2006 number ones

1033. ‘Crazy’, by Gnarls Barkley

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What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster… hit?

Crazy, by Gnarls Barkley (their 1st and only #1)

9 weeks, from 2nd April – 4th June 2006

And ‘Monster hit’ is the only way to describe this record. ‘Crazy’s nine-week run at the top of the charts is the longest for almost twelve years, since Wet Wet Wet’s ‘Love Is All Around’ did fifteen. It was the biggest selling single of 2006. It was the twelfth biggest of the decade (though if we discount charity/novelty/X-Factor songs it is the third biggest ‘normal’ song of the 2000s). And it was the first song in history to reach #1 on downloads alone.

Before we get into this record in detail, let us consider monster hits more carefully. We’re now well over fifty years into the singles chart, and in that time I’ve noticed that gigantic hits fall into two categories. (By gigantic, monster, mega – delete as you wish – hits we’re talking purely about the length of their run at number one, and I’m going to set a minimum of eight weeks, which means, for example, ‘Dancing Queen’ is a classic, but its six weeks on top mean it was not a mega, monster, or gigantic hit.)

These two categories are ‘obvious’, and ‘weird’. Obvious mega hits include ‘I Believe’ (18 weeks), or ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It For You’ (16 weeks), or the aforementioned Wet Wet Wet biggie, any of Ed Sheeran’s chart-humpers, and even the most recent record-breaker, ‘Rein Me In’. They’re obvious, often bland, crowd pleasers. In the weird category, though, we have the likes of ‘Stay’ (8 weeks), ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and ‘Two Tribes’ (both 9 weeks, though Bo Rap is really on 14 thanks to its 1991 rerelease), Drake’s ‘One Dance’ (15 long weeks), or the dreaded ‘Dance Monkey’ (11). Regular, catchy, three point five minute pop songs don’t seem to ever have the legs to become monster hits.

I’m not sure what the significance of this is, if there’s a significance to it at all. I’m also not sure what category Gnarls Barkley’s ‘Crazy’ falls under. It isn’t your regular pop song. But it isn’t that weird either. It’s timeless, soulful; but also quite lo-fi, and lyrically quite challenging. It opens with the line I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind… and goes on to become a rumination on fame, and how artists are more respected when they are a little insane. My heroes had the heart, To live their life out on a limb, And all I remember, Is thinking, I wanna be like them… The ‘craziness’ theme extends to the Rorschach test inspired video.

Singer CeeLo’s voice has so much soul, and bite to it, truly making the song, and making it sound like its coming from a different species entirely to the singer of the previous #1, Ne-Yo (sorry Ne-Yo, you were just the closest example…) The rest of the song is relatively simple, if off-kilter: a neo-soul beat, strings, and a sample of ‘Last Men Standing’ from the soundtrack to 1968 Western ‘Django, Prepare a Coffin’. The more I write, the more I’m leaning towards putting this in the ‘weird’ column…

For such a monster hit, I don’t think ‘Crazy’ gets the airplay it deserves twenty years on, and has slipped from the public conscience in the meantime. Gnarls Barkley themselves deleted the song from music stores, not wanting people to get sick of their song, meaning that it disappeared from the charts two weeks after being knocked off #1, perhaps explaining how people forgot about it so quickly.

This completed an odd chart run, which began with the song making number one on downloads alone. In 2006 a new rule had been introduced, allowing songs to chart via downloads a week before their physical release (at this point, songs still needed a physical release to be eligible for the chart). Most big hits charted low down in the Top 40 on downloads before leaping to the top the following week – in the second half of 2006 nine different number ones will experience this week-two bounce – but ‘Crazy’ was so popular, and so anticipated, that it went straight in at the top.

Gnarls Barkley were singer CeeLo Green and producer Danger Mouse. Both had pedigree: Green had worked with Lauryn Hill and Santana, while Danger Mouse had produced for Gorillaz, and had released the well-received ‘Grey Album’, a mash-up of Jay-Z’s ‘Black’ and The Beatles’ ‘White’ albums. ‘Crazy’ was their first hit, a real out-of-nowhere, lightning in a bottle moment, that the duo would never quite manage to capture again (follow-up ‘Smiley Faces’ made #10, and was their only other Top 20 hit). They went their separate ways again in 2008 – CeeLo’s solo career will bring him another fine chart-topper – before releasing their long-touted third and final album ‘Atlanta’ earlier this year.

