reading, or whether you’ve been around since the Tennessee Ernie Ford days, you make this worthwhile. And while I do try to keep things strictly musical, I’d like to mention how keeping this blog since 2018 has seen me through various ups and downs, in my personal life and in the world as a whole, and has genuinely helped to keep me sane. Listening to a number one single, be it good, bad, or indifferent, on a loop and trying to craft a five-hundred word post about it is as close as I can get to mindfulness.

The most recent new UK #1 (Taylor Swift’s ‘I Knew It, I Knew You’) was the 1456th chart-topper, and if I keep my current pace up I should reach that song in late 2030. I hope you’ll all still be around then, if only because I have strong feelings about Tay Tay that the world definitely needs to hear…

999. ‘Jailhouse Rock’, by Elvis Presley

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From one of the most forgotten male chart-toppers in Steve Brookstein, to the ultimate male chart-topper… Elvis Aaron Presley.

Jailhouse Rock, by Elvis Presley (his 19th of twenty-one #1s)

1 week, from 9th – 16th January 2005

For what would have been Elvis’s seventieth birthday, on January 8th 2005, an ambitious (and money-spinning) project was announced by the holders of his back-catalogue, BMG Records. They would re-release each of the King’s eighteen UK number ones, week by week, for what would ultimately set collectors back around eighty quid. ‘All Shook Up’, his first chart-topper in 1957, came first, but was chart ineligible due to costing a tenner and coming with a commemorative, limited edition box in which to store all the other singles.

So it fell to ‘Jailhouse Rock’, Elvis’s second number one back in January 1958 (the first single to ever enter the UK charts at #1) to chart first… with the lowest sales ever recorded for a number one single to date: 21,262 copies.

Needless to say, this record was lucky to make number one. And lucky with the fortuitous fact that Elvis’s birthday fell in January, when sales are historically at their lowest anyway. Yet, can you imagine any other artist managing this? Re-releasing eighteen ancient singles and having them all chart in the Top 5, three of them returning to number one? After dominating the charts like nobody ever has, before or after, in the late fifties and early sixties; The King was back to dominate them again.

What of the actual music? Well, of course, ‘Jailhouse Rock’ is a classic. But there seems to be no point analysing it musically in the context of 2005. It was a forty-five year old rock and roll record re-emerging in an age of reality TV pop, tacky dance, and US hip-hop&B. I’ll refer you instead to my original post. I’m sure I was complimentary, but can’t really remember as I wrote it in 2018 (!) How time flies…

Next up, I’m going to bring the usual recap forward by one. And after that’s done, we can properly start the 1000 Number Ones festivities. Watch this space!

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998. ‘Against All Odds’, by Steve Brookstein

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2005 begins with what should have been the final chart-topper of 2004, and that year’s Christmas #1…

Against All Odds, by Steve Brookstein (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 2nd – 9th January 2005

On the one hand you can feel a teensy bit sorry for Steve Brookstein, because a couple of years later winning X Factor would be a sure-fire way to have a genuinely massive million-seller, a Christmas number one, and at least one or two follow-up hits. But since he was the winner of the first series, before it was pulling in huge viewing figures, and because he came up against a juggernaut of a single in Band Aid 20’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ reboot, none of this came true. Instead he belatedly limped to #1 for a week, when nobody was watching, on a technicality.

At the same time, any sympathy for him evaporates when you hear this dull and predictable winner’s single. Did we really need another cover of ‘Against All Odds’? Mariah Carey and Westlife had taken their version to the top barely four years earlier. Phil Collins’ original was only two decades old. (Worryingly, Brookstein’s cover is now closer to 1984 than the present day…)

Of course, Brookstein isn’t a bad vocalist. But he is a glorified pub singer. Judge Sharon Osbourne didn’t like him, and I don’t think the X Factor producers were thrilled to have a thirty-six year old with a pretty limited appeal as their inaugural winner. The subsequent champions were all young, and pretty, with potential for real pop stardom. Some even came close to managing it.

The one person who did argue for Steve Brookstein was, inevitably, Simon Cowell. Cowell looks at a granny-baiting, middle-aged crooner as hungry kids look at chocolate ice cream. He lapped him up. For a while, at least. Following a debut, chart-topping album, Cowell and Brookstein feuded. Eight months after winning X Factor, he was dropped by BMG Records. According to Brookstein it was because he refused to record another LP of safe covers.

And so he faded into obscurity, popping up every now and then to rant about Cowell. He did a bit of musical theatre, a bit of TV, and a lot of provincial touring. Looking at his Wiki, has there been a more depressing sentence in a pop star’s bio than: “In June 2007, Brookstein appeared on the P&O Portsmouth to Bilbao car ferry, alongside X Factor alumni Chico Slimani and Journey South”? (More on Chico soon, btw.)

This would be the last X Factor winner’s single not to make Christmas #1 for five years, as the series dominated British pop culture in the latter half of the decade. So that’s something to look forward to covering… This also came dangerously close to being Britain’s 1000th number one single. Which feels like a close escape, but maybe it would have been fitting. Maybe it is the ultimate #1 single? Cheap, disposable, forgotten…

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