Never Had a #1… Part 1

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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.

911. ‘Because I Got High’, by Afroman

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It’s been noticeable how, as soon as the 21st century began, the top of the singles chart has been home to all manner of depravity. And here is yet more evidence of slipping societal standards…

Because I Got High, by Afroman (his 1st and only #1)

3 weeks, from 21st October – 11th November 2001

We’ve had the rock ‘n’ roll, we’ve had the sex, and now we have the drugs. Of course, this isn’t the first number one song to reference illegal substances, but usually they’ve been protected by innuendo, by a level of plausible deniability. This record, however, opens with someone asking us to roll another blunt. Less than a decade sits between the nudge-wink of ‘Ebeneezer Goode’, and this unabashed celebration of ganja.

But, actually, is this a celebration? Superficially, yes. But then you listen and notice that this song is a list of unfortunate events brought about by smoking too much weed. First verse: I was gonna clean my room, Until I got high… Second verse: I was gonna go to class, Before I got high… It’s not long before he’s being chased by the police, crashing his car, and ending up a paraplegic.

Obviously, all this is tongue in cheek, a fact highlighted by the fact that the paraplegic verse is followed by one about being unable to function sexually: I was gonna eat your pussy too, But then I got high… (Sadly, Afroman is forced to take matters into his own hands, if you catch my drift.) This is no anti-drug song, no inside job to keep the kids on the straight and narrow. But it works as a satire nonetheless, with Afroman and his homies skewering the reasons that those in authority give to warn people off marijuana. By the end, the fourth wall has been broken: Imma stop singing this song, Because I’m high… And if I don’t sell one copy, I’ll know why…

So I like this record on one level. I also like how stripped back it is, just a bassline and vocals. It’s almost a cappella, with some doo-wop backing touches. But the backing vocals, his gang of stoned buddies whooping and hollering, are also the reason that this song grows old, and quickly. Unless you’re actually high when listening, then you might think that this was the greatest song ever recorded. Which I suppose means that ‘Because I Got High’ is doing its job.

Afroman had been rapping since the 8th grade, when he allegedly recorded a diss track about the teacher who had him expelled for wearing sagging jeans. Which seems unlikely, but it’s a fun origin story… ‘Because I Got High’ could be said to have gone viral, by the standards of the time. It had originally been released a year and half earlier, and had slowly grown in popularity on file-sharing websites. This belated major label release came after the track was featured on the soundtrack to ‘Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back’.

Afroman was good for one more Top 10 hit, ‘Crazy Rap’ in early 2002. And if ‘Because I Got High’ is at the limit of your tolerance, or if you’re a Dolly Parton fan, then I’d say best avoid it. After the hits dried up he started releasing his music independently, and remains active to this day, with his beloved Mary Jane still very much a strong lyrical theme (his album titles include ‘Drunk ‘n’ High’, ‘Waiting to Inhale’ and ‘Marijuana Music’).

910. ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’, by Kylie Minogue

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After a fairly underwhelming run of boyband fluff and novelty covers, we finally arrive at a number one record worthy of its exalted position…

Can’t Get You Out of My Head, by Kylie Minogue (her 6th of seven #1s)

4 weeks, from 23rd September – 21st October 2001

This is sophisticated pop by the standards of any era, not just when compared to the trash that it regally swept aside to spend a month on top of the charts. Pop to sit with the likes of ‘Dancing Queen’, or ‘Heart of Glass’, or ‘…Baby One More Time’ (not to give away my next Very Best award, or anything…)

And like the best pop songs before it, it has layers. Yes, ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is catchy, and has a la-la-la hook which lodges itself deep in your brain. But it’s actually quite a sinister record, almost a dirge, with a hypnotic marching beat setting the foundations of this tale of obsession. There’s a dark secret in me, Don’t leave me locked in your heart… Perhaps the most telling line is when Kylie breathes the Set me free… Feel the need in me…

It straddles that fine line of being strange enough to be interesting, yet catchy enough to be a huge hit. You can dance to it, sure, but you can also think about it, and analyse it. You couldn’t do the same with ‘Hand on Your Heart’. And it hasn’t actually got a chorus. Or does it? Are the lalalas the chorus? Is it the Set me free…? Or is it one big chorus? This fluid, hypnotic element means that the song could potentially be played on a never-ending loop and not grow old…

I can remember hearing this record for the first time, on a radio in my old Scout hut. That same night (unless I’m mixing two memories here) I had also been clobbered over the head with a hockey stick and knocked unconscious. I’d like to claim that I came to with the sound of Kylie’s new single in my ears, but I think that really would be stretching things. Anyway, concussed or not, it sounded like the biggest-sounding hit I’d ever heard. My love for Kylie, which had been bubbling away since the early nineties, now came to the boil. She remains an icon, a legend. She is, and always will be, the moment.

