846. ‘Born to Make You Happy’, by Britney Spears

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I did warn you that despite kicking things off with the snarling ‘The Masses Against the Classes’, the year 2000 would not be ushering in any kind of rock renaissance. Here then, restoring order, is Britney.

Born to Make You Happy, by Britney Spears (her 2nd of six #1s)

1 week, from 23rd – 30th January 2000

I love Britney Spears. I feel I have to preface every post I write about her with this statement, in case anyone is expecting me to give her a critical mauling (I can’t). But if there was ever a Britney #1 I was lukewarm on, it would be this one. Or so I thought.

But actually, this is a decent pop song. It’s nowhere near as cutesy or saccharine as I’d mis-remembered. It’s got a cool, electro-pop edge, a moody piano riff, and delicate guitars embellishing the end of each line. It has probably been lost among the sugar-rush of her other, early hits (and it’s nowhere near as good as ‘…Baby One More Time’, or her next chart-topper) but it’s the most mature-sounding of the four singles from her debut album. Plus, it might be one of her best vocal performances (in an admittedly narrow field…)

It’s let down a little by its overwrought lyrics, though. I’ll do anything, I’ll give you my world, I’d wait forever, Just to be your girl… You can’t really appreciate them, I suspect, unless you were a sixteen-year-old listening to this song in real time. They certainly appeal to a teenage sentiment, but a song with the hook I don’t know how to live without your love, I was born to make you happy… did little to endear Britney to those of a more feminist leaning.

But then again, if you’re going to try to enjoy teen-pop, then you have to embrace it all, even the ridiculously emo side of it. A quarter of a century on, ‘Born to Make You Happy’ sounds like a relic. No young female star in 2025 would dream of claiming that she was born to make any man happy. Which is a good thing, and yet…

For some reason, at school we changed the lyrics of this song to I was born to wear a nappy… I have completely forgotten the reason for this, if there ever was one, but felt it needed mentioning here. As I wrote above, this was the 4th single from her debut album, and was only released in Europe. But like the Manics the week before, it took advantage of low January sales to score Britney her second #1, and to keep things ticking over nicely until her next big, brand new single.

845. ‘The Masses Against the Classes’, by Manic Street Preachers

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The new millennium. The 21st century. The two thousands. The noughties. Here we go. Off with a bang.

The Masses Against the Classes, by Manic Street Preachers (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd January 2000

Could it be any more Manic to combine rushing punk rock, some of the most instant chord progressions of this entire year’s run of #1s, and extracts from Noam Chomsky and Albert Camus? All in a song named after a quote by Victorian-era Prime Minister William Gladstone.

Whatever you make of the their politics (the sleeve art for this was literally the Cuban flag), you can hopefully admire the way the Manics unashamedly used it in creating some of the day’s best rock music. Their first chart-topper ‘If You Tolerate This…’ referenced the Spanish Civil War, but the band had also received criticism from some of their die-hard fans for allegedly selling out with a softer, more pop-leaning sound.

Which means that ‘The Masses Against the Classes’ works as a socialist anthem, but also as a middle finger to those that accused them of discarding their punk roots. Hello it’s us again… sneers James Dean Bradfield, after a distorted rip-off of the Beatles’ ‘Twist and Shout’… We’re still so in love with you… Success is an ugly word, Especially in your tiny world… It all culminates, as the guitars splinter and distort, with that Camus quote: A slave begins by demanding justice, And ends by wanting to wear a crown… Which, if you think about it, is the best description of toxic fandom going.

For such an influential genre, punk rock has been very poorly served at the top of the charts. Which makes sense, for what could be less punk than having commercial success? I have at various points argued for ‘School’s Out’, ‘Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)’, and even Mr. Blobby, being the most punk number ones. Add to that stellar list, then, ‘The Masses Against the Classes’. Punk aside, it’s just nice to hear some freaking guitars back at the top of the charts!