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1032. ‘So Sick’, by Ne-Yo

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Following on from the lowest-selling number one of all time, we have another forgotten chart-topper…

So Sick, by Ne-Yo (his 1st of five #1s)

1 week, from 26th March – 2nd April 2006

Or should that be a forgettable chart-topper? ‘So Sick’, US singer Ne-Yo’s second single, has neither a catchy hook nor an unwanted sales record to distinguish it. It’s more R&B sludge, of the kind that has started to make number one in the UK more regularly as overall sales hit rock bottom. For whatever reason, fans of this, and Akon, and Mario Winans, were the ones still going out to buy records. Ne-Yo was the latest in a star-studded modern R&B heritage that you can probably trace back to Usher’s first #1 in 1998, and through to Jason Derulo in the 2010s.

Like Akon’s ‘Lonely’ – though minus the irritating, sped-up sample – ‘So Sick’ wallows in self-pity. It is a bold move, I’ll admit, making a sad, slow song about being sick of hearing sad, slow songs. And I’m so sick of love songs, So tired of tears… Why can’t I turn off the radio…? Meanwhile, back in 2006, I’m sure I had no problem turning off the radio when this record came on.

Can a song be both annoying and boring? This is dull, the tempo slow and deliberate, but also the hand-clap beat and the cheap electronic riff that plays over the chorus are quite aggravating to listen to. Ne-Yo has a good voice, for sure, smooth and soulful – even if he has a grating habit of over-pronouncing some of the lyrics – but it isn’t enough to elevate the song as a whole. This is a strong contender for my next ‘Meh’ award.

He will be a regular on the charts for the next wee while though, with four more number ones to come over the next six years. And, from glancing at the titles, I believe they are all a little more upbeat, and enjoyable, than this syrupy ballad. Ne-Yo’s grip over 2010s pop extended to writing and producing too, and he would be involved in big hits for Rihanna, Beyonce, and Mario. I’ll leave you to decide whether this will be to the benefit of pop music for the remainder of the decade…

1031. ‘No Tomorrow’, by Orson

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Just glancing through the list of 2006’s chart-toppers, I notice that it’s a year which is pretty well stocked for well-remembered, and eclectic #1s. We’ve already had Arctic Monkeys and Madonna and, while I don’t want to give too much away, we’ve got Lily Allen, Shakira, Justin Timberlake, My Chemical Romance and a returning Take That to come. All with records that people still look back fondly on today.

And yet our next number one, which I doubt anybody nowadays can hum the chorus to, is arguably the most (in)famous of all…

No Tomorrow, by Orson (their 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 19th – 26th March 2006

For if Orson’s ‘No Tomorrow’ is remembered at all, it is not for musical reasons. It is because it recorded the lowest ever weekly sales for a number one single: 17,694 copies/downloads. It’s a freakishly low sale, almost 3,000 below the second-lowest (Elvis’s ‘One Night’ reissue, AKA the #1000th #1, at 20,463), and will presumably never be bettered, if that’s even the right word.

But I’m glad, in a way, that the lowest sales record is held by this odd little alt-pop-rock record. It could so easily have gone to a much bigger song by default, on its tenth week at number one. This is not the type of thing we hear often at #1. I’m trying to think of a good term for this genre of glossy, well-produced US rock… Frat rock? Douche rock…?

I like it though. It’s dumb, but very catchy. The lead singer looks like a moron, in a pork-pie hat and tie combination. The chorus is stupid but soaring. Did I mention it’s dumb… It’s all about living for the moment, hence the title, but it tries to get its message across with lyrics like: Tomorrow there’s no school, So let’s go drink some more Red Bull, And not get home ‘til about six o’clock…

Despite not inventing the genre, we Brits can be a little possessive over our rock ‘n’ roll. And despite inventing the genre, Americans have been resoundingly put in their place by British rock groups. Who is the biggest American rock group? Aerosmith? Bon Jovi? Linkin Park? The Beach Boys…? It’s actually surprising when you think about how weighted towards UK acts rock music, in the British singles charts especially, has been.

And yet, every so often, we allow the Americans in. Often at the most random moments… Beach Boys aside, none of the other acts I just named have a UK #1. But Los Lobos, Deep Blue Something, the Offspring, and Limp Bizkit do. To this motley crew (no number one for them either…) we can add Orson. Who were actually so much more popular in Britain, for a brief shining moment, that they decamped from their native California to base themselves in London.

