Birthday Number 1s: 2019 - Beautiful People

Not Drake in 2019, but Ed Sheeran, it's

Beautiful People - Ed Sheeran ft Khalid

I feel, or have felt, somewhat the same way about Ed Sheeran as about Drake - a kind of mysterious fury at their stultifying music. But I think I always understood what made Ed Sheeran successful- that he was fiercely driven, personally endearing, that he appealed to those that support the underdog, that he had a natural ability to entertain and engage.

And, the truth is, I don't hate Ed Sheeran at all anymore. He was won me over.  Well, not the music (though I'll come back to that).

He did a great thing for everyone sticking up for the authorship of his songs when opportunistically sued twice. It's not entirely an exaggeration to say he saved songwriting and by definition pop music. He did it with smartness, common sense and good grace, at what was clearly a very trying time in his personal life.

Perhaps that sympathetic feeling has bled into the fact that I have listened to this song and ... quite liked it. Genuinely. Liked the hook and liked the sentiment. A little ginger kid from Suffolk who no longer believes his own hype and remembers who he is. I think it works and I think it's true.

I think this is the first time I've ever liked an Ed Sheeran song. I thought Sing was ok, quite neat, but most of everything else I heard had me reaching for the off button or the sick bucket. 

I listened to the extremely successful albums (x and ÷)  all the way through a couple of times and it reminded me of listening to James Blunt. Just a bit icky.

The albums of Ed Sheeran have become less successful but the singles are still going strong. I think he is a singles artist, really, and as a singles artist he might work out quite well.

Btw, this single was on the album ' No.6 Collaborations Project' which is an annoying title for an album, and the collaborator in this case is American sole singer Khalid, not to be confused with the previously discussed DJ Khaled.

The Number 1s in 2019 were dominated by Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran and Stormzy (sometimes the latter two together) as well as Lewis Capaldi for 7 weeks and that extremely odd Dance Monkey song by Tones and I.

I could also have written about Senorita by Shawn Mendes and Camila Cabello, which hit Number 1 on 1st August and was very much the song of that summer - indeed, I was going to write about that one, but I thought I'd address the Sheeran behemoth instead. 

The main thing that happened in the first week of August, musically, was the suicide of David Berman, a few weeks after releasing Purple Mountains, which I now consider one of the greatest albums of all time. That album has about four songs that deserved to be Number 1 singles for several weeks but there we go, we'll have to do with the Ed Sheeran song that won me over.

Birthday Number 1s: 2018 - In My Feelings

Oh great, another Drake song. 

I thought I'd made my feelings quite clear on this matter ...

this one's called

In My Feelings

It doesn't push my buttons quite as much as One Dance, but it won't be on any playlists I'll be making soon.

I think Drake is probably my least favourite artist in the history of music. Perhaps that is because he's not Nick Drake. Early on in Drake's career, when he was touted as a sensitive, reflected rapper, there was a clever little quiz on Buzzfeed called 'Drake, Nick Drake or Blake?' which had a line of lyrics and you had to decide which of them it was, which would have worked very well as Nick Drake was very influenced by William Blake, and solipsism's just solipsism, and it's not like Nick Drake was a particularly clever, artful lyricist, but it didn't work well, because the ones that were Drake were just nothing really.

This year, Drake's released a poetry book called 'Titles Ruin Everything' which has been savaged, and appears to be absolutely nothing. I like that, even after he had become a massive global superstar of catchy hits and no one remembered that his original USP was self-aware, sensitive lyrics, he still thought it would be a good idea to release a poetry collection.

My first big "what is this shit" moment with Drake was when Hold On We're Going Home was Pitchfork's 2011 Song of the Year. That was his breakout, proper-song, ballad. It's dreadful and creepy.