Not this record’s success indicates in any way that the year 2000 is going to see a rock resurgence after the pop-heavy late-nineties. Sorry, things are going to stay just as poppy over the course of this year’s forty-two chart-toppers (a record turnover of #1s). The Manic Street Preachers were one of the few guitar acts that could break through to the top at this time, and they did so by releasing in dead mid-January, and by publicly deleting the single from production on the Monday it was released (which is also very punk, to be fair).

All this also means that it stands out as a bit of an oddity in the Manics’ back-catalogue. One of their two #1s, that very few casual listeners could sing the chorus to. There are far better known songs by the band that didn’t make it so high in the charts, but then isn’t that the way with so many acts? They would go on scoring Top 20 hits until the early 2010s, and are releasing their 15th studio album later this month. I feel a Manic Street Preachers’ ‘Best of the Rest’ is a post I’ll be doing soon enough…

The only video made was this live version, recorded in Cardiff on the Millennium’s Eve…

The studio version…

844. ‘I Have a Dream’ / ‘Seasons in the Sun’, by Westlife

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I’m sure many readers think I’ve been a little soft on Westlife in my posts on their first three chart-toppers. ‘Swear It Again’ was fairly bland, but I enjoyed ‘If I Let You Go’ more than I was expecting to, and ‘Flying Without Wings’ has an overblown charm to it. But no more. The Westlife love-in stops here!

I Have a Dream / Seasons in the Sun, by Westlife (their 4th of fourteen #1s)

4 weeks, from 19th December 1999 – 16th January 2000

Just five seconds into ‘I Have a Dream’ and I’m feeling nauseous. The sleigh bells, the tinkles, the choking clouds of saccharine. It is so cynically programmed for the festive season that I’m imagining a big red button on a mixing desk, sealed in a glass box, with a sign that reads ‘Smash for Boybands in Desperate Need of Christmas Number One’. I’d make my usual comparison to karaoke backing tracks, if that wasn’t a horrible insult to the people who make karaoke backing tracks.

It doesn’t help that it’s an ABBA cover. Even though ‘I Have a Dream’ has never been one of my favourite ABBA songs, this feels like an act of sacrilege. But then it’s not so much a ‘cover’, more a pillaging mission that would make even the blood-thirstiest Vikings blush, leaving behind a smouldering ruin where once stood a much-loved ballad.

With grim inevitability a choir appears, for the second chart-topper running, as we lurch towards what the producers must have hoped would be a soaring climax. The best bit of the entire business are the closing two seconds; not just because the song is ending, but because one of the boys finishes on an oh-woah-owah that I think was meant to sound profound, but that sounds to me like the noise a murderer would make as they drop their bloody knife, realising exactly what a terrible crime they have just committed.

‘I Have a Dream’ finishes, yet we barely have time to rinse the sick from our mouths. There’s another massacring of a seventies hit to contend with. ‘Seasons in the Sun’ was a fairly shite record to begin with, so this cover doesn’t offend the ears quite as badly. Still, it tries its best. To kick off, we get a blast of the ol’ Oirish pipes, in the finest B*Witched tradition, to remind us exactly which nation to blame for this offence.

The rest of the song plods by fairly slowly, and the Westlife boys sound largely bored. The production is just as cheap and tacky. I’ve tried, in the comments, to defend late-nineties pop music from accusations that it was too ‘push-button’, but I can offer no defence here. All the worst pre-programmed touches and flourishes of the era are on display here. We end the decade on the lowest of low notes…

Again, I wonder if Westlife actually counted many teenage girls among their fans, as this seventies double-header seems unerringly aimed at the mum market. And the tactic, of course, worked. As terrible as this record is, it was an inevitable Christmas number one, and the only Westlife single to spend more than two weeks at the top. It was also the last number one of the decade, of the century, and of the millennium. It meant that Westlife joined the Spice Girls and B*Witched in reaching #1 with their first four releases. It also meant that they scored four number ones in a calendar year, a feat managed just twice before, by Elvis in 1961 and ‘62.

