The intro to this is easily the most exciting sound to hit No.1 so far ? a slamming one-note trumpet fanfare that takes you into the tune’s gimmicky sliding-horn hook. Beyond that it’s hard for me to get much of a grip on “Cherry Pi[…]

The history books record it as the first ‘country record’ to top the British charts, but even Shania in full-on sitars-and-bongos mode would blush at claiming this one for Nashville. Tennessee’s chucklesome hick baritone is the only[…]

Ruby’s real contribution to British pop culture is as rhyming slang for the national dish, ironic when you hear this spiceless outing, arranged as primly as it is sung. Murray’s pert and precise enunciation helps kill off a pleasant but t[…]

Italiana strikes again, but Clooney plays it for laughs and dances. The track kicks off with a sarkily comical ballad intro before quickly getting down to hoofing business. I imagine an iceberg of mambo tunes of which this novelty is the chart-toppin[…]

Dickie is backed up here by The Stargazers, who redeem themselves for “I See The Moon” by doing a slick job on a flimsy but enjoyable crooner. The song is really little more than an extended chat-up line – “Someone broke into […]

This is also a knees-up party record but of a whole different order. It’s a medley – nay, a megamix – of music-hall hits instrumentalised, mashed together and played sped-up on a piano. I imagine Grandma out of Giles cackling away a[…]

A word on teenagers and adults. It’s a truism to suggest that in the early 50s the “teenager” hadn’t been conceptualised; judging by these records, it’s also generally accurate. Nothing about them suggests they are aimed[…]

My God My God. One of the defences of the sales-based UK charts I regularly offer is that it impartially reflects anyone who is buying singles, not just the people record labels and radios would like to be buying them. This means the charts can be re[…]

Cornell’s problem is that he sounds far far too pleased with his allotted lines – rhymes like “this is / bliss is / kisses”, which aren’t that witty and which come attached to an unremarkable slow-dance tune. Even so a d[…]

One of the many reasons I turned this project from whim to reality was that I reckoned it would give me a ‘way in’ to liking older artists more. Listening to Frank Sinatra in the context of lots of other less famous people doing sort-of-s[…]