Many would claim that this is Kylie’s signature song, but that’s not a simple claim to make. Has any other pop star released their signature song a full fifteen years into their careers? So I’d definitely agree that this the signature song of her post-comeback career, proving that her return the year before, with ‘Spinning Around’, wasn’t going to be a one-album flash in the pan. And Kylie of course remains active, and dare we say relevant, a quarter of a century on. But she also has one final #1 to come, so we won’t wrap things up for her just yet.

‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ was a final number one, though, for one of its songwriters, Rob Davis (alongside Cathy Dennis). Davis had an incredible career in music, from his early-sixties debut in a Shadows tribute band, to his role as lead guitarist in Mud, to his three classics of the early ‘00s: ‘Toca’s Miracle’, ‘Groovejet’, and this.

Having waxed lyrical about this record for seven paragraphs, I will spoil it all by admitting that ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ is not my favourite Kylie record. I will never not enjoy it, but like ‘Dancing Queen’ and ‘…Baby One More Time’ before it, copious airplay has taken the edge off. Nowadays I’d rather hear it in the brilliant New Order mash-up ‘Can’t Get Blue Monday Out of My Head’, which Kylie debuted at the 2002 Brit Awards, and subsequently released as a B-side. Get your ears around that, if you never have before…

909. ‘Hey Baby (Uuh, Aah)’, by DJ Ötzi

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Christmas is still months away, so what’s with all the novelties? Hot on the heels of Bob the Builder, Oktoberfest comes to the UK singles chart…

Hey Baby (Uhh, Ahh), by DJ Ötzi (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 16th – 23rd September 2001

God, it’s hard to exaggerate how much this record was done to death. Mentioning Christmas feels relevant, because this was played at every festive party in 2001 (and 2002, and 2003…) The murdering of a sixties classic, the cheap synths, the crowd participation – added to the title, just in case you were in any doubt – the key change… The term ‘Eurotrash’ doesn’t begin to do it justice.

But it’s somehow… enjoyable? There’s something endearing about this, and I think it is down to DJ Ötzi’s complete commitment to his craft. He sells it, bawling out every line as if he is coming live, four beers in, from the big tent in Munich. I don’t think it has occurred to him that this could be considered a novelty record, and he’d be mortally offended if you as much as suggested it.

Ötzi is Austrian, while his beanie hat and bleached goatee (which he still sports today, aged fifty-four) have been burned into my memory for the past twenty-four years. Two interesting facts about him: he named himself after Ötzi the Iceman, a 3,500 year-old frozen mummy uncovered in the Alps (Europe’s oldest known human). And in 2002 he suffered a severe form of hearing loss (add your own jokes here…) He remains active though, especially beloved in his homeland, where he’s enjoyed thirteen Top 10 albums!

Bruce Channel’s original ‘Hey! Baby’ had been a #2 in 1962, and had also come back into the public consciousness thanks to the ‘Dirty Dancing’ soundtrack in the late-eighties. Ötzi had his wicked way with another sixties hit as a follow-up, ‘Do Wah Diddy’ making #9 later in the year. He enjoyed a third Top 10 with a remixed version of ‘Hey Baby’ for the 2002 World Cup, before graciously leaving the British charts alone.

Interestingly, demand for ‘Hey Baby’ was such that it had bounced around the lower reaches of the chart for seven weeks thanks to import copies from Europe. This meant that it had an unprecedented, if slightly false, forty-four place climb to the top when finally given a proper release. I also wonder if it’s telling that this was the best-selling record during the week of the 9/11 attacks. Were the public looking for light relief after digesting such horrific images? I couldn’t say. The fact that this and Bob the Builder were the two biggest records at the time does feel slightly incongruous…

If we add Blue’s ‘Too Close’ into the equation, this is, I believe, the first time that three consecutive covers have topped the charts. Also, and this is something I’ve been feeling for a while now, the cheapness of 2001’s chart-toppers is starting to wear thin. These two back-to-back novelties, Atomic Kitten, Shaggy, Hear’Say, Geri’s ‘It’s Raining Men’… I never expected to say this, but the year 2000 now feels like a high watermark for the time, with some high quality dance and pop #1s, and not too much cheese. Now though, we’ve reverted back to 1998-99 standard, when Vengaboys, B*Witched, Eiffel 65 and the like ruled the day.

