Here are the new entries ranked from best to worst:
In the early days of this blog I picked a record of the year for each year and 1961 stood out to me as a year when I struggled to find a record that was good enough. Now I've listened to every Top 40 hit from the first month of the year I'd still say no records are outstanding.
The best of the bunch is "A Thousand Stars" by Billy Fury, arguably the biggest star from Liverpool before The Beatles came along. Incidentally this record would appear in the 70s film "That'll Be The Day" which had both Billy Fury and Ringo Starr in it.
The number 2 record also featured in a film that came out years later with "Stay" by Maurice Williams And The Zodiacs featuring in "Dirty Dancing".
Rock n Roll still appeared to be in, but you sense it's getting to the stage where everyone is jumping on the bandwagon which will lead to an inevitable backlash. The fact that one of the better ones was "What To Do" by Buddy Holly which would have been at least 2 years old by this point more or less illustrates this.
Instrumental rock was popular around this time, not bad music but starts to all sound the same after a while. One such record is "Pepe" by Duane Eddy and there is another version by Russ Conway on the piano instead of guitar.
There were 3 different versions of "Rubber Ball" which are quite spread out in the table. There's the original by Bobby Vee which is up near the top, a cover by the Avons which isn't bad and a cover by Marty Wilde which is your inferior British karaoke type cover.
The latter wasn't the worst record though. Below it we have "Till" by Tony Bennett, his first hit in nearly 5 years which sounds really dated in 1961. Then down the bottom we have "Bangers And Mash" by Peter Sellers And Sophia Loren, a novelty record I find really irritating.
I feel I must address the relatively low position of "Are You Lonesome Tonight" by Elvis Presley. Many consider it to be a classic but I'm afraid I just find it boring.
Overall I think this batch of records shows that good music did exist before The Beatles but at the same time it shows The Beatles needed to happen.
Score: 34
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