So, here end the 1990s. I wouldn’t call it the best chart decade (the 1960s will never be topped), but was it the most interesting? It was a decade of extremes: the longest continuous run at #1, the best-selling #1 of all time (and some of the lowest selling #1s too), as well as the two longest-playing #1s. We’ve had classics that have come to define modern British pop culture, and some of the most notorious novelties. We’ve had Take That, Oasis, and the Spice Girls. We’ve had our first ‘fuck’ on top of the charts. I will be doing a deeper dive into the decade very soon, when we do our ‘Nineties Top 10’.

But I’ll leave things here, on an important question. There’s no doubt that the ‘90s have ended at a tragically low ebb. But what record is worse? This, or ‘The Millennium Prayer’? It is probably a question best answered when I hand out the next ‘Worst Number One’ Award, but for me there’s only one winner…

843. ‘The Millennium Prayer’, by Cliff Richard

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And so, after forty and a half years, Britain’s most decorated chart artist bows out from chart-topping duty, with his sixty-fourth Top 10 hit, and fourteenth number one.

The Millennium Prayer, by Cliff Richard (his 14th and final #1)

3 weeks, from 28th November – 19th December 1999

In some ways it’s tragic that Cliff ends in this way, as he has been responsible for some great hits, and was arguably the nation’s first real homegrown rock star. But in other ways, it’s entirely fitting and predictable for Cliff, an artist who had long since given up caring about such concepts as relevance, and quality control, to leave us with ‘The Millennium Prayer’.

It’s a simple enough idea: the Lord’s Prayer set to the tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne’. A prayer for the new millennium, twinned with a world-famous new year’s melody. ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is a lovely tune, heartwarming and yet melancholy, and so on one level there is something bearable about this record. The production is fairly minimal, though very dated by 1999’s standards, with a marching drumbeat and a trumpet solo in the middle. There is, naturally, a gospel choir brought in towards the end.

What makes it less bearable are Cliff’s ad-libs, decorated with assorted vocal gymnastics that are, I suppose, impressive for a man approaching sixty. What makes this near-nauseating is the video, a live performance in which Cliff goes into full Messiah-mode, prancing around, arms stretched, surrounded by a children’s choir.

I’m a fairly irreligious person, and I’m being careful not to let my opinions on organised religion cloud my judgement of this song’s merits. But I’m hopeful that even the most committed Christians, who may agree with the song’s sentiments (and lovely sentiments they are, too), can recognise that this record is garbage. It makes Cliff’s two previous festive chart-toppers, ‘Mistletoe and Wine’ and ‘Saviour’s Day’, sound like masterpieces of subtlety and restraint.

In fact, can I just take a moment to rant against the concept of Christian rock in general? Christianity has centuries’ worth of hymns, psalms, carols… Plus, the entire gospel canon. Gospel music, sung by a choir, can be wonderfully moving, even for a heathen like me. But there’s something fundamentally wrong with Christian contemporary rock music, such a disconnect between the rock ‘n’ roll beat, the guitars, the long hair – the entire raison d’etre of rock and roll – and the churchy message. I have a sneaking suspicion that God, whoever they may be, really, really hates Christian rock. (Although having said all that, ‘The Millennium Prayer’ is almost entirely saved in my estimations by the fact that Jesus himself received a writing credit!)

My mum was one of the hundreds of thousands who bought ‘The Millennium Prayer’, making it both the year’s third highest seller, and the third biggest hit of Cliff’s entire career. I remember it sitting in our CD tower at home for years, but I never remember her playing it. I suspect this was the case for most of the copies sold. Christians around the country mobilised en masse to buy the record, probably multiple times, especially after it had been refused airplay by most (sensibly-minded) radio stations. Nowadays it’s a festive tradition for the charts to be stuffed with protest songs around Christmas: songs bought, downloaded, or streamed as a statement, not because anyone particularly likes the music. Was ‘The Millennium Prayer’ the first modern protest number one?