Then, around 2016 or 17, on the back of really liking Lemonade, To Pimp a Butterfly, Vince Staples, Yeezus, stuff like that, I kind of thought my taste in music had changed and I would listen to successful hip-hop and r'n'b albums all the way through, and I listened to a couple of Drake albums a couple of times, and it was one of the least enjoyable experiences of my life. How I suffer for their art!

Anyway, Drake had three Number 1s in 2018, so it was always quite likely it would be him again. I'm slightly disappointed to miss out by only a week on writing about Three Lions, on one of its regular returns to the front of the national consciousness. There's lots to be said about Three Lions, but actually I wrote a lot about it before. 2018 was a big heatwave summer, the biggest I remember before 2022. Unsettling. I remember going into London when it was 33ish for a birthday party on the South Bank, and it was the day England had beaten Sweden in the World Cup quarter-final, and also the day of Pride, and the city was heady with interlocking tribes, and you could almost think that (a day once dawned and) it was beautiful.

People really liked this Drake song, anyway, It inspired internet memes. I still don't really understand, but I accept.

Birthday Number 1s: 2017 - Wild Thoughts

This is not so bad.

Wild Thoughts - DJ Khaled ft Rihanna & Bryson Tiller

At some point, I woke up and DJ Khaled, a portly middle-aged Palestinian-American, was suddenly an extremely famous cult figure, and, as well as that, all Number 1 singles had minimum three credited artists and it was hard to tell who did what.

DJ Khaled is fun, it seems, does silly stuff, grafted in the shadows for many years, and then, somewhat bafflingly, started to have megahits.

Bryson Tiller I don't much about. Sounds a bit like a fisherman from Mull. Rihanna's a Barbadian cricket fan.

This isn't her finest work, but she does the job. There are lots of things going on with this song, it doesn't want to lose your interest, which is better than songs that do want to lose your interest, but only a little bit. There's a guitar sample from Santana's Maria Maria, and general good vibes.

It had a lot to compete against to get to Number 1 in 2017. In fact, it was only Number 1 for one week as an intermission between two of Despacito's three (3!) stints at the top, lasting 11 weeks in total.

Also that year - Shape of You wrapped it up for a few months, Sign of the Times by Styles, Symphony, Artists for Grenfell, New Rules, Look What you Made Me Do, Rockstar, Havana, and I'm the One, oxymoronically by DJ Khaled featuring Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper and Lil Wayne (could have been called I'm the one of five, arf) and Feels by, more modestly, Calvin Harris featuring Pharrell Williams, Katy Perry and Big Sean.

There was the "Corbyn's good actually" election that summer, swiftly followed by the sheer awfulness of Grenfell.

I don't really know what else happened that summer. We had had really not very much good sleep for a year, and were just, then, starting to get a bit more, and that was the main thing, really.

DJ Khaled famously streamed his son's birth on snapchat in 2016. Each to their own.

Birthday Numbers 1s: 2016 - One Dance

2016 was, in chart terms, something of a throwback year. There were only 11 Number 1 singles in total.

Those included 7 Years by Lukas Graham, Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur, Shout Out to My Ex by Little Mix, Rockabye by Clean Bandit, and, from 14th April to 4th August, 

One Dance - Drake ft Wizkid & Kyla

A lot of things happened within the 15 weeks this abysmal song was the UK's most popular - most importantly, a baby was born. It bums me out a little that this was Number 1 when she was born, but, who knows, she might come to love it. And when she was born, Let's Hear it for the Boy was playing, so, you know, you can't account for anything.

More fittingly, this abysmal song soundtracked the abysmal Brexit.

I, broadly, understand the superstardom of most of the 21st century superstars - Beyonce, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Adele, Justins Bieber & Timberlake, The Weeknd, Kanye West, 50 Cent, Ariana Grande, BTS, Sheeran, Harry Styles, Coldplay, Eminem ... whoever else ... I may not always like it, but I understand it.

But what the fuck's up with Drake? What's the draw? I don't get it.