Having said all this, our next chart-topper is both classy and era-defining, blowing all this novelty nonsense out of the water…

A low-res version of the video:

Better quality version (audio-wise I mean, the song’s still terrible…):

On This Day… 28th August

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Welcome one and all to our fourth ‘On This Day’ feature, in which we take a look back at chart-topping history through the records which have made #1. (Please feel free to check out the previous dates that we have covered here, here, and here.)

What, then, were the stories atop the UK singles chart on August 28th through the years…?

Well, way back in 1953 Frankie Laine’s ‘I Believe’ was starting its seventeenth of eighteen weeks at number one. That’s a lot of weeks. Amazingly, no other record in the intervening seventy-two years has managed to equal it. The record set by just the 9th number one single – the charts having begun less than a year earlier – still stands! Interestingly, two of the records that came closest – ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ (16 weeks, and the record holder for consecutive weeks) and ‘Love Is All Around’ (15 weeks) – were also both at number one on this date. The only other 15-weeker, Drake’s ‘One Dance’, was sadly not at #1 on the 28th August. ‘I Believe’ returned to #1 in the nineties ‘thanks’ to Robson & Jerome, but I won’t bother linking to that.

Eleven years later, and sitting at #1 was the Honeycomb’s stomping ‘Have I the Right?’ It was the third and final chart-topper produced by the visionary Joe Meek. Of the three, this is probably the most traditionally ‘pop’ sounding, though it is still crammed with wacky techniques – such as having the band stomping on the staircase outside his studio – and instruments, such as the slicing synths. It hit the charts in that glorious autumn of ’64, one of the most fertile times for British pop with ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, ‘You Really Got Me’, ‘I’m Into Something Good’, and this, taking turns on top.

28th August is also the birthday of The Honeycombs’ female drummer, Honey Lantree. One of few women to take up the sticks – I can only think of Karen Carpenter and Meg White – she had been discovered while working as a hairdresser. Her salon manager was in a band, let her try out, and was so impressed that he incorporated Lantree and her brother into his group. She retired from music when the Honeycombs split in 1967 following Meek’s death, but she rejoined them every so often for tours right up until 2005.

August 28th has seen not one, but two versions of ‘I Got You Babe’ sitting at number one in the singles chart. The original was, of course, by Sonny and Cher in 1965…

It was their only #1 as a duo, and Cher’s first of four, spanning thirty-three years. Exactly twenty years later, and a cover by UB40 and Chrissie Hynde was spending its solitary week on top. I gave this record a ‘Meh’ award, and my opinions on it haven’t changed much. It’s still a bit of a slog…

On this day in 1977, and the world still coming to terms with his death aged just forty-two, Elvis Presley’s current single climbed to #1, the first of his record five posthumous chart-toppers. ‘Way Down’ had spent its first two weeks on chart climbing from #46 to #42, so its safe to assume that it wouldn’t have been a massive hit without tragedy striking. However, it would also be wrong to suggest that The King was a spent force at this point in his career, as his previous single ‘Moody Blue’ had made it to #6. In my original post on it, I rejoiced in the fact that fate ensured Elvis’s final single was a rocker, given that he’d spent much of the ’70s releasing schmaltzy ballads. Lyrically, it’s also fitting for the recently deceased star, given that it’s called ‘Way Down’, and compares a woman’s love to prescription drugs… However, fun as the song is, and as lively as Elvis’s perfomance is, the show is stolen by JD Sumner’s astonishingly low closing note.

Finally, on this day in 1993, Culture Beat’s ‘Mr. Vain’ was enjoying its first of four weeks at #1. I bring this to your attention not just because it’s a banger – and it is – but because it was the first chart-topper in forty years not to be released as a 7″ single. Vinyl was on its way out after a century as the medium of choice, to be replaced in the space of twenty years by CDs, then digital downloads, then streaming…

Thanks for joining this delve back through the decades. Next up, we continue our journey through 2001 with a similarly retro reboot…

908. ‘Mambo No. 5’, by Bob the Builder

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Bob the Builder manages what all the other Christmas novelties never could. Benny Hill, Little Jimmy Osmond, Renée and Renato, Mr. Blobby… Few of them managed another hit, let along another chart-topper!