Their fame didn’t last, despite both their debut single and album going to #1, and they split up in 2008 after their second LP failed to do very much. Nowadays, they are remembered for that unenviable sales record and little else. The Top 3 for this week in 2006 were separated by just three hundred or so sales, so the record could have gone to Chico, or to Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Pump It’ (a song perhaps even dumber than this one). I’m glad it went to ‘No Tomorrow’, though, as it’s a little moment of something slightly different at number one. And in the end it hung around, and went on to be the year’s 12th highest selling single, showing that you can’t always judge a song by its one-off sales figure…

There’s no high-quality upload of the song on YouTube, so here’s the audio:

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1030. ‘It’s Chico Time’, by Chico

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

What time is it???

Well we’re about to have that question answered in a very cheesy, disco-funk fashion. It is, it turns out, Chico Time.

It’s Chico Time, by Chico (his 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 5th – 19th March 2006

Yousseph ‘Chico’ Slimani had been a contestant on the previous year’s X-Factor, going home in the quarter finals as Shayne Ward went on to win. Yet despite finishing nowhere near the final three, Chico was the only other contestant from that series to have a number one. He was the season’s novelty act, the blueprint for later ‘comedy’ turns from the likes of Jedward and Wagner, and came out with the sort of debut single that most would have expected. In fact, he had performed it on the show the previous November, and it was pretty rare for X Factor contestants to be allowed, or to even have ready, an original song.

‘It’s Chico Time’ is nonsense – a complete novelty – but it’s not awful. It reminds me of a so many other songs; so many little bits nicked here and there that I can’t name all its many influences. The strongest whiffs, to my ears, and from a chart-topping perspective, are from ‘Livin’ La Vida Loca’, and ‘Who Do You Think You Are‘. And ‘Uptown Funk’, despite that song not existing for another decade. Maybe Bruno Mars is a Chico fan…?

What Chico Time actually involves, and what activities one might take part in at this hour, is left largely a mystery. Until the middle eight, which is all over the place musically, but is also when this previously family friendly track gets a little saucy. Shake it naughty, Come on baby bump my body… It’s probably worth mentioning here that a pre-fame Chico had worked as a stripper… At its heart, though, this song is a lesson in foregoing self-importance. You can get delirious if you take life too serious… There are worse mantras to live by.

Despite the stage name, Chico was not Spanish. He had been raised in Morocco, but born in Wales! He joins Sir Tom and Dame Shirley in the ranks of chart-topping Welshpeople. That is a Pointless answer if ever I heard one. He had one further Top 40 hit, a cover of ‘D.I.S.C.O’ (with the lyrics changed to ‘C.H.I.C.O.’) which made #24, but little else. An attempt to resurrect his biggest hit as ‘It’s England Time’ for the 2010 World Cup thankfully went uncharted.

His post-‘Chico Time’ career is an interesting mix of charity causes: Prince’s Trust, Cambodian orphanages, and water charities in Africa. I had to do a double take at finding out that his single ‘Curvy Cola Bottle Body Baby’, in which he celebrated the larger ladies, was released to raise money for an eating disorder charity! He’s appeared at religious events singing traditional Islamic songs, and at anti-Covid vaccine protests. He had a stroke in 2018 but made a strong recovery. There is never a dull day, it seems, when you are on Chico time.

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1029. ‘Sorry’, by Madonna

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Our third disco influenced number one in a row. And leave it to Madame Ciccone to show them all how it’s properly done…

Sorry, by Madonna (her 12th of thirteen #1s)

1 week, from 26th February – 5th March 2006

The question I’d like address before we finish today is thus: Is ‘Sorry’ better than ‘Hung Up’? Answers at the end of the post. The two records are cut from the same cloth, at least. This is a little more laidback, more electro/new-wave than its predecessor, more reliant on synths and bass than strings and an ABBA sample. But it is still a great dance tune.

Lyrically, it’s the flip-side of ‘Hung Up’. In the earlier hit, Madonna was largely gagging for an unnamed man. Calling him on the phone and being both literally and metaphorically ‘hung up’. On ‘Sorry’, though, she is reading the riot act, in a very disco-diva fashion. Don’t explain yourself, ‘Cause talk is cheap, There’s more important things than hearing you speak… is a great line, as is the withering: You’re not half the man you’d like to be…

And yes, it’s another shadow #1, following in the wake of an even bigger hit, like so many chart-toppers were in the low sales climate of 2006, as Britain slowly transitioned from CDs to downloads. Casual physical purchases were dropping, and so having a fanbase like Madonna’s, willing to hit the aisles of HMV, was vital. But again, I don’t want to bandy terms like ‘shadow number one’, or the even less complimentary ‘non-number one’, around with songs as good as this.

Any song by Madonna automatically qualifies for gay anthem status. What nudges this record into camp classic territory is when Madge shows off her impressive polyglotism, by reciting the title in various languages. And as a very (very) low-level speaker of Japanese, the one thing I can pull Madonna up on here is for getting the stress completely wrong on gomenasai.

