Best Song: Del Shannon - So Long Baby
It had been earlier on in the year that Del Shannon topped the charts with his Top 40 debut "Runaway". This was his 3rd Top 40 hit. If punk had existed back in 1961 then this is what it would have probably sounded like. It's short and snappy and you sense some of that attitude.
Worst Song: Mrs Mills - Mrs Mills Medley
The name Mrs Mills has school teacher written all over it, least of all because my keyboard teacher at music school when I was a kid was called Mrs Mills. It's a piano medley and sound exactly the sort of thing a school teacher would play that you'd have to sing along to.
Top 40 Review
This would be the last Christmas charts before The Beatles came about. As such it looks more like a 50s chart than a 60s one.
Rock n Roll was in the charts, but we had more traditional pop in there than anything else. Whenever I've looked at 1961 in the past I recall seeing it as a bit of a hangover from the 50s and there wasn't really anything new to drive things forward.
Also having a notable presence in this Top 40 is jazz music. As jazz had been around long before the singles chart first came about it's a similar category to traditional pop in that respect.
Aside from the Del Shannon song, the records I've given full marks to are those which have a degree of familiarity to them. One of the strong contenders for best song was "Runaround Sue" by Dion, but where it falls down vs Del Shannon is that it seems to obvious.
Just the one explicitly Christmas song in the charts which is "Baby's First Christmas" by Connie Francis. It's not one you hear anymore and I understand why because it's bad even by Christmas music standards.
As you might expect, both Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard are in the Top 40 but neither got the Christmas number one or even got close. That honour went to Danny Williams with "Moon River". No points there.
Once again it was a pretty poor Top 40 overall that I've just listened through and leads to a score that's inevitably single figures.
Score: 8
Table
It's the 2nd best year from a Christmas chart perspective and there's not much difference vs it's original score:
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