When he first appeared, I remember hearing that he had emotional depth, self-aware lyricism, but, I've not seen or heard any evidence of that. Just vaguely misogynistic whining. He appears to be almost entirely without charisma or warmth, has an entirely forgettable, monotonous singing voice and rapping voice, has no interest in a tune, no great humour, seems a bit of a douche, hardly seems a heartthrob.

I mean, it's hardly for me to cast such harsh judgement on one of the most successful musical artists of all time, but I still don't get it. The songs are catchy? People want to dance to them? Fine. That's usually the secret in successful pop music I'm missing, but I still, normally, understand it a bit, even if I don't feel it.

One Dance is abysmal. It refuses to be interesting. It would drive me insane to have to listen to this more than a handful of times.

Gee, I hope there are no more Drake songs coming up ...

Birthday Number 1s: 2015 - Black Magic

Well, this is a banger!

Black Magic - Little Mix

Sometimes, songs are just really fun, and there's not that much more to say, but, you know, here I go.

Little Mix won The X Factor in 2011. I was all over the X Factor in 2011. I still quite often declaim "Sophie Habibis" or "Frankie Cocozza" in the voice of Peter Dickson. Little Mix were put together by Kelly Rowland, originally called Rhythmix, mentored by Tulisa, not particularly fancied early on, beat Marcus Collins in the final vote, hit Number 1 with an odd cover of Damien Rice's Cannonball, and then, over time, turned out to be great, and have several big hits, and are, I think, the second most successful X Factor act after One Direction

I am not sure I particularly love the whole sound, or think there is an outstanding USP, but this is an undeniable banger, and that's all there is to say on the matter. It is also a very quizworthy fact that two members of Little Mix gave birth to children whose fathers are footballers whose names begin with A in the same week.

It's shouty, infectious, pop-rock, there's nothing magical about it, it doesn't have the pizzazz of Girls Aloud, or even All Saints, but no matter. There aren't any Number 1s I particularly love from 2015 - Bieber had a few massive 1s at the end of the year, and someone tried to persuade me those were good, but not for me, really. 

It was the year of To Pimp a Butterfly and Carrie and Lowell, and I remember listening to those a lot. 

2015 was the year Cameron won a majority and committed to a vote on Brexit. I remember going to see the reformed SFA the day after that. People there knew. 2016 it all started to kick off.

We did a lot in 2015. We bought a house. We went by train to Scandinavia, we went to New York, we went to France.  Even at the time, we felt we were taking the chance to do things while we could.. We haven't left the UK since then.

I have a feeling this is the last birthday Number 1 I really and truly like. In any case, next year. Ooh, I have some strong words for next year ....

Birthday Number 1s: 2014 - Me and My Broken Heart

We may have reached the point where I've got nothing to say.

Me and My Broken Heart - Rixton

But I'll try.

One thing I should say is that, some years, I get to know the hit songs pretty well because of work - because every couple of years, I make new clips of modern songs to use in music rounds, so there are some years I really dig into, some I don't. I think I made clips of about half the Number 1s in 2014, so I know the songs pretty well. But I didn't make a clip of Me and My Broken Heart.

2014 starts with Happy and ends with Uptown Funk. Nothing else in between is as massive. Certainly not Me and My Broken Heart, though it did all right in a few places.

It was co-written, once again, by Wayne Hector and Steve Mac, who also did Beat Again and Glad You Came. It borrows a bit from a song by Rob Thomas called Lonely No More which you've probably heard in the background somewhere.

All of these songs are well enough done, and you could listen to them four times, but probably not seven times.

Rixton is a terrible band name. One of the worst I've ever heard. Like, what even is it? Clearly, the remaining members of Rixton agree, as they're now called Push Baby (which is not much better). One of those, the lead singer, is Jake Roche, who is the son of Shane Richie and Colleen Nolan. I once worked with Shane Richie on a quiz show. He was nice. He was as you'd expect. I don't have fond memories of that show, as I might get to in a couple of years, but Shane Richie was nice.