I billed this as Cliff’s farewell, and while he has no further number ones to come (he currently sits in joint-third position in the ‘most number ones’ table, behind only Elvis and The Beatles), he is still very much active and recording well into his eighties. The 2000s brought him four more Top 10s, while his most recent album, ‘Cliff with Strings’, made #5 just over a year ago. Despite his many musical mis-steps, the man is a living legend. (While anyone who claims that ‘We Don’t Talk Anymore’ isn’t his best number one is just plain wrong.)

Of course, Cliff was aiming for his third Christmas #1, and presumably the final #1 of the century, with this modern day hymn. He didn’t quite make it though, as he was held off by a record that we may discover to be every bit as irredeemable as ‘The Millennium Prayer’…

And B-sides… ‘Some Might Say’, by Oasis

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Launching our second new feature of the year, we’re going to celebrate the flip-sides to some famous chart-toppers. In my posts on every UK #1 between 1952 and 1999, I’ve stuck fairly rigidly to reviewing just one side of each chart-topping disc. On occasion I may have mentioned them in passing, and I’ve always given them a spin if they’re listed as a double-‘A’; but by and large I’ve avoided the B-sides.

To be honest, I was born at the tail end of the B-side era, so sometimes overlook their importance. By the mid-to-late-nineties, when I started buying music, the bonus tracks on a CD or cassette single were often just remixes of the A-side, or maybe a live version of an earlier hit. And the download/streaming era has killed off the concept for good. But cast an eye back further, to the days when an act’s singles were the main event, rather than a plug for their current LP, and the ‘other’ side of a hit single was a source of countless hidden gems.

And besides (see what I did there), many’s the big chart-topping hit that was originally intended as back-up to a song that, for whatever reason, didn’t catch the imagination. ‘Rock Around the Clock’, ‘Maggie May’, ‘I Feel Love’… The list is long, and often surprising. So, let’s kick things off with one of the last bands to recognise the power of a good B-side…

‘Some Might Say’ made number one in April 1995, Oasis’s first chart-topping single. You can read all about that song here. It was only their sixth release, but already the Gallaghers and co. had built a reputation for spoiling their fans with cult classics hidden behind the actual hits. ‘Half the World Away’ on ‘Whatever’, ‘Listen Up’ and ‘Fade Away’ on ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’. But on ‘Some Might Say’, the lead single from their soon to be multi-multi-platinum second album ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’, Oasis included not one, not two, but three great B-sides. Starting with…

‘Talk Tonight’ is a classic of the Noel-with-an-acoustic guitar genre, a common theme for their B-sides. It was written about a woman in San Francisco, to whom he escaped after a concert went wrong (another common Oasis theme). Oasis at their best produced songs about very specific moments – visiting a park with a woman you barely know – that feel very universal. Everyone has some absent friend with whom they would like to talk tonight.

‘Acquiesce’ meanwhile is Oasis with a capital OASIS. One of very few tracks on which the brothers share vocal duties: Liam at his sneery best on the verses, Noel stretching his vocal chords on the chorus. Plus, the lyrics speak to their brotherly bond: Because we need each other, We believe in one another… (Noel has claimed that the only reason he sang the chorus was because Liam couldn’t reach the high notes). The moment when the pair collide at the start of the second verse is possibly the best five seconds in Oasis’s entire back-catalogue.

For a famous rock band, the moments in which Oasis let loose and just fucking ROCKED are actually quite few and far between. ‘Headshrinker’ may well be the heaviest song they ever recorded, with ten-tonne weighted chords, and lyrics like Lost in the fog, I’ve been treated like a dog, And I’m outta here… about an unhinged lady-love. Their biggest hits may have long since been lost to bland ubiquity, but gems like this remind us that on their day Oasis could be pretty punk.

