It’s the final countdown

I meant to go to bed early last night — about 10.00pm. Instead, I got this stu­pid idea in my head, and sat writ­ing it, re-writing it and edit­ing it until about 1.30am. So you’d bet­ter bloody like it, OK?

On this date last year, I looked at some of the people who are for­tu­nate enough to share my birth­day, and tried to gauge in how far we also share sim­ilar per­son­al­ity traits.

This year — and I know that you can hardly stand the ten­sion — with the help of thisdayinmusic.com, I shall be count­ing down the songs that were at the top of the singles charts on today’s date, my birth­day, from 1971 onwards. Will we dis­cover some mys­tical link between each poptastic hit and a cer­tain aspect of my char­ac­ter? Who knows? Who cares?

At this point, you may want to get your­self a large mug of tea.

No 1 hits of July 23

• 1971 — Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep — Middle of the Road
Their other ‘hit’ was called Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. Con­sid­er­ing that I spent most of this year gurg­ling and hav­ing adults talk­ing baby-speak at me, it’s obvi­ously a highly appro­pri­ate chart-topping hit with which to begin this countdown.

• 1972 — Puppy Love — Donny Osmond
It will so please one of my dearest friends to see the divine Donny on this list. But appar­ently, as a gig­gling tod­dler, my favour­ite record was in fact Little Jimmy Osmond’s clas­sic, Long-Haired Lover from Liv­er­pool. My mother never tires of telling me how I used to jiggle around to it in my baby-walker. My mother is a cruel woman.

• 1973 — Wel­come Home — Peters & Lee
Oh look, a bizar­rely ill-matched couple (equat­ing to my par­ents, then), plus schmaltzy sen­ti­ment­al­ity. Even at the age of two, it seems that I was already being groomed as a future Magic FM listener.

• 1974 — She — Charles Aznavour
Des­pite never hav­ing learned French prop­erly, I’ve always had a tend­ency to go weak at the knees as soon as I hear a beautifully-sung chan­son. Coin­cid­ent­ally, due to my father’s work, our fam­ily also spent much of 1974 liv­ing in … France.

• 1975 — Give a Little Love — Bay City Rollers
It must have been at about this time that I was the proudest four-year-old in primary school, because I had a pair of long, stripy Bay City Rollers socks. I was unut­ter­ably cool.

• 1976 — The Rous­sos Phe­nomenon — Demis Rous­sos
Never heard of him, but the pho­tos look very scary. He’s also named this record after him­self, which is the sign of an ego the size of Portugal.

• 1977 — I Feel Love — Donna Sum­mer
Oh dear. I think I’m about to show my ignor­ance. Now, of course I know I Feel Love — it’s a gay disco clas­sic, isn’t it?

• 1978 — You’re the One That I Want — Grease
Due to the speed of the song, more com­monly known as Yowawan­nawawa (Ooh Ooh Ooh). As a pre­co­cious seven-year-old, I could never see the appeal of Grease. In fact, it took another four­teen years before I finally under­stood it. By then I was a pre­ten­tious drama stu­dent, in love with all things kitsch. It doesn’t take a lot of work­ing out, does it?

• 1979 — Are ‘Friends’ Elec­tric? — The Tube­way Army
It would take another three or four years before I began fall­ing in love with the won­der­ful elec­tronic sounds of syn­thes­isers. Even then, I would still be of the opin­ion that Gary Numan was a dick­head who thought he was a robot. And voted Tory.

Inter­mis­sion: If you have to answer an urgent call of nature, do it now. Right now. We still have another twenty-three years to get through, you know.

• 1980 — Xanadu — Olivia Newton-John & ELO
Oh, thank heav­ens — it’s the ‘80s at last! But what’s this? Olivia Neutron-Bomb (because that’s what incred­ibly hil­ari­ous kids called her back then) singing with beardy weirdos ELO? Run away.

• 1981 — Ghost Town — The Spe­cials
No sar­castic com­ments here. This is one of the best records ever made, accur­ately reflect­ing the bleak era in which it was pro­duced. Both the sound of the song and the images in the video ter­ri­fied me at the time, and they still bring a lump to my throat.

• 1982 — Fame — Irene Cara
I always pre­ferred the TV series to the film — they had bet­ter tunes, and the kids had health­ier skin. Well, these things are import­ant to an eleven-year-old. I owned a dis­turb­ingly high num­ber of Fame albums on cas­sette, and the series unfor­tu­nately coin­cided with my first dab­blings in drama, as a mem­ber of the local youth theatre. I believe I may have worn leg-warmers to rehears­als. Amaz­ingly, my par­ents saw this and res­isted the tempta­tion to kill me there and then.