Mambo No. 5, by Bob the Builder (his 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 9th – 16th September 2001

Gone is Lou Bega’s list of women that he’s shagged, replaced with more child-friendly construction items and a lengthy to do list. A little bit of timber and a saw, A little bit of fixing that’s for sure… A little bit of tiling on the roof, A little bit of making waterproof… Bob’s a little bit of a taskmaster, that’s for sure, but his gang seem to be up to the job.

It’s largely more of the same as ‘Can We Fix It?’, just to a different tune. It sounds so much like Bega’s version that I wonder if they aren’t singing over the same backing track. But like the first hit, there’s an enjoyable amount of energy and love put into it. It’s a novelty, but it doesn’t overly grate, and the lyrics are genuinely tight and cleverly put together.

We’ve just had two versions of ‘Lady Marmalade’ at number one with just three years in between, and here are two versions of ‘Mambo No. 5’ in top spot exactly two years apart. Not counting the 1950s habit of releasing different versions of a song at the same time (as with ‘Answer Me’, ‘Singing the Blues’ and ‘Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White’) this must be a record for shortest time between two chart-topping versions of the same song. Though is it the same song? Same title and tune, yes, but completely different lyrics. After ‘3 Lions ‘98’ this is only the second song to make #1 twice with (significantly) different words.

Bob the Builder and his gang would have one further hit, with rave anthem ‘Big Fish Little Fish’, from their brilliantly titled second album ‘Never Mind the Breeze Blocks’, making #81 in 2008. Leaving seven years between albums was clearly a gamble that backfired… Bob the Builder remained on TV until 2008, before being relaunched in 2010. I can’t be alone in finding the CGI animation of the reboot slightly sinister compared to the original stop-motion version. The CGI Bob has never attempted a singing career, and it’s probably for the best. Good to go out on a high.

907. ‘Too Close’, by Blue

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Much like the Dalai Lama, when one boyband dies another is born…

Too Close, by Blue (their 1st of three #1s)

1 week, from 2nd – 9th September 2001

And it’s fitting that Blue depose Five’s final number one, because in many ways they were their true successors. A bit street, a bit cool, not too heavy on the ballads… They were the Westlife, perhaps, to Five’s Boyzone; or the N*Sync to Five’s Backstreet Boys.

And their number one debut – their second single – is a fun track. Like ‘Let’s Dance’, it’s a slice of disco-revival pop, but a slinkier, sexier, slower jam. ‘Too Close’ had been a US #1 just three years earlier, recorded by R&B trio Next. Their original wasn’t completely unknown in the UK, making #24, but there was plenty of room for a bigger version of what is a fun song. What’s interesting is that covering such a recent hit probably delayed any chance of Blue making it in the US (Lee Ryan’s comments on 9/11 probably didn’t help either…)

While the Next version is a much purer, more minimal ‘90s R&B record, I enjoy the quicker tempo and the poppier touches used in Blue’s cover. They retain the somewhat risqué lyrics, though, and I can’t ever imagine a Westlife #1 opening with the line: All the slow songs you requested, You’re dancing like you’re naked… Ooh it’s almost like we’re sexin’… Despite my general revulsion for the term ‘sexing’, I can enjoy this record, and its tale of trying to hide an erection while slow dancing.

An unnamed female singer, listed only as Awsa in the credits, feels a little bump coming through… The Blue boys protest that you’re making it hard for me! It’s all fairly childish, but I do appreciate any attempt at double entendre in chart-topping singles. Again though, it’s interesting that straight off the bat Blue weren’t cultivating a particularly kid-friendly image. Rewind ten years and it’s impossible to imagine Take That trying something similarly saucy. Is it indicative of deep societal change across the turn of the millennium? Or did Blue’s management just assume the kids wouldn’t pick up on the innuendo?

It’s also interesting, to return to the Five vs Blue comparison, to hear a late-nineties boyband next to a noughties boyband. Five, for all their pierced eyebrows and swagger, were still very goofy, and very pop-leaning on songs like ‘Slam Dunk da Funk’. Blue were a more grown-up proposition from the off, with this record’s slick, very Americanised R&B. Not that Blue were the first boyband to discover sex – think ‘Deep’ by East 17, or Another Level’s ‘Freak Me’ – but that it’s still interesting to note how pop music is slowly settling into its 21st century sound.

