We now have a clear leader of the leaderboard with Fredo having 4 Top 40 hits so far this year.
Joining Olivia Rodrigo and Doja Cat on 2 is Digga D and Tom Grennan who made his Top 40 debut with 2 records on Friday.
20 of the 48 Top 40 hits so far this year have been rap.
Here's my weekly look at the Top 30 from 30 years ago. The plan is for these posts to go out at 17:30 on a Sunday.
Time for our second visit to see what tunes I was enjoying in 1996:
Best Song: The Four Seasons - Opus 17
There's a good chance that by the time you read this I'll have changed my mind. There were several candidates that were very hard to choose between, but this one just pips it for no particular reason. This was the 7th Top 40 hit for The Four Seasons and maybe the first that isn't that well known. Generally speaking I'd say the lesser known Four Seasons hits are the better ones.
Worst Song: Frank Sinatra - Strangers In The Night
I've heard many times what a great showman Frank Sinatra was, how his music is timeless etc. I've just never liked this sort of music and probably never will. It also seems very out of place in this Top 40, it's almost as if Frank Sinatra has heard the term "Swinging Sixties" and assumed it meant his swing music was in again. It did top the charts though, so maybe it was. Not for me though.
Top 40 Review
Once again we have no Motown records in the Top 40.
There's no shortage of good records though. On the soul front you have records like "River Deep, Mountain High" by Ike And Tina Turner, "When A Man Loves A Woman" by Percy Sledge and "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown. From the UK we have "I Couldn't Live Without Your Love" by Petula Clark which could easily pass for a Motown record.
Elsewhere we almost have the who's who of British 60s groups with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Hollies, The Animals, Yardbirds, Troggs, Herman's Hermits, The Small Faces and Manfred Mann all being in this particular Top 40.
One of the best song contenders in there is the Rolling Stones cover "Out Of Time" by Chris Farlowe. This was one of the stand out number ones of the 60s when I was listening through them several years ago.
Aside from the Frank Sinatra record, this does very much feel like a 60s chart which should be expected really given how far into the decade we've got.
The records that I do not like are in the minority. Given that there were a number that I simply found OK though, it doesn't quite get a score of over 50%. But given some of the Top 30s in the early 90s don't get more than 50%, this is an impressive score.
Score: 19.5
Table
The 60s are getting better as the years go by post-Beatles, but the score for 1966 will take some beating if this was to continue.
Fans of musicals will probably know this particular song from being in Evita. That particular version was never a Top 40 hit, but this disco version from Linda Lewis was, just.
Linda Lewis isn't what you'd call a household name, but many will be familiar with some of the music she was at least involved in such as being backing vocalist on David Bowies "Aladdin Sane" album.
This was the last of her Top 40 hits as an artist. Her first came in 1973 with "Rock-a-Doodle-Doo" which was also written by her. The rest were all covers.
Here's my weekly look at the Top 30 from 30 years ago. The plan is for these posts to go out at 17:30 on a Sunday.
Best Song: Gene Pitney - Looking Through The Eyes Of Love
I started listening to Gene Pitney in the late 90s after opening myself up to music that wasn't rave. A mate of mine who was mainly into rave but liked other things introduced me to Gene Pitney songs that weren't "Somethings Gotten Hold Of My Heart" and I liked it and bought a CD. This was amongst the better tracks in my opinion.
Worst Song: Joan Baez - We Shall Overcome
I simply don't like it. Joan Baez has always been one of those artists that annoy me and I just find this particular record boring.
Top 40 Review
After anticipating a flood of Motown records to appear, there are precisely zero in this particular Top 40.
What we do have is folk music having a notable presence on the Top 40 with the likes of Bob Dylan, Donovan and The Byrds. The latter do a cover of the Bob Dylan song "Mr Tambourine Man" which was the first actual song I learned on the guitar. Only good enough to warrant half marks though.
No Beatles in this chart but still plenty of bands they opened the doors to. This includes Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas with "Trains And Boats And Planes". The songs composer Burt Bacharach is also in the Top 40 with his version. Again, both records only good enough to warrant half marks.
In fact there are a lot of records that get half marks, 14 in total. The best of the rest would be "Heart Full Of Soul" by Yardbirds. A sign of the music getting harder. Another somewhat surprising song I've given a 1 to is "Leave A Little Love" by Lulu, proof you shouldn't judge an artist by their big hits.