• 1983 — Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home) — Paul Young
I always thought that was a stu­pid title for a song. Wherever you lay your hat is, obvi­ously, a hat­stand, isn’t it? It’s not your home, Paul. Don’t be silly. And what can we say about Paul Young any­way, other than that he had a face like a cornish pasty?

• 1984 — Two Tribes — Frankie Goes to Hol­ly­wood
Another record that was a state­ment of its time, but still sends a shiver down my spine today. To find out why, go read this.

• 1985 — Frankie — Sis­ter Sledge
First, there were clas­sics like We Are Fam­ily and Lost in Music. No, I’ve not know­ingly danced to them, but I have pos­sibly tapped my foot in an appre­ci­at­ive man­ner. Then Sis­ter Sledge made this record — the video for which, if my memory serves me cor­rectly, fea­tured them chas­ing some old bloke (who looked like a gas-fitter) round the streets, and fright­en­ing the poor old codger out of his wits. Mmm, very taste­ful. This song makes me want to vomit.

• 1986 — Papa Don’t Preach — Madonna
True Blue, the album fea­tur­ing this song, is the only Madonna album I’ve ever owned. I think I listened to it twice, pos­sibly three times. Can any­one explain to me just what is so great about Madonna? Please? Anyone?

• 1987 — It’s a Sin — The Pet Shop Boys
Shiver. This record had it all. Thun­der­ous elec­tron­ics, a sense of the gothic (small ‘g’, natch) about it, the reli­gious over­tones (at a time when I was very reli­gious). It really appealed to my Cath­olic guilt, even though I’ve never been a Cath­olic. Oh, and I so wanted my cheap Casio key­boards to sound like Chris Lowe’s synths. S’not fair.

• 1988 — Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You — Glenn Medeiros
Er, who? We’re now in the middle of the Sixth Form indie kid years, so chart music was rather passing me by. And this one passed me by altogether.

• 1989 — Never Stop Me From Lov­ing You — Sonia
Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, the memory of infuri­at­ingly bub­bly Scouser Sonia would be just a dull pain in the back of my head. Unfor­tu­nately, we’ve recently had to suf­fer her reappear­ance on Reborn in the USA. Oh, the hor­ror, the horror …

Inter­mis­sion: As the ‘80s count­down pro­gressed, you’ll no doubt have noted that the descrip­tions of the records became less about how they might shed light on my per­son­al­ity, and more about a crit­ical assess­ment of said awful pop song. That’s because the late ‘80s were pretty dire, and I was begin­ning to tire of mere chart fod­der. Brace yourselves, because I think the ‘90s will only get worse.

• 1990 — Sac­ri­fice / Heal­ing Hands — Elton John
As far as I can remem­ber, Elton had white hair and was wear­ing a glit­tery hat to cover over his bald­ness. He’s now got a shiny ginger mop. Ain’t show­biz won­der­ful, kids?

• 1991 — (Everything I Do) I Do It For You — Bryan Adams
Like me, you’ll prob­ably be able to remem­ber every single scene from this video, so often was the bloody thing on tele­vi­sion. It was num­ber one when I began my sum­mer break from uni­ver­sity, and about six­teen weeks later, when I returned to cam­pus, it was still there. Unmov­ing and omin­ous, a bit like Green­land. Twelve years later, I don’t hate it — but it does sound rather like the dis­tant grunt­ing of a dis­tressed warthog.

• 1992 — Ain’t No Doubt — Jimmy Nail
I was con­vinced that I couldn’t remem­ber this song, but then it star­ted com­ing back to me: “Ain’t no doubt it’s plain to see / some­thing da da dum no good for me.” It’s quite, quite ter­rible. I think I’m begin­ning to lose it. You may have to put me out of my misery before I get to the end of this. Help, is any­one still there?

• 1993 — Pray — Take That
Was this the song that had an accom­pa­ny­ing video with sup­posedly homo­erotic over­tones? Weren’t they smear­ing them­selves in sun­tan lotion or some­thing? Whatever. Dur­ing my last year at uni­ver­sity, all my drama stu­dent friends abso­lutely loved Take That. I thought they were being ironic, in that usual stu­dent kind of way. Appar­ently, they weren’t.