But hell, it’s Madonna. If she wants to pronounce it wrong then Japan will just have adjust its language to suit. I love this song, I love Madonna. But. Is ‘Sorry’ better than ‘Hung Up’? Well, I am enjoying it today, especially because you don’t hear it half as much as its predecessor, but all in all, no. ‘Hung Up’ is the better track. Though this was a hell of a one-two for an artist over three decades into her career.

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1028. ‘Thunder in My Heart Again’, by Meck ft. Leo Sayer

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On to another number one with a disco groove, albeit a more family-friendly record than its predecessor ‘Nasty Girl’…

Thunder In My Heart Again, by Meck (his 1st and only #1) ft. Leo Sayer (his 2nd and final #1)

2 weeks, from 12th – 26th February 2006

It’s been a while, but it’s nice to have a tacky dance song back at #1. This sound was all the rage back in 2003 and ’04 (also known as handbag house, but my woke self thinks that’s a bit misogynist), it usually involves an old disco or dance track tarted up with a modern beat by a young, preferably European, DJ. Think ‘Make Luv’, think LMC, think ‘Lola’s Theme’ and, of course, ‘Call on Me’. And anyway, ‘tacky dance’ can’t be much of an insult, as I quite like most of those songs. They remind me of nights out in my provincial hometown.

‘Thunder in My Heart Again’ ticks (almost) all the tacky dance boxes. A sample from Leo Sayer’s 1977 #22 hit ‘Thunder in My Heart’, a basic, pre-set rhythm, lots of swooshes and vocal effects… The only thing lacking is that Meck was British. I’d have sworn he’d be German or Dutch.

Meck didn’t have to work too hard to turn this into a nu-disco track, as Sayer’s original was pretty darn disco to start with. I do love the commitment with which he belts out the Do just what you wanna do with my love… line. In fact, listening to the original now, you start to think that Meck was a little cheeky in getting a credit on this record… I like Sayer’s quote from the time, in which he claims this remix “kept all (the original’s) integrity”. Leo, mate, it sounds almost identical…

Though Sayer had little reason to complain as his credit on the single brought an unexpected return to number one, exactly twenty-nine years after his sole previous chart-topper ‘When I Need You’. (Fun fact: Leo Sayer has only ever made #1 in February.) At the time it was a record, beating the twenty-six years between Cher’s ‘I Got You Babe’ and ‘The Shoop Shoop Song’. He didn’t hold the record for long, and it has since been beaten by three acts with longer gaps between their number ones. Answers on a postcard, or in the comments, if you know who they are…

After this, we’ll continue on a disco groove. From hip-hop, to tacky dance, to a pop legend showing everyone how to do dance music properly…

This video is a masterpiece of the tacky dance genre. Gloriously cheap looking!

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1027. ‘Nasty Girl’, by Notorious B.I.G. ft. Diddy, Nelly, Jagged Edge & Avery Storm

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In 2005, we had a belated, posthumous #1 for 2Pac. In early 2006, another famous, and very dead, nineties rapper makes their first and only appearance on top of the charts: the Notorious B.I.G.

Nasty Girl, by Notorious B.I.G. (his 1st and only #1) ft. Diddy (his 3rd and final #1), Nelly (his 4th and final #1), Jagged Edge & Avery Storm

2 weeks, from 29th January – 12th February 2006

It’s fitting, in more ways than one, that six months elapsed between their turns at number one, as that’s how long passed between their deaths. 2Pac’s murder came in September 1996, before Biggie was slain in March 1997 in a similar drive-by shooting. Rumours abound that their deaths were related, given the feud between the two that had gone on since 1994.

Unlike 2Pac, whose ‘Ghetto Gospel’ was hard-hitting social commentary, ‘Nasty Girl’ doesn’t have such worthy ambitions. The title gives a big hint, and yes, this is filth. I remember the soulful groove, and the catchy chorus from the time (this was my 20th birthday #1), but I don’t remember it being so dirty. I must have been hearing the radio edit…

B.I.G. delivers the first verse, a sample from a song of his originally called ‘Nasty Boy’. Fingers in your mouth, Open up your blouse, Pull your g-string down south… is one of the cleaner lines, but it’s my favourite of the three main verses. Biggie has a brilliantly languorous flow, that makes him sound like he’s rapping direct from the bedroom, presumably in a silk nightgown.