The week before Me and My Broken Heart the Number 1 was It's My Birthday by will.i.am ft Cody Wise which would, i suppose, have been apposite. The week after it was Number 1 was the day we got married. Little old DMcG, gettin married, who'd a thunk it? I was mainly listening to Steady Pace by Matthew E White and Lean on Me by Bill Withers that week (actual wedding day, not wedding party day, which was at the end of August).

Anyway, fun times. 36. I think we went and did pitch and putt on my birthday.

Other Number 1s - Rather Be. Money on My Mind,  Hideaway, Sing, Ghost by Ella Henderson, which is a banger, All About That Bass, Thinking Out Loud, and, interestingly, Band Aid 30, which was when everyone decided, all of a sudden, that Band Aid was beyond the pale bullshit. Funny old world.

.... ah crap, of all the songs, both, i guess, because i've listened to it a few times because i hardly knew it, and also because it is, after all, quite catchy, this little bastard has burrowed into my brain and i can't get it out. I need another irritant.

Birthday Number 1s: 2013 - Wake Me Up

In August 2013, it was

Wake Me Up - Avicii

with vocals by Aloe Blacc.

This was a massive hit, one of the biggest dance songs of that decade, but it wasn't the only massive hit of 2013. I have, thankfully, narrowly avoided having to write about the execrable Blurred Lines (Number 1 in July 2013), which almost, literally, ruined all music for everyone.

Also, there's Thrift Shop, Love Me Again, I Love It, Roar, Counting Stars, Wrecking Ball, and a little number you might have heard of called Get Lucky.

But Wake Me Up is right up there. Aloe Blacc is a fine, retro soul singer who had big hits with I Need a Dollar and The Man. He wrote the lyrics to this song. They are sweet, open-hearted lyrics. This song really works, I think, The melody and the sentiment feel genuinely fresh and soulful, and the different elements don't jar. It could have been a cheesy disaster, but it isn't. There are a lot of non-EDM covers of it, and it was something of a fixture on the talent shows.

I didn't know all that much about Avicii, just that he was one of the foremost names in EDM, that he was a superstar DJ. I remember hearing that he was retiring, which seemed sad, and was shocked by his suicide in Oman, aged 28, in 2018.

When I read about him (real name Tim Bergling) I noticed that the tributes described him as a musical prodigy, a gentle, highly sensitive person who struggled with fame, with life in general, hated letting people down, was obsessed with making beautiful music, and it struck me that he was being described in terms which, rightly or wrongly, I was conditioned not to associate with dance music, but with the doomed singer-songwriter (Nick Drake, Kurt Cobain), with folk and rock'n'roll. Dance music was the music of emptiness, of hedonism, wasn't it? The superstars were opportunistic and brash, weren't they? Avicii seemed to fly in the face of that.

I don't know that there's no truth in my stereotypes, but I think it's helpful for someone like me to hear the beauty and craftsmanship in genres where I don't go looking for them. 

Wake Me Up is, for a globe-smashing banger, a record with some craftsmanship and beauty to it.

As for me, I had a nice summer 2013, I think. 35. I recovered from truly horrendous gastroenteritis, went to France, went to Edinburgh, did a bit of this, a bit of that. Ian Bell scored 3 centuries in the Ashes. Went to Knole Park a lot.

I suppose that year might be looked at, globally, as the calm before the storm. Was probably stormy enough, mind.

Birthday Number 1s: 2012 - Spectrum (Say My Name)

In the big summer of 2012, the big song that was Number 1 was

Spectrum (Say My Name) - Florence and the Machine

which is the song Spectrum, remixed by Calvin Harris. I made a playlist of some of these later Number 1s and idly added the non-remixed song and idly thought "that doesn't sound much like a hit single" and then heard the remixed version, and thought, "ok that's what Calvin Harris does."

