Best Song: Roy Orbison - Blue Angel
This was the 2nd Top 40 hit for Roy Orbison. I'm not going to pretend it was ahead of it's time because it wasn't and it does sound old fashioned. At the same time though it was music that stood out as being good at the time and still had it's place once The Beatles were established.
Worst Song: Frank Sinatra - Ol' MacDonald
I've never though much of Frank Sinatra to be honest, the big band sort of music really isn't my cup of tea. On this particular record though he's singing "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" in the big band style. It just sounds ridiculous to me.
Top 40 Review
One thing that you can say about the Christmas Top 40 in 1960 is that it had variety. From traditional pop to the more modern pop, rock n roll, instrumental rock, jazz. There's a few records from each of those genres in there.
We have some Christmas hits in there too. The best known would be "Little Donkey" by Nina And Frederick and there was also "Lonely Pup (In A Christmas Shop)" by Adam Faith and "Little White Berry" by Roy Castle. None of them get any points as usual.
We have the novelty records in there too such as "Goodness Gracious Me" by Peter Sellers And Sophia Loren. Once again no points there.
Saving this Top 40 though is Roy Orbison whose record "Only the Lonely" was also in the Top 40 and also gets maximum points.
Other records getting full marks are "Save The Last Dance For Me" by The Drifters which was their 2nd Top 40 hit and "Rocking Goose" by Johnny & The Hurricanes which is a silly record but fun to listen to.
Many more records get half marks though which pretty much sums up this chart. There's lots of rubbish in there, but sizeable chunk of records are simply OK.
The Top 2 positions are held by Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard who were very much in the peak of their popularity here. To me that's more of a sign that The Beatles needed to happen.
Meanwhile we had 2 records from Lonnie Donegan, the king of skiffle which was the roots of The Beatles. I always thought skiffle had it's limitations and Lonnie Donegan had made it to 25 hits by this point.
Once again we end up with a score in single figures.
Score: 8.5
Table
The score is lower than the best year score but not by a great deal. Interesting how close the Christmas charts scores are for those years that scored 9.5 in the best year search:
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