Elvis Presley is at number one, given the number he's had this shouldn't be a surprise. However it does feel out of place in this particular chart and we are in a period where Elvis single didn't chart particularly high.
I think the best way to describe this Top 40 is progress. Despite the lack of Motown it does very much seem like a 60s chart and it gets a very respectable score.
Score: 16
Table
1965 now tops the table. It could stay there a while given the score, but knowing what else the 60s has to offer I can't help but think it will get knocked off the top once the decades out:
This was the 3rd and final Top 40 hit for pub rockers Dr Feelgood. Although pub rock has it's legacy, unsurprisingly it didn't give us many Top 40 hits as it was music for the pub, not the charts.
The popularity of pub rock had already been in decline by 1979 having been overshadowed by punk. Despite this, the bulk of the genres Top 40 success came after the first punk Top 40 hit.
This record was written by Larry Wallis who had previously been one of the founding members of Motorhead and played with several bands over the years.
Dr Feelgood are still going today, though without any original members or members who even played on this record since 1994 when Lee Brilleaux, the last remaining original member died.
It was 20 years ago this month that I was having a conversation with somebody about the inevitable death of UK Garage. In some ways it was a strange conversation to be having, UK Garage was massive at that point and we'd have 3 chart topping UK Garage records before the end of the year. But if you look at what happened beyond 2001, we were pretty accurate with our prediction.
Back in the mid-90s, there were a lot of people who were into house and garage. If you were to ask them what the difference between house and garage was, many of them wouldn't know the answer. It was generally accepted that a given tune would fit the house and garage category. Back in the 80s when the 2 genres first came about, if it was from Chicago it was house and if it was from New York it was garage due to the names of the clubs to play those genres i.e. Warehouse in Chicago and Paradise Garage in New York.
Then at the beginning of 1997 an Armand Van Helden remix of "Professional Widow" by Tori Amos topped the charts and everyone was talking about speed garage. The ironic thing about speed garage was that it wasn't very fast. The term lasted until around mid-98, by which point big beat had become the big genre in the dance music world alongside house.
In the underground rave scene, the divide between happy hardcore and drum & bass had widened to the point where having both genres at the same rave wasn't making much sense. Instead you had events like Hysteria who would have drum & bass in the main arena and garage in the second room.
Going into 1999, garage barely got a mention commercially. The term house and garage had been replaced by house and trance. In-fact on the Kiss Ibiza 99 compilation you have a house disc and a trance disc and "Straight From the Heart" by Doolally, a UK Garage tune appears on the house disc.
Meanwhile multi arena raves such as Slammin Vinyl and United Dance had UK Garage arenas with DJs such as Timmi Magic, Mikee B, Spoony, EZ, Jason Kaye, Mike 'Ruffcut' Lloyd and Pied Piper playing in them.
Commercially there was a garage number one in "Sweet Like Chocolate" which was more novelty record done in a garage style than a proper garage record in my book. Aside from this, a couple of hits from Da Click and a re-issue of "Straight From The Heart", there were no other garage records in the charts for most of the year.
At the end of the year came "Re-Rewind" by Artful Dodger, "A Little Bit Of Luck" by DJ Luck & MC Neat and "Buddy X 99" by The Dreem Team.
Suddenly UK Garage was massive. The Dreem Team aka Timmi Magic, Mikee B and Spoony had a show on Radio 1. The DJs who'd play at Slammin Vinyl were now on the TV. We had Posh Spice make her solo debut with a garage record. There was seemingly no underground anymore, what you'd hear in a Slammin Vinyl set was more or less the same as what you'd hear on the radio.
On a personal level I'd well and truly jumped on the bandwagon myself. I bought both the hardcore and garage tapepacks from Slammin Vinyl in September 2000. I listened to the garage tapes all the time but barely listened to the hardcore ones. I received the Artful Dodger album as a Christmas present that year.
At the beginning of 2001 there were 3 UK Garage hits which amongst other factors made me question the future of UK Garage. They were "Why" by Mis-Teeq, "Falling" by Boom! and "Boom Selection" by Genius Cru.
I like Mis-Teeq and have their debut album. But this was an R&B group using garage to launch themselves and it was almost inevitable there would come a point they would revert back to R&B, which they did. Boom! were a manufactured pop group and the record was abysmal, exactly the sort of thing to alienate those genuinely into garage. Genius Cru were a bunch of MCs and this record was indicative of the direction garage was going in.