I had, initially, been a Florence and the Machine fan. I really liked Dog Days are Over, liked the first album, liked them when they supported Blur in Hyde Park just before they got massive (along with Vampire Weekend, pretty good support that), but then went off them for some reason, and very quickly. Not for some reason, actually. Because of the cover of You've Got the Love, which I hated and hate. Which was inescapable for quite a long time, and seemed to confirm everything bad about Florence Welch's voice, even though it was only one song. Oh I still hate it. It's absolutely one of the worst records ever made, I ignored F & T M for a decade or so after that, but have, grudgingly, listened to their last couple of albums, and they're really good.

Also, Florence and the Machine is really, by hook or by crook, an excellent name for a pop act. Excellent maybe the wrong word. But strong. Florence such a pastoral name. The Machine, so many implications. Like two halves of the titles of two extremely different 80s children's shows. I didn't actually know until today that the name is just because the Machine was the teenage nickname of the band's co-founder Isabella Summers. 

This was the Number 1 during the Olympics. I did not know that at the time. Was that a big deal? I feel like everything was a big deal during the Olympics. There was a lot of music about. I remember Elbow and Muse, the Spice Girls, Carly Rae Jepsen, Emeli Sande, Evelyn Glennie, but I don't remember that Florence was Number 1.

The Olympics were great fun. I mean, they really were. I saw lots of stuff - football, swimming, boxing, wheelchair tennis, basketball, boccia, athletics, volleyball. I was around in London, taking it in, though we'd moved to Sevenoaks earlier that year. I think I did karaoke on my actual birthday. Went to Claridge's which had been taken over by NOMA. Ate ants. There were some real treats that fortnight. But I can't remember Florence, even though I'd been to Florence the summer before (when it was a mere 40 degrees, terrifying heatwave fans).

Halfway through the Olympics, we went to stay at J's parent's place in the middle of France, only after I'd received assurances that they had full access to British TV. I was simply not going to miss the Olympics.

I remember on the way down, in Paris, in between connecting trains, outside the Montparnasse, I think, checking on my phone and seeing that Jessica Ennis had run 12.54 in the 100m hurdles. That was the only athletics I missed! Good holiday ... but still no Florence stirs my memory, let alone the machine.

This is a pretty good song. I've actually heard it loads since, in the background. Florence and Calvin had another Number 1 in October 2012 (this time it was Calvin Harris ft Florence Welch).

The Number 1s in 2012 were very good, or rather some of them were. Titanium, Paradise, Call Me Maybe, Feel the Love, Gangnam Style (!), Diamonds (Rihanna's second greatest song ...). Even Robbie Williams had an ok song.

So, basically, all pretty good. Well done, Florence. Well done, Calvin.

Birthday Number 1s: 2011 - Glad You Came

What can I tell you about

Glad You Came - The Wanted

Well, I can tell you it was written by the team (Wayne Hector, Steve Mac) that wrote 2009's Beat Again, and that, in fact, this will not be the last August 1st Number 1 by these men, who I had not heard of before, but who clearly had quite the knack for a hit.

I heard this song on the radio a few weeks ago (we are forced to listen to R1 in the car) and it was on a Noughties Nostalgia show, or something like that.

Time passes. To me, The Wanted are still one of those new boybands, I gather the kids like them etc. In fact, they've had time to rise, to rise again, for this song to be a hit in America, to slip, to split up, for a member to win Strictly, for another member to have an inoperable brain tumour, for him to become a national treasure, for the band to reform, for him to die. The Wanted aren't one of those new bands.

When I saw The Wanted on TV, which must have been a few times, I remember that Tom Parker seemed more like a slightly grumpy indie guy than a boyband guy, which endeared him to me.

But, truthfully, I knew nor cared very little else about The Wanted. I think I was passingly confused because their first big hit was called All Time Low and there was also a US emo band called All Time Low. I probably made clips out of a couple of their songs for use in quizzes, but, still. I wouldn't say anything hit home. 