906. ‘Let’s Dance’, by Five

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Five (sorry, 5ive) return for album number three, and in boyband years three albums equals… Well let’s just say it’s almost time to go to that big boyband concert in the sky.

Let’s Dance, by Five (their 3rd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 19th August – 2nd September 2001

‘Let’s Dance’ is a swansong, then, and as a swansong it ticks all Five boxes. Rapped verses, catchy chorus, a hint of disco, cheeky swagger, Abs’ bucket hat in the video… Job’s a good ‘un. There’s even a spot of very du jour Daft Punk-influenced vocoding, perhaps borrowed from S Club 7 (and their far superior disco reboot) a few months earlier.

It’s a decent enough tune, then. But it’s all a bit calculated, fairly 2001-pop-song-by numbers. It lacks the personality, the vim and vigour of Five’s earlier hits, and again I’m left to lament that they had to wait so long for a #1, and that the likes of ‘Everybody Get Up’ and ‘If Ya Getting’ Down’ fell short.

It has the feel of a boyband on their last legs, basically, and that’s before you get to the fact that one of them, Sean Conlon, had already left the band due to exhaustion. This hadn’t been announced to the fans, and so he’s represented by a cardboard cutout in the video. Something that Conlon felt was a bit insulting, and that’s probably fair enough.

And on their last legs they were, as the split was announced just a month after this record had been sitting at number one. Various reunions took place over the next couple of decades, but always with one or two members missing. Earlier this year, though, they announced they’d be getting properly back together for a tour. News that was greeted more excitedly than most pop reunions, because I think Five were generally well liked by everyone, even those who were usually immune to boybands’ charms. They were fun, they were fresh, and they were – let’s be real for a moment – all pretty fuckable. And, most importantly of all, praise be: they kept the ballads to a minimum!

The strange, mockumentary official video:

The actual song:

Random Runners-Up… August 17th

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Welcome to the latest installment of Random Runners-Up, where we celebrate the records that came close, but no cigar. Three records, all sitting at #2 on this date in history…

‘We’ve Gotta Get out of This Place’, by the Animals – #2 for 1 week in 1965, behind ‘Help!’

Some classic sixties R&B to start us off. This is gritty stuff, with a winding bassline, snarling guitars, and the gutteral yowl of lead singer Eric Burden telling a tale of hardship and poverty. It was written by Brill Building duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, intended for the Righteous Brothers. The Animals changed the lyrics slightly, to reflect their childhoods in Newcastle. Watch my daddy in bed a-dyin’, Watch his hair been turning grey… And then out of nowhere springs a very upbeat, pop-leaning chorus. It is a positive song, despite the misery of the verses. The singer will get out of this place: Believe me baby, I know it baby, You know it too…

This was the Animals’ second-biggest hit, after their 1964 chart-topper ‘The House of the Rising Sun’, and was one of seven Top 10s the band enjoyed before fracturing in 1966. ‘We’ve Gotta Get out of This Place’ was released right at the start of the Vietnam War, and became an anthem for US soldiers stationed out there in the late-sixties.

‘You Got What It Takes’, by Showaddywaddy – #2 for 1 week in 1977, behind ‘Angelo’

The seventies were a time of great musical innovation… They were also a time of Showaddywaddy. Not that I’m complaining, because I can’t resist Showaddywaddy and their rock ‘n’ roll revival schtick. They had one number one in the UK, ‘Under the Moon of Love’, but were a constant presence in the charts during the latter half of the decade. ‘You Got What it Takes’ was the third in a run of seven straight Top 10 hits, and one of the band’s four #2s.

Like their chart-topper, this was a cover of an oldie: a 1960 #7 hit by Marv Johnson. Musically it owes a great debt to Lloyd Price’s ‘Personality’, and lyrically it tells the tale of a girl who doesn’t doesn’t live in a beautiful place, doesn’t dress with the best of taste… Nature didn’t give you such a beautiful face… And yet she has what it takes. What exactly that is isn’t specified, leaving our imaginations to run riot. Johnny Kidd & The Pirates and the Dave Clark Five also had hits with this tune, which makes it all the more surprising that I had never heard it before today!