Noel Gallagher has long since bemoaned the fact that he used up so many great songs as B-sides, especially after years of fame (and booze and drugs) had blunted his songwriting edge. Stick any of these three featured songs onto ‘Standing on the Shoulders of Giants’ and they would instantly be the best tracks on the album. But then again, chucking classics like these away on the one CD single encapsulates the carefree, live-in-the-moment ethos of early Oasis, and of Britpop before it soured, and was a huge part of their appeal.

I hope you enjoyed this first installment in what I hope to make a semi-regular feature. If you have any suggestions for B-sides (to UK #1 singles) that I can feature, please let me know in the comments!

842. ‘King of My Castle’, by Wamdue Project

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Suddenly we’re at the pre-penultimate number one of the 1990s. The third last chart-topper of the decade, and the last good one…

King of My Castle, by Wamdue Project (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 21st – 28th November 1999

There’s something deeply cool about this record, something that I recognised aged thirteen but that put me off it. It sounded scary, somehow, a song that people much older than me danced to, in dark, misty nightclubs, grinding against one another as the bass pulsed through them…

Now that I’m a grown man, and have been to plenty of nightclubs, in time getting over my fear of grinding up against strangers, I can appreciate this alluring one-hit-wonder. The throbbing, disco beat. The purred uh-humms. The very of-its-time Balearic riff, but one that sounds as if it’s being played from speakers dropped in the deep end of a swimming pool. The kitschy little flute motif.

I’d say, though, that the biggest selling point of this record are the lyrics. The fact a woman sings Must be the reason why I’m king of my castle… The fact I always thought she was free in her ‘trestle’ (it’s ‘trapped soul’)… The wonderful insouciance of the line: Must be a reason why I’m making examples of you…It’s to do with Freud’s theory of the unconscious – as all the best dance hits are – while the video featured scenes from anime ‘Ghost in the Shell’, in which cyborgs are controlled by a hacker. That video featured too many hand drawn boobs for daytime screening, so a more generic second was made.

Wamdue Project were the brainchild of producer Chris Brann, with vocals from deep-house singer Gaelle Adisson. ‘King of My Castle’ had originally been released and recorded in an eight-minute downtempo version in 1997. This remix was helmed by Italian DJ producer Roy Malone, and it became a hit all around Europe. One-off dance tracks feel like a summer phenomenon, therefore it feels a little odd for a dance track to take off so well in late-November. But if ever there was is such a thing as a moody, winter dance smash then this is it.

I’m at the natural end of this post, but would like to linger a little longer in Wamdue World, knowing the horrors that are about to come. (The 20th century does not end on a high note, musically speaking.) This is the sort of dance music I can really get behind, one with a genuinely weird edge, one that I can see working as a grungy rock song. One with easily misheard lyrics based on Freud, and his ego. Wamdue Project are not quite one-hit wonders – I lied earlier – as follow up ‘You’re the Reason’ scraped to #39 the following April, but they remained such a mystery that Chris Brann was nominated for Best British Newcomer at the 2000 Brit Awards, before being hastily withdrawn when the judges discovered he was American.

The ‘Ghost in the Shell’ video:

The ‘official’ video:

841. ‘She’s the One’ / ‘It’s Only Us’, by Robbie Williams

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‘She’s the One’ is not Robbie Williams’ best known number one. Nor does it get the airplay of a ‘Rock DJ’, a ‘Feel’, or an ‘Angels’. But if you’ll let me, I’d like to suggest that it’s one of his very best.

She’s the One / It’s Only Us, by Robbie Williams (his 2nd of seven solo #1s)

1 week, from 14th – 21st November 1999

At least, I always thought so. Until today, when everything I believed was rocked to its core… ‘She’s the One’ is a cover. World Party, a project fronted by former Waterboys member Karl Wallinger, recorded and released the original in 1997, and it was an Ivor Novello-winning, film soundtrack appearing, performed-on-Jools-Holland sort of hit. I’m ashamed of myself for not discovering this much earlier…

Robbie Williams delivers a facsimile of this song – same instrumentation, same harmonies, same vocal range – and delivers it very well. It is a lovely song; a very late-Britpop, arms around your mates in the pub sort of tune. It could easily have been recorded by Oasis, which of course means it has lots of nice Beatlesy touches to it, in the drum-fills and the backing vocals. But I feel slightly cheated now, after all these years of enjoying this so-called Robbie Williams hit.