Some of the garage DJs had been around for years long before UK Garage became a thing. Mikee B and Jason Kaye were part of early 90s rave act Top Buzz, Grant Nelson used to produce happy hardcore as Wishdokta, DJ Zinc was still a big name in drum & bass, Trick or Treat were happy hardcore DJs SY and Unknown. Furthermore, The Dreem Teams Radio 1 show wasn't just garage,
All these factors combined led me to believe that garage maybe had another year. It became too big too quickly. At the same time, the garage arena wasn't a happy place to be. I think the last time I was in a garage room was at Slammin Vinyl in February 2001, the last time it featured the genre. It just felt like it could kick off any minute, it didn't but many garage events did attract violence.
Then we had the So Solid Crew, a group with something like 36 members and heavily associated with violence. The whole thing seemed a joke, MCs were nothing new to garage but tended to be one person MCing for a DJ not 20 MCs on a single record.
The last proper Pure Garage compilation came out at the end of 2001. 2002 began with Daniel Bedingfield regaining the top spot with "Gotta Get Thru This" and So Solid Crew had their 3rd hit with "Haters". You could sense this was the beginning of the end though. After DJ Luck & MC Neat charted in May with "Irie" there was no garage in the Top 40 for the rest of the year.
Many of those big names in garage would continue to be successful in music. Dreem Team remained on Radio 1, some members of So Solid Crew had solo hits that weren't garage, Mis-Teeq went back to R&B.
There have been garage hits since then, even one this year. We also have the garage classical from Spoony. But the garage scene itself is long gone.
Best Song: Mary Wells - My Guy
Motown has arrived. Although it first came about in 1959, it wasn't until 1964 that it hit the UK Top 40. This was the first UK Top 40 hit from Motown and only one for Mary Wells. If anything it's a sign of great music to come as Motown produced lots of good records in the 60s and beyond.
Worst Song: Kenny Ball And His Jazzmen - Hello, Dolly!
There are 3 versions of this record in this Top 40. As well as this there were versions by Louis Armstrong and Frankie Vaughan. It's a song from a musical which is never a good thing in my book, but after hearing it for the 3rd time I was irritated by this more than any other record.
Top 40 Review
Now we're approaching the mid-60s with The Beatles and co now established, you would expect most 50s acts to be finished by now. However, 10 of the 40 records are by acts who were also present in the charts in the 50s. Furthermore we have the record "Dimples" by John Lee Hooker charting for the first time, but the record itself is from 1956. A further 5 records were by acts who debuted before The Beatles including the number one "It's Over" by Roy Orbison and 2 hits by Jim Reeves.
The Beatles themselves were in the Top 40 with "Ain't She Sweet" which was their only UK Top 40 hit of the 60s not to make the Top 10. This is because it was Polydor cashing in on the bands success rather than an official release from the band.
There were 9 records in the Top 40 by bands who fall under the beat category. In addition to The Beatles, from Liverpool we had The Swinging Blue Jeans, The Fourmost and The Mojos. From London we had Brian Poole & the Tremeloes and The Dave Clark Five. From Birmingham we have The Applejacks, from Manchester we had The Hollies and finally from Blackburn we had The Four Pennies.
Furthermore we had Cilla Black and Peter & Gordon in the charts who had both previously charted with Lennon/McCartney compositions.
The Rolling Stones were also in the charts with "It's All Over Now". It wouldn't be until the following year that they would start charting with songs they wrote themselves.
What we are most likely seeing here is the charts not truly reflecting the history books. The older acts were perhaps no longer cool but enough of the older people were buying their records to keep them having hits.
As expected the score for 1964 is higher than in 1963, but only just.
Score: 13.5
Table
1964 now tops the table but again I don't expect it to stay there too long, particularly with more Motown records on the way:
The Late Show were a band who were too obscure to have their own Wikipedia page. I couldn't find much about them on the internet, but what I found was they were a short lived British rock n roll retro group.
The title would suggest the group are trying to glamorize a British city with an American sounding tune. But it's actually a cover of a 1961 song by the Dovells who were an American group. The Bristol they are singing about is a suburb of Philadelphia as opposed to the UK city.
This would be the only Top 40 hit for the group. One of the members went on to become a teacher and it's probably safe to assume the rest of them went back to the day job too.