‘Macarena’, by Los Del Rio – #2 for 1 week in 1996, behind ‘Wannabe’

For some reason I had visions of ‘Macarena’ being lodged in the Top 10 for months on end, but in truth it spent just one week at number two and didn’t have a chart run out of the ordinary. I guess I thought it must have hung around like a bad smell because it was the bane of my existance for endless school discos. This, and Whigfield’s ‘Saturday Night’. Both dances looked so simple, and yet… I could never quite get them right. Any dance that involves alternating left and right, or turning, and I short-circuit.

This hit version is a remix of a 1993 original, from Los Del Rio’s 18th studio album. They were (are, in fact, as they’re still going!) a Spanish duo from the sixties, and by the time this made them UK one-hit wonders both men were almost in their sixties. And no, the Macarena is not the name of the dance, but the name of one of the men’s daughters. Britain was one of the few countries where this didn’t go to #1. In the States, it stayed on top for fourteen, presumably very long, weeks…

905. ’21 Seconds’ by So Solid Crew

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Garage music continues on its mission to be as annoying a genre as possible…

21 Seconds, by So Solid Crew (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 12th – 19th August 2001

The three hardcore UK garage number ones – ‘Bound 4 da Reload’, ‘Do You Really Like It?’, and now this – feel like the musical equivalent of a teenager playing their music out loud at the back of the bus.

I could argue that I’m just an old fogey; but actually, I was fifteen when this made number one. I could easily have been that twatty teen. And while I’m sure me and my schoolmates were plenty obnoxious, none of us were ever into garage music. It felt very inner-city London; not small-town Scotland.

Like the two earlier garage #1s, this has lots of MCs spitting rhymes over a minimal 2-step production. The title refers to the fact that each performer gets twenty-one seconds to deliver their verse. Which at least keeps things quite fast-paced, and if one rapper doesn’t grab you then you know they won’t be on for long. Problem is, none of them grab me. And this isn’t me speaking as someone who doesn’t like rap music. There are rap songs I love. I named a rap song as my most recent Very Best Number One. It’s just that none of the rappers involved on this track have anything interesting to say.

What the title doesn’t refer to is there being twenty-one MCs on this track, though it starts to feel like it. There was actually a mathematical formula involved in creating the record. According to Wikipedia: “21 seconds is arrived at as the song’s tempo is approximately 140BPM, has a key of G minor, and each rapper has 12 bars of 4 beats (48 beats at 140BPM, when worked out to the nearest integer, rounds to 21 seconds).”

So Solid Crew had, at any one time, somewhere between nineteen and thirty members. Which makes them by far the biggest group to reach #1, although fewer than ten were involved in this track. The one member of So Solid that I can name with any confidence is Lisa Maffia, who is the only MC who sings her verse. Turns out I also recognise Romeo and Harvey, who had decent-ish solo careers away from the Crew. Interestingly, Oxide & Neutrino (of ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ fame) were So Solid members but didn’t feature on this track.

Of the three garage chart toppers that I mentioned, I would rank this in the middle. It’s not as intentionally annoying as DJ Pied Piper, and there is a lot of cultural relevance here. It’s punk for the new millennium, the sound of rebellious youth. It’s extremely modern, and there’s a clear line from this through to modern UK rap hits from the likes of Stormzy or Central Cee, while the I got twenty-one seconds to go, I got twenty-one seconds to flow chorus went just as viral, by 2001 standards, as Do you really like it, Is it is it wicked... I don’t like this record, but that’s down to personal taste. I must say, when I reviewed ‘Bound 4 da Reload’ I never thought I’d be placing it top of any list, but there was a joie de vivre in its ‘Casualty’ sampling novelty that is lacking in this song’s charmless slog through five minutes’ worth of identikit rapping.

One other thing worth mentioning here is the first appearance of the N-word in a number one single, in Megaman’s opening verse. I’m a big fan of tracking offensive language in chart-topping singles, from Lonnie Donegan’s ‘bloomin’’, to John Lennon’s ‘Christ!’, to Paul Weller’s ‘bullshit’. It feels like a switch was flicked the moment we hit the 21st century, with Oxide & Neutrino, and then of course Eminem, cramming their chart-toppers with vulgarity. All that’s left is the debut appearance of the c-word on top of the charts (and I don’t mean Coldplay…)