Best Song: The Four Tops - I'm In A Different World
When I first heard this I thought it sounded pretty similar to "Two Hearts" by Phil Collins but this obviously came first. It sort of makes sense though because Lamont Dozier was one of the composers of both records. This was the final Four Tops hit to be penned by Holland-Dozier-Holland.
Worst Song: Foundations - Build Me Up Buttercup
My choice for worst song was no doubt helped by the fact every shit town centre bar and club I went to on a Saturday night as a youngster would have this blasting out. It certainly helped me to resent this song anyway. I could put up with a lot of shit music and did, but when this would get played I'd say not this fuckin song again.
Top 40 Review
No Christmas songs in this Top 40 but we do have novelty records. The Christmas number one was "Lily The Pink" by The Scaffold which is terrible. Des O'Connor had "1-2-3 O'Leary" which was also bad. Then there was "I'm The Urban Spaceman" by Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band which is excellent.
The big genre of this Top 40 is soul music and aside from the Foundations they all get some points. They include records from Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, The Isley Brothers and The Supremes. There's also the excellent "Breaking Down The Walls Of Heartache" by Bandwagon.
There were 3 Beatles songs in the Top 40 but none were the actual Beatles versions. We had 2 different versions of "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" by Marmalade and Bedrocks. Then there was Joe Cocker doing "With A Little Help From My Friends". All good records.
Rock music was getting harder in 1968 with the Jimi Hendrix experience doing "All Along The Watchtower" and GUN doing "Race With The Devil". The latter does sound very heavy given it was 1968. Both decent records.
The more specialist genres were generally doing pretty well points wise. The exception to that was country music. These records were "Harper Valley PTA" by Jeannie C Riley which is a load of nonsense, and "Little Arrows" by English singer Leapy Lee which just sounds silly.
It's hard to pick too many faults with this Top 40 though. It very much reflects how music was progressing at the time and makes for quite an interesting chart. When doing my best year search I concluded 1969 was the best year in part because it seemed like it was the best of the 60s all coming together.
This Christmas chart of 1968 feels like it's almost the start of it and as a result we end up with a decent score.
Score: 23.5
Table
That's 5 times in a row now that I've found the Christmas chart to be better than the best year chart:
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