Today, we conclude our presentation of the UK top 50 singles, as they appeared 50 years ago. Let's get on with it!
No 15: There are many songs that tell stories but The Beatles' The Ballad Of John And Yoko was almost like a newsreel of one of the most famous marriages (plus honeymoon and bed-in) of all-time. The verse told the story as any newspaper would - while the chorus and the middle eight functioned like an editorial. The song was already a UK #1, it was currently on its way down.
No 14: There was a time when one of the most eclectic singer-songwriters of the last 60 years actually had hit singles: We are talking about Scott Walker. Lights Of Cincinnati had peaked at #13 the week before - and it's a sublime song.
No 13: Also on its way down was the rock classic, Proud Mary, by one of America's best rock bands, Creedence Clearwater Revival. Having peaked at #2 in the US, it was a top 10 hit in the UK.
No 12: The Beatles had launched their own record company, Apple. Billy Preston was one of the company's main acts and That's The Way God Planned It was his biggest hit during his stay at the company. It would peak at #11.
No 11: Break Away was one of The Beach Boys' less successful hits in the US. It did much better in the UK, peaking at #6.
No 10: The Family Dogg was a British vocal group created by Steve Rowland, future hit songwriter Albert Hammond, and his writing partner Mike Hazlewood. Christine Holmes, Pam "Zooey" Quinn, and Doreen De Veuve completed the original line-up. The musicians playing on the hit single at #10, Way Of Life, are all extraordinary: they include 3/4 of Led Zeppelin (Page, Jones, and Bonham) as well as Elton John! The single, written by regular hit-makers Roger Cook and Roger Greenaway, had already peaked at #6.
No 09: Another Beatles' connection here: The Marmalade were a Scottish pop/rock band who, a few months earlier, had topped the charts with their version of the Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. They thus became the first Scottish group to top the UK chart. Baby Make It Soon was their follow-up, written by Tony Macaulay - and it peaked at #9 in the UK and at #3 in South Africa.
No 08: Clodagh Rodgers, a pretty blonde singer and actress from Northern Ireland, began her professional singing career at 13. In 1969, she was the best-selling female singles artist in the UK, partly because of Goodnight Midnight, a top 5 hit.
No 07: Desmond Dekker was a Jamaican ska, rocksteady and reggae singer-songwriter, and musician. Together with his backing group, The Aces, he was very popular and paved the way for Bob Marley & The Wailers. The single in question, peaking at #7, was called It Mek. The song's title is Jamaican patois meaning "that's why" or "that's the reason." The phrase was also used as a schoolyard taunt roughly meaning "that's what you get." This was the sense used in the song's lyrics, which metaphorically tell of the problems that happen when someone (such as a lover) goes too far.
Desmond Dekker's preceding single was also his only #1 hit in the UK, called Israelites. Since it's my favorite reggae song outside of Bob Marley, here it is as a bonus:
No 06: We've heard artists from England, from the US, from Scotland, from Northern Ireland, from Jamaica - now it's time for a Welsh band called Amen Corner. Hello Suzie (written by the Move's Roy Wood) was their follow-up to their #1 hit (If Paradise Is) Half as Nice. Hello Suzie peaked at #4.
No 05: After the Bee Gees' original international success, tensions began to mount within the group. Robin Gibb had a brief solo career - and Saved By The Bell was his most successful European hit. It peaked at #2 in the UK. It was a #1 hit in New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
No 04: In 1968-69 everybody was trying to be socially and politically relevant with their songs. Even The King, Elvis Presley, not the most progressive of artists, released In the Ghetto, a socially sensitive song written by Mac Davis.
It is a narrative of generational poverty: a boy is born to a mother who already has more children than she can feed in the ghetto of Chicago. The boy grows up hungry, steals and fights, purchases a gun and steals a car, attempts to run but is shot and killed. The song ends with another child being born in the ghetto and implies that the newborn could meet the same fate, continuing the cycle of poverty and violence. The feeling of an inescapable circle is created by the structure of the song, with its simple, stark phrasing; by the repetition of the phrase "in the ghetto" as the close of every fourth line; and finally by the repetition of the first verse's "and his mama cries" just before the beginning and as the close of the last verse. It is played in the key of B flat.
The public rewarded Elvis' turn. In the Ghetto became one of his two most popular hits since 1963. The other was Suspicious Minds. In the Ghetto peaked at #2 in the UK and Canada and at #3 in the US. It was a #1 hit in Germany, Australia, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, and New Zealand.