What the original doesn’t have is a Brit Award winning video set in the world of competitive figure skating, with Robbie playing a has-been skater given one last chance at glory. Plus, it means Barry Davies, the greatest football commentator of my lifetime, can claim a number one single. (My dream aged thirteen, when this song came out, was to be Barry Davies.)

There was some drama, and some fairly ungentlemanly behaviour from Williams, when he started claiming that ‘She’s the One’ was the best song he had ever written. Some of Wallinger’s band played on the cover, unknown to Wallinger himself, and he suffered a brain aneurysm around the time it was hitting #1. Still, he did well off the royalties, and in interviews has claimed that this record saved him from penury. Williams has also, more recently, finally admitted that he didn’t write the song.

What of the double-‘A’ side, ‘It’s Only Us’? The fact I don’t think I’d ever heard this suggests it was more of a jumped-up ‘B’-side than a true double-‘A’. It was written for the soundtrack to FIFA 2000 and, again, it’s very Britpop indebted, this time more Supergrass than Oasis. It rollocks along nicely with lyrics that namecheck Williams’ hometown of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as ‘Rock Me Amadeus’, and with a fun end-of-the-pier organ solo. It’s also one of those songs where Robbie makes a drugs reference – We’re just after cheaper thrills, Since the price went up on pills… – of the sort that always feels a little try-hard for a former boyband member, like a teenager trying to shock his parents. We get it, Robbie. We get it.

It’s worth noting that this was the fourth single from ‘I’ve Been Expecting You’, the album that had given us ‘Millennium’ well over a year earlier. Taking the fourth single from an already huge-selling album to number one requires some serious star power, something that Robbie had in abundance in the late ‘90s. In fact, this moment saw the breakout star from the decade’s biggest boyband knocking his female counterpart, Geri Halliwell, off top-spot. The following year the pair would even date for a couple of months. Geri and Robbie, top of the pops and pretending to be a couple for the tabloids… Pop culture doesn’t get any more turn-of-the-21st-century that that.

840. ‘Lift Me Up’, by Geri Halliwell

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The artist formerly known as Ginger returns, with further camp silliness…

Lift Me Up, by Geri Halliwell (her 2nd of four solo #1s)

1 week, from 7th – 14th November 1999

Maybe you think I’m overstating just how camp solo Geri could be. If so, then I would nod you in the direction of the birdsong and Disney princess tinkles that open ‘Lift Me Up’. You half expect her to burst into a chorus of ‘Bibbity Bobbity Boo’. But no, we soon settle into a perky pop-ballad, with a suitably uplifting chorus. Lift me up, When the lights are fading… I will be your angel for life…

It’s hard to overstate just how of its time, just how drenched in little late-nineties flourishes this song is. The drumbeat, the guitar-lite backing, the warm synthy organ line, and the key change. We are truly entering the age of the key change, when pop music was so cheesy, so unashamedly bubblegum, so – yes – camp, that a pop song with any modicum of ambition needed one.

I might suggest, however, that a slower number such as this shows off Geri’s vocal limitations. The lower-key verses certainly back this idea up. I will say, though, that she acquits herself well in the choruses, sensibly aided by some backing singers, which she commits to without letting things get too cloying. And I notice a theme between this – a song in which the singer is asking a lover, or friend, to help keep her upbeat and positive – and the previous #1, Five’s ‘Keep on Movin’.

