NO DISTANCE LEFT TO RUN

Blur

This is just beautiful. Seriously, few words can describe just how good this is. It may sound fairly sweet, but there’s a certain indefinable something about it that pops up and belts you round the chops. This fully deserves to go to Number One, so watch it crawl in at around Number 18. That’d be just typical.

NB. It actually went in at 14 and immediately fell to 42 the next week. And yes, that was just typical.

GREATEST HITS III

Queen + (album)

See that + after Queen’s name? That’s symbolic, that is. It means that a fair few songs are not actually by Queen. Instead you lucky fans get treated to Brian May singing Driven By You (calm down now), Freddie Mercury’s 1993 remix of Living On My Own (steady on there) and some bloke’s awful remix of Under Pressure (no apparently EMI didn’t think the original was good enough). Add to this a smattering of live "highlights" of that 1992 Wemberlee concert and, all in all, you end up with what amounts to an album full of fillers and naff all else. If you’re a fan, stick with I and II. If you’re a Queen completist, you’ll already have all these tracks. Either way, stay well away from this sad rump. Probably the most unnecessary Best Of album ever, and that includes 911’s.

The Best Songs Of The Millennium

Promise not to laugh…

THE SUN ALWAYS SHINES ON TV

A-ha

You’re not laughing are you? Good. Now, I know that A-ha were a teenybopper band and that teenybopper bands (to me anyway) represent all that is utterly wrong with music these days, but this is different. For starters, it clocks in at over five minutes and it’s got a slightly darker feel to it than say, your average Wham! single of the time. It also builds up to a huge finale instead of just repeating the chorus to fade with the odd key-change thrown in. One more thing, it’s utterly brilliant. So there.

PS It’s also proof that some songs that get to Number One genuinely deserve to.

The Worst Songs Of The Millennium

EVERY LOSER WINS

Nick Berry

Even Nick Berry hates it. That’s how morally repugnant it is. For those of you who don’t recall, back in the mid-1980s it was deemed a good idea by some crazed berk in a padded cell somewhere to release lots and lots of singles with tenuous TV connections. This horrible decision resulted in all sorts of bilge being dumped on the charts (Something Outta Nothing, Anyone Can Fall In Love, that song that used the theme to Howard’s Way, even the Grange Hill cast released Just Say No, for crying out loud). This was a dark time for The Top 40. The very lowest low point possible was achieved when this totally unforgivable piano-led ballad soared to Number One and actually stayed there. How bad is this song? Put it this way, not even the Smurfs have covered it.