This is pretty competent dance-pop. I can certainly listen to it a few times without becoming enraged, and I imagine its been the soundtrack to a lot of responsible adults' blissful youths. 

Summer of 2011 was my last summer as a Londoner. It was the summer of the riots, which was quite a powerful sensation on the streets. I was in Tooting, where there was no looting, while in Ealing there was some stealing and in Clapham it also did happen.

Someone Like You and Price Tag were hits at the start of the year. One Direction took off at the end, Juliette and I went to Latitude and then End of the Road in early September, where we listened to Joanna Newson and we froze and her harp-playing fingers froze on a starless mid-September night in Dorset.

Birthday Number 1s: 2010 - We No Speak Americano

We No Speak Americano - Yolanda B Cool and DCUP

You know the one. Must have heard it 100 times without quite knowing what it was. I think when I came to this year and saw this title, I created a whole different song in my head, some kind of combination of Bodak Yellow and Pretty Fly for a White Guy. 

But this is this. Pretty hard to escape - it's in all the jolly, red bull fevered films like Madagascar and The Inbetweeners and Peter Rabbit. Annoying but solid content. It's not much of anything but you can see why it was a hit. Yolanda B Cool and D Cup were Australian and they didn't have any other hits. The name Yolanda B Cool is a quote from Pulp Fiction which I happened to watch a bit of yesterday. I saw someone on twitter last week post "Crazy how, after 30 years, the debuts of Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and Paul Thomas Anderson are still their best films" ... and when people said "what about Pulp Fiction", he doubled down and said "no one really rates it anymore" People really do relentlessly put any old shit on twitter. Authoritatively. 

Anyway, this is basically a speeded up version of Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano, a very famous Neapolitan song we all know. When I heard this song, I thought about Jude Law, so I'll write about Jude Law.

Jude Law's a bit like Ben Affleck. He looks like a leading man but he's not a leading man. He makes you feel uneasy. He's good in quite a lot of things. Remember that terrible shtick Chris Rock did on him at the Oscars "You want Tom Cruise but you get Jude Law. Who the fuck is Jude Law?" etc. You'd never get Jude Law if you wanted Tom Cruise. I mean, I'm going to say, I've seen a fair bit of Chris Rock stuff that doesn't hit. that rings too false to care about.

Jude Law sings Tu Vuò Fà L'Americano in The Talented Mr Ripley. It's a good scene, Matt Damon's Ripley mesmerised by Dickie Greenleaf's knowing, but oblivious, charisma. Was that film underrated at the time? It's really good. The cast is so good I forgot Gwyneth Paltrow, who was actually the biggest, and most acclaimed, star of all of them at the time, was in it.

Damon, Law, Paltrow, P S Hoffman, Blanchett. And Jack Davenport. An air of languorous, exquisite horror.

But anyway, that's not got much to do with Yolanda B Cool and D Cup in the summer of 2010 - to me, the Number 1s in 2010 seem mostly quite bad, not all bnd, but there were an awful lot of one-week wonders. Most memorable? Bad Romance, Pass Out, Dynamite, Only Girl in the World. 

It was the year the Tories came to power. Cameron and Clegg, Dread. There was the South African World Cup that summer, I went to New York, Latitude, went to Burgundy, some other things, none of which involved We No Speak Americano.

Birthday Number 1s: 2009 - Beat Again

In the golden age of The X Factor, Number 1 on August 1st 2009 was

Beat Again - JLS

I was in Poland for my 31st birthday, at a wedding. Bobby Robson had just died. There was dancing, there was vodka, there was meat.

There was quite a bit of travel to weddings that summer. 31's pretty much peak age for the weddings, isn't it?

Don't think I went to Latitude, but went to Green Man - Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver, Wilco. That was the era. Had recovered, though not fully, from broken leg.