No 03: In 1969, Pete Townshend, The Who's guitarist and songwriter, was the catalyst behind the formation of the band Thunderclap Newman. The concept was to create a band to perform songs written by drummer and singer Speedy Keen, who had written Armenia City in the Sky, the first track on "The Who Sell Out". Townshend recruited jazz pianist Andy "Thunderclap" Newman (a friend from art college), and 15-year-old Glaswegian guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, who subsequently played lead guitar in Paul McCartney's Wings from 1974 to 1977 and died of a heroin overdose in 1979 aged just 26. Keen played the drums and sang the lead. Keen also wrote Something In The Air, the band's first single.
Townshend produced the single, arranged the strings, and played bass under the pseudonym Bijou Drains. Originally titled Revolution but later renamed to avoid confusion with the Beatles' 1968 song of that name, Something in the Air captured post-flower power rebellion, marrying McCulloch's sweeping acoustic and glowing electric guitars, Keen's powerful drumming and yearning falsetto, and Newman's felicitous piano solo.
The single reached #1 in the UK Singles Chart just three weeks after release, holding off Elvis Presley in the process. This had just happened in the previous week to the one we are presenting today. In this chart, it had moved down to #3.
The song was used in various movies and on TV and received multiple covers, the most notable being the ones by Labelle (1973), the Eurythmics (1985), and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1994).
I have a special affection for songs that mirror the sociopolitical climate of their era, so, as a bonus, here's a song that was released more than two years earlier and is one of the best of its kind: Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth. It was written by Stephen Stills and was inspired by the Sunset Strip curfew riots in November 1966. The song was a big hit, peaking at #7 in the US and at #9 in Canada.
No 02: At #2 is Give Peace A Chance by the Plastic Ono Band, the song that became the anthem of the anti-Vietnam-war and counterculture movements, and was sung by half a million demonstrators in Washington, D.C. at the Vietnam Moratorium Day, on 15 November 1969.
The Plastic Ono Band was John Lennon's ad hoc group of friends, including Yoko, Tommy Smothers of the Smothers Brothers, and various celebrities, including Timothy Leary, Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, Joseph Schwartz, Rosemary Woodruff Leary, Petula Clark, Dick Gregory, Allen Ginsberg, Roger Scott, Murray the K, and Derek Taylor, many of whom are mentioned in the lyrics.
When released in 1969, the song was credited to Lennon–McCartney. On some later releases, only Lennon is credited. Lennon later stated his regrets about being "guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me." According to author Ian MacDonald, the credit was Lennon's way of thanking McCartney for helping him record The Ballad of John and Yoko at short notice.
The song reached #2 in the UK and #14 in the US. Shortly after John's tragic death, fans gathered outside the Dakota (the building in which Lennon lived at the time) and sang Give Peace a Chance. The song is one of three Lennon solo songs, along with Instant Karma! and Imagine, in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
No 01: For its first of four weeks at the top, we now go to the Rolling Stones' smash hit Honky Tonk Women. It was a single-only release, available from 4 July 1969 in the United Kingdom, and a week later in the United States (although a country version called Country Honk was later included on the album "Let It Bleed"). It topped the charts in both nations.
The song was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards while on holiday in Brazil from late December 1968 to early January 1969, inspired by Brazilian "caipiras" (inhabitants of rural, remote areas of parts of Brazil) at the ranch where Jagger and Richards were staying in Matão, São Paulo.
Honky Tonk Women is distinctive as it opens not with a guitar riff, but with a beat played on a cowbell. The Rolling Stones' producer Jimmy Miller performed the cowbell for the recording. Except for the US and the UK, the song was also a #1 hit in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Switzerland. It hit #2 in Canada, Germany, and Norway, #4 in Austria and the Netherlands, and #5 in Belgium.
Now, it’s time for our statistics. There was a 29% increase in the number of visits from the previous week, which is natural, considering there were more stories. The new stories did OK - but I am glad to say that people keep going back to read the older stories. Thanks!
As far as countries are concerned, Greece was the only major player that suffered minor losses, while winners include the United States, South Africa, and the Netherlands. The rest of the major players kept their percentages stable.
Here are this week's Top 10 countries:
1. the United States
2. the United Kingdom
3. Canada
4. Russia
5. Australia
6. Greece
7. Germany
8. South Africa
9. the Netherlands
10. France
Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Argentina, Austria, the Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Eswatini (Swaziland), Finland, French Polynesia, Georgia, Ghana, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jersey, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Martinique, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Myanmar (Burma), New Zealand, Nigeria, North Macedonia, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Turks & Caicos Islands, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!
And here's the all-time Top 10:
1. the United States = 35.8%
2. France = 14.9%
3. the United Kingdom = 11.1%
4. Greece = 6.9%
5. Russia = 3.0%
6. Canada = 2.1%
7. Germany = 2.0%
8. Australia = 1.0%
9. Italy = 0.8%
10. Cyprus = 0.7%
That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!