• 1994 — Love is All Around — Wet Wet Wet
Love is All Around, as ori­gin­ally recor­ded by The Troggs, is a gor­geous little song. Wet Wet Wet decided to make it into a power bal­lad. Nice. Was it only me who, every time I saw Marti Pellow’s grin­ning face on the TV screen, wanted to reach out and smack it repeatedly, until he bled and fell on the floor plead­ing for mercy? Oh, it was just me. Sorry.

• 1995 — Boom Boom Boom — The Out­there Broth­ers
No, this one means noth­ing to me. You’ve got to remem­ber, how­ever, that in 1995 I was listen­ing to a lot of Sonic Youth, and shop­ping in nowhere but the most obscure record shops. The NME was my Bible.

• 1996 — Forever Love — Gary Bar­low
He wrote all the songs in Take That, appar­ently. So he was the tal­en­ted one, God help us. I do like the fact that his web­site is called Gary Bar­low News Inter­na­tional — thereby sug­gest­ing that people all over the world are still keen to hear news about our Gaz. Like, er, which fish & chip shop he’s cur­rently work­ing in.

• 1997 — D’You Know What I Mean? — Oasis
I loved the video for this — all the omin­ous heli­copters and the apo­ca­lyptic scenery. It’s just a pity that all ‘ver kids’ were storm­ing the bar­ri­cades to watch a bunch of brick­ies from Manchester play­ing ‘60s revi­sion­ist Dad-rock. Oh well.

• 1998 — Freak Me — Another Level
It’s 1998, and I’m begin­ning to redis­cover clas­sical music. Who were these Another Level chaps, then? And, er, do we think that they were sug­gest­ing some­thing rather rude in the song title?

• 1999 — Livin’ La Vida Loca — Ricky Mar­tin
OK, I admit it. I clearly remem­ber dan­cing to this record in 1999. Well, when I say ‘clearly’, I really mean that I don’t remem­ber because I was very, very drunk. And when I say ‘dan­cing’, I really mean that it didn’t resemble dan­cing in any way, shape or form. I was drunk a lot in 1999. What a year that was.

Inter­mis­sion: Los­ing. Will. To. Live. Music has become dread­ful in recent years, hasn’t it? I must be get­ting old. I’m sure it were bet­ter when I were a young­ster, when all them nancy boys wore make-up and played them elec­tronic key­board thing­ummy­bobs. You knew where you were with them pon­cey New Romantics, didn’t you? OK, nearly there now. Deep breath …

• 2000 — We Will Rock You — Five & Queen
Five. So called because there were five of them. Queen. So called because they were queens. I don’t know. I really don’t care any­more. I’m play­ing Shos­takovich now, just in case you’re wondering.

• 2001 — Etern­ity — Rob­bie Wil­li­ams
I don’t remem­ber this one either. The best I can say about Rob­bie Wil­li­ams, the self-styled cheeky chap­pie with the massively inflated ego, is that I went through a period the year before when I couldn’t help but cry when Angels came on the radio. You now have my per­mis­sion to call me a soppy git and slap me round the face, while telling me to pull myself together. But there were memor­ies there, so I had my reas­ons. That’s my excuse, and I’m stick­ing by it.

• 2002 — Any­one of Us — Gareth Gates
Right, whose idea was this stu­pid count­down? Who thought it would be a good idea to put me through a list of thirty-two records where only a hand­ful are worth remem­ber­ing? I’m break­ing out in a cold sweat. I can see my life flash­ing before my eyes. Gareth Gates. Gareth fuck­ing Gates. Stop. Please stop. I can’t take it any more.

• 2003 — Crazy in Love — Bey­oncé Knowles
At last. We made it. It’s 2003, and … I don’t know who’s Num­ber One. Really, I don’t. I know you’re going to assume I’m mak­ing this up in order to por­tray myself as some prematurely-aging thirtyso­mething who doesn’t know one end of the pop charts from the other, but I really mean it. Thanks to a curs­ory glance at her web­site, I now know that Bey­oncé is a woman, but apart from that … noth­ing. Haven’t heard the song. Wouldn’t know it if you played it at me repeatedly until I begged for mercy. I’m rather proud of myself. It’s offi­cial — I am com­pletely out of touch.

Con­clu­sion: That was an entirely tedi­ous jour­ney through thirty-two years of chart-topping songs. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, even if it mostly failed in its stated aim of shed­ding some light on my char­ac­ter via the pop­u­lar hits of the day.

I’m off to look at my CD col­lec­tion and won­der if it would be improved by the addi­tion of the latest album by Bey­oncé. I think we know what the answer will be, don’t we?