The start of the year was the dawn of Lady Gaga but, apart from that, and I know I keep saying it, but I think 2009 is genuinely, fair dinkum, the first year I'm really not following the charts. I still don't really know most of the Number 1s in that year. I'm sure I've heard them, but couldn't hum them.

That pretty much applies to Beat Again by JLS. I kind of know it. I've listened to it a couple of times  this week, and thought, yeah I've heard that, sure. It's pretty catchy. Very of its time - bit like Usher, Ne-You, Timberlake, that kind of thing. Not that cheesy. A good way to start.

You can tell yourself you didn't watch The X Factor, but it turns our you did. I tended to watch a lot of the first half of each series, and not much of the second half. I certainly saw the first JLS audition. They were probably the most readymade act the X Factor ever had. They didn't need anything except exposure, which they got. They finished second to Alexandra Burke, which was probably a blessing in disguise.

In those middle years of The X Factor, it really did produce some of the biggest UK pop acts and some very good singles - from Leona Lewis to Little Mix, not to mention Chico Time. The bad outweighed the good, though - it was a dark reductive operation, and its comeuppance was, and is, a long time coming, but it did hold a powerful sway for a long time.

JLS had five Number 1s. They didn't have to release a shitty cover to start with - they waited a few months and then hit the ground running with this. It lasted a few years for them, but not for ever, but, rather like McFly, they combined being actually pretty good with nice-guy versatility, and have had good careers beyond. My favourite JLS-related song is, of course, JB singing "come join us down on the farm today" on CBeebies. Invaluable stuff.

Birthday Number 1s: 2008 - Dance Wiv Me

From now on, this process might get harder. There will be fewer songs I know or care about. That's just the way it goes. I didn't totally detach from the charts in the late 2000s, and to this day there are still hit songs I like (in fact, I think 2023 has been a pretty interesting year near the top), but I think this will be a bit more of a struggle. Two contributing factors - Top of the Pops ending in 2006, plus I stopped buying the NME regularly in 2007 or 2008. I was still massively into music, but lost an automatic connection to what's popular. AS did a lot of people.

So, for 2008, it's

Dance Wiv Me - Dizzee Rascal ft Calvin Harris & Chrome

which is a pretty decent record. It sounds exactly what you think it'd sound like - poppy, dancey, hiphop. It's actually a pretty big deal, in that it was the first Number 1 for everyone involved. For Chrome, a little-known r'n'b singer, it was one the first of two both with Dizzee Rascal. For Dizzee Rascal, the first of, I think, five, for Calvin Harris, the first of eleven (!) not even including all his productions, and counting, including massive worldwide smashes. He is a very very successful singles artist, and that shows little sign of slowing down even now.

Though, I noticed, he doesn't carry critical acclaim with it. Rather like Mark Ronson, a DJ who also wanted to be a bit of a pop star, a skinny, geeky, well-to-do hitmaker who doesn't really fit the box of superstar, there seems to be a lot of resentment alongside the sales. Pitchfork was scathing about Calvin Harris' Coachella headline and album last year. I have no skin in this particular game but I do find a certain thread of American anti-Britishness pretty fascinating. Every country is anti-British in some way or another, and that is to be expected and respected, but the one that sticks in my craw a little is American hipster attitude to British culture. I can't quite pin it down, put as a regular Pitchfork reader, follower of US music and film journalists, there's a very specific thing.

So I should leap to the defence of Calvin Harris ... so ... I quite like his singing. He sings in some of his hits and he's like the bassist of an indie band who does harmonies somewhat unwillingly to start with, and then has written his own song, and is allowed to have a couple of minutes every second album. Which is the kind of voice I want to hear on a dancefloor banger.

His name's not actually Calvin Harris, it's Adam Wiles. He chose Calvin Harris because he thought it was racially ambiguous when he was getting started. Calvin Schmalvin.

He's from Dumfries. the Queen of the South. I was in Dumfries last summer - it's very nice. It was blistering hot when we arrived, and about 15 degrees colder and wetter when we left. Nice.