The video is also… I’ll try and not use the c-word… Pretty theatrical. Geri is driving alone along a dusty road when she comes across some aliens whose spaceship has broken down. She befriends them and they have a jolly day together, trying on her underwear and watching the ‘Mi Chico Latino’ music video… Actually, no. If there were a better word then I’d use it, but I don’t think there is. It’s just plain camp.

‘Lift Me Up’ was Geri’s third single and her second chart-topper, making her the most successful solo Spice (a title that she has never relinquished and that will, we can assume, now be hers for eternity). But it was released on the same day as Emma Bunton’s ‘What I Am’, a collaboration with electronic duo Tin Tin Out – a far cooler piece of music. A publicity battle ensued, which Geri was critical of at the time. In the end she won, fairly comfortably, by 140,000 copies to Emma’s 110,000. Baby would have to wait a couple more years to finally get a solo #1.

On This Day… 5th January

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A very Happy New Year to you all, and a warm welcome back to the UK Number Ones Blog. I hope you had a good festive period, managed to celebrate, relax, and (in my case) catch up with writing about some soon-to-come number ones. Before we resume our journey through the late, late-nineties, I’m debuting a new feature!

The Village People, group portrait, New York, 1978. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images)

‘On This Day…’ will do pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. I’ll intro a few of the records that have been top of the charts on a particular date in history, as well as mentioning a few births, a few deaths, and a few interesting occasions that tie into a particular chart-topper. The hope is that readers will be able to delve into my back-catalogue of posts, and find something I wrote long before they started following this blog. Or people can, y’know, just enjoy the tunes!

First up, number one on this day in 1962, we have a stone-cold classic:

‘Moon River’, from the soundtrack to ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ is one of the great songs of that supposedly fallow period between rock ‘n’ roll and The Beatles. In the film it is sung by Audrey Hepburn, at the Academy Awards that year it was performed by Andy Williams, while an instrumental version by the song’s composer Henry Mancini and a version by Jerry Butler were hits in the US. In the UK, however, it was left to South African-born Danny Williams to have the most succesful version of all. You can read my original post on ‘Moon River’ here.

Meanwhile on this day in 1923, radio host, record producer, and founder of the legendary Sun Records label, Sam Phillips was born in Alabama. He is most famous for his work with a young Elvis Presley, although he also produced Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and many of the other early rock and roll stars. His only contribution to the top of the UK singles chart, however, was this banger:

Here’s my original post on ‘Great Balls of Fire’. If you’re only going to top the charts once, might as well make it good ‘un. Speaking of which, number one on this day in 1979 we have perhaps the ultimate guilty pleasure. There is not a soul alive who hasn’t done the dance to the ‘YMCA’, however grudgingly, and not even the recent gyrations of Donald Trump can truly sour this wedding reception classic. Even more recently, Village Person Victor Willis (AKA the cop) has been threatening to sue anyone who claims that ‘YMCA’ – a song with the lyric: They have everything for young men to enjoy, You can hang out with all the boys… – has any homosexual connotations. Whatsover. No sirree. To which we can all say, ‘Okay honey…’ (Original post here.)

In sadder news, on this day in 1998, Sonny Bono died following a skiing accident in Nevada. He was of course the singing partner, and former husband, of Cher, with whom he enjoyed his sole chart-topper ‘I Got You Babe’ in 1965. I wrote about it, the 201st #1 single, way back in 2019.

Finally, one of the least likely number one singles of all time was sitting astride the charts on January 5th 1991. Early January is a bit of a dead zone for chart-toppers, as in most years the Christmas leftovers are still clinging on top with little competition. Iron Maiden spotted an opportunity, and released ‘Bring Your Daughter… To the Slaughter’ in the final week of 1990. Their devoted fanbase, as well as the publicity of knocking the God-bothering Cliff Richard’s ‘Saviour’s Day’ off #1, delivered the heavy metal legends their biggest hit. (Original post here.)

