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.