Plus, he’s not Diddy – topping the charts for the third time under a third different name – whose verse makes for pretty icky listening knowing what we know now. Women wantin’ to bone Sean Combs… he brags. Nelly does the third, and again he can’t match the effortless smut of their dead partner. Both these men were appearing on their final chart-toppers.

Elsewhere in the credits – the longest for a number one single up to this point – we have vocal group Jagged Edge, who sing the chorus, while R&B singer Avery Storm gets to harmonise in the background. This makes it one more act than Christina Aguilera et al and their version of ‘Lady Marmalade’.

The video is even more stacked with luminaries: Usher, Pharrell Williams, Fat Joe, Naomi Campbell, and surely many more I don’t recognise, dancing in a club in honour of Biggie. I assumed that William’s must have been involved in the record’s production, as the beat sounds very Neptunes, but he wasn’t.

I do like this song, as despite the vulgarity it’s silly enough, and it does have a very danceable, disco-soul beat. It probably goes on a minute too long, though. It was from an album called ‘Duets: The Final Chapter’, B.I.G.’s second posthumous album. Like 2Pac, he wasn’t short of people making a buck off his legacy, in this case P. Diddy himself, who was the project’s executive producer. Some complained that the rappers he was ‘duetting’ with on the album were people Biggie didn’t care for in real life, but obviously he had no say. Diddy, whose career breakthrough had come thanks to his tribute for Biggie (‘I’ll Be Missing You’), had no qualms.

It’s worth noting that ‘Nasty Girl’ was not a big seller, and in its second week at #1 it recorded sales of fewer than 25,000. Just a month after Shayne Ward selling three quarters of a million to make Christmas number one, we’re on our way to hitting a record sales low…

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1026. ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, by Arctic Monkeys

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We move into 2006, with a classic January #1…

When the Sun Goes Down, by Arctic Monkeys (their 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 22nd – 29th January 2006

A ‘January #1’ being a low-selling one-weeker, making it due to the general sleepiness of the market after the new year, potentially indie in leaning, or alternative in sound. Think ‘Sadeness Part 1’, or ‘Professional Widow’, or ‘The Masses Against the Classes’. Or indeed ‘When the Sun Goes Down’, Arctic Monkeys second #1.

Following their first appearance on this blog, there was some discussion of how Arctic Monkeys’ career can be split into two parts. Pre and post-‘AM’, their hugely successful 2013 album. To Gen Z, and therefore to streaming services and social media, that album is Arctic Monkeys. Which means their first four albums get overshadowed, forgotten even, in some quarters. It means you don’t hear ‘I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’ as much as you might expect, and you almost never hear their second and final chart-topper.

Which is a shame. Okay, it might not be the most commercial of their hits. It might not be as light-hearted, or as danceable as its predecessor. I mean, it might feel strange dancing to a song about prostitutes, and the ‘scummy’ men that surround them. It’s musically bold, too, starting with an extendedly slow, almost jazzy intro, in which the scene is set (with a lyrical nod to another big hit about hookers, the Police’s ‘Roxanne’).

A minute in, and we snap into a much more trademark, sharp as a tack riff. It’s even heavier than ‘…Dancefloor’, the heaviest riff we’ve heard at number one for a good long while. Like ‘…Dancefloor’ too, the lyrics go from brazenly teenage – They’re all infected, But he’ll be alright – to sharply observant. And Alex Turner’s delivery remains unashamedly South Yorkshire – we get a ‘summat’, and a ‘fookin’ freezing’, while the second verse has an all-time rhyming couplet: ‘Ford Mondeo’ with and he don’t even have to say ‘owt…

The slow, solitary guitar returns for the outro – the song only really comes to life for a minute and a half – and ends on an almost comical, music hall riff. I don’t like this record as much as ‘…Dancefloor’, but I am glad that the band chose something as deliberately uncommercial – both musically and lyrically – for their second single, knowing that there was an excellent chance of it making number one. The video is worth a watch too, perhaps one of the most unglamorous music videos of all time, featuring a young Stephen Graham as a pimp.

Maybe surprisingly, after two #1s straight out the blocks, Arctic Monkeys managed no further chart-toppers. They had plenty of hits from their second album, before their fortunes slowly slipped with albums three and four. Then, as we mentioned above, they returned with the hugely successful ‘AM’ and seemed to become a completely different band. Since then they’ve long since stopped chasing chart hits.

Meanwhile rock music in general has all but disappeared from the Top 40 in the streaming age (‘Mr Brightside’ excepted…) So, once again, we can call Arctic Monkey’s British rock’s last hurrah, bid them farewell, and prepare ourselves for a future that neither rocks nor rolls…

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