I hope everyone enjoyed this new feature, and won’t mind if it pops back up ever few weeks. I’m also going to be doing more regular posts on cover versions, number two singles, ‘Remembering’ features, ‘Best of the Rests’ and ‘Today’s Top 10s’, as well as a new look at the ‘B’-sides to famous number ones. The main focus will of course still be on the chart-toppers; just a little more regularly interspersed with interesting detours through chart history!

Here’s to a great 2025!

Cover Versions of Christmas #1s

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For our last post of the year, let’s take a look at some classic Christmas number ones, but in versions you might not have heard before… Some good, some not so good, some just plain odd.

Starting with the daddy of all festive chart-toppers, Slade’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’. Noel Gallagher recorded a cover for the ‘Royle Family’ Christmas special in 2000 (a sitcom that his band had famously contributed the theme song for). It sounds exactly as you’d expect Noel Gallagher doing a cover of Slade’s Christmas classic would. Except it lacks the raucous energy of the original, instead opting for a woozy drone. And there’s no It’s Chriiiiissssttttmmmmmaaaaasssss…. So shame on you, Noel.

That same year, way over on the other side of the pop spectrum, Steps recorded their own version, and is it wrong that I’m enjoying this version more…? For a start, they lead with It’s Christmaaaaaas… so bonus points there. But there’s also something in the propulsively camp beat, and the faux-Cher autotune, that is more in keeping with the anarchic original.

Or if neither of those straight covers do it for you, then how about this remix that made #30 in 1998? It’s a bizarre record: a fairly anonymous trance beat over which Slade occasionally pop up. Flush were a Swedish act, and this was presumably made with Slade’s permission, given that it’s Noddy Holder’s vocals.

Christmas #1 the year following Slade’s colossus, Mud took a more sombre approach to festive pop on ‘Lonely This Christmas’. In 2013 Traitors! recorded this fun pop-punk version for a charity album called ‘It’s Better to Give than to Receive’. And that’s about all I know. The band don’t have a website or Wiki page, and their only other release seems to have been a four track EP. I don’t even remember where I heard this version first, but it’s been on my festive playlist for a few years now. So thank you Traitors!, whoever you are/were.

Of course, Christmas is actually about more than just presents and gluttony… There’s also ‘Die Hard’. I mean, there’s also the birth of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus H Christ. And sometimes religious songs have made Christmas number one, such as in 1976. Johnny Mathis’s version of ‘When a Child Is Born’ is fairly gentle and respectful, not enough to wake the sleeping babe in his crib. The same cannot be said for larger than life Greek Demis Roussos, who rattles the gates of heaven with his bombastic take. If I were Jesus, I know which approach I’d prefer.

And then there are the times when the festive number one isn’t about Christmas at all. in 1979, Pink Floyd made number one with their first chart hit in over a decade, ‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt II’. In 2004, nu-metal band Korn covered all three parts of the song (Pt II starts around the 1:30 mark). It was described as “one of the worst classic rock covers of all time” by Ultimate Classic Rock magazine, but I suspect they might be a tad biased against anything released post-1980. I’d call it a brutally efficient cover version.

‘Another Brick in the Wall Pt II’ then returned to the charts in 2007 when remixed by Swedish DJ Eric Prydz. His take, ‘Proper Education’, made #2, and gave us an interesting video in which a group of young hooligans break into some flats and… turn off all the energy wasting devices.

Our final cover is a 2015 remake of Shakin’ Stevens’ 1985 Xmas #1 ‘Merry Christmas Everyone’, by Shaky himself. ‘Echoes of Merry Christmas Everyone’ is a completely re-imagined bluegrass version, with lots of banjo and harmonica, recorded to raise money for the Salvation Army, and it’s amazing how a jaunty, slightly irritating original, was transformed into a melancholy, slightly haunting cover.

That’s it from the UK Number Ones Blog for 2024! I’m going to take a couple of weeks off, before returning in the first week of January, when I’ll be launching a couple of new features to mix things up in amongst all the usual chart toppers. I’d like to thank everyone who has read, followed, liked and commented this year, and wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy new year!