Anyway, I guess his gifts are pop nous, beats, catchy tunes, and being the Fatboy Slim of this century ... or something.

And what of the Dizzee Rascal, found guilty of something not exactly rascallish in recent times. This was where he decided to have a hit, I guess.

I remember listening to Boy in Da Corner on the top deck of a bus travelling through north-east London when it came out, and it really was impressive  and seemed to own the time and place. It told me things I didn't know. Saying that, he won the Mercury, he had the column inches, but he didn't really have a hit. Fix Up look Sharp has a semi-hit. He didn't have a proper, full-sized hit for five years, even though he was a famous enough cultural entity. Indeed, when i did jury service in 2006, one of the defendants was described by a witness as looking like Dizzee Rascal. I think , very inappropriately i think, he was described a couple of times by one of the barristers as "Dizzee Rascal". I do not think said defendant, sitting in the dock, was impressed.

Anyway, the actual Dizzee Rascal clearly was sick of being acclaimed but not having hits, so made some dumb, fun pop records, having five Number 1s, of which Bonkers is, let's be honest, a proper classic, much better than this one, but has never got the acclaim back. Such is the way.

You can somewhat ignore what I said at the top about losing track with pop music in 2008, actually. I think it's just another case of doing things in the summer so not paying attention. Number 1s for 2008 which I paid attention to include Mercy, American Boy, That's Not My Name (Ya wannae dance tae the Tang Tangs?), Take a Bow, Viva La Vida, I Kissed a Girl, So What, Single Ladies/If I Were a Boy, and the best of all of them, The Promise. I mean, great, that's a great year for hits, isn't it?

And what of me? 30th birthday. I specifically remember the mundane things I did the days before - went to my football team's AGM at the Freemason's Arms, ran a 10 mile in Battersea Park in 67 min 50 (as good as I ever got). Was properly fit that summer, training for marathon, pre-leg break. Went to Latitude (sunny), went to Green Man (rainy), went to the Isle of Coll for a half-marathon. One of those clashed with the first filming of Only Connect which i might otherwise have appeared on as a contestant. Wonder what happened to that show ...

Birthday Number 1s: 2007 - Umbrella

Splendid, another of the greatest pop singles of all time, it's

Umbrella - Rihanna ft Jay-Z

which was Number 1 for nine whole weeks in the summer of 2007. Nine weeks hardly seems enough. Why didn't people keep on buying it? Why did more people buy The Way I Are by Timbaland ft Keri Hilson one week in early August?

Some see Rihanna as one of 21st century pop's great auteurs along with Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga, but I don't think she's quite that. I think she has more to thank other people for than they do, but the main, key thing, about Rihanna is that on her best songs, of which Umbrella is one - probably her greatest - ,her voice is the most perfect sound in the history of pop music.

And that's, above all, why her success, her popularity, is long-lasting and relentless. Ten songs with over a billion spotify streams. 14 US Number 1s. Over 250 million record sales.

I haven't quite got into Rihanna as an albums artist, despite giving it a go. I'm happy with a handful of singles. I love Umbrella more each year. Diamonds likewise (Diamonds is written by Sia, whose other monster hits are Chandelier and Titanium. Hmm ... fertile theme).  Back to Umbrela, which is, first and foremost, a great song. It was almost sung by Britney Spears (don't think would have been good) and Mary J Blige (would have been great, but not this great). It has leant itself to many cover versions. It works well as a rock song. It's a big-hearted song of love, friendship, protection.

Tom Breihan, the American writer of Number Ones, admits he gave it a poor review at the time, felt Rihanna's vocals cold for what the song was, and only came to love and understand it later. Her vocals have a metallic edge, but they're not cold. They're ... a lot more than that.

I agree with him that Jay-Z's rap is a bit hopeless, nothing more than intro, but it's out of the way by the time the song starts. The verses are good, the chorus is magnificent, the "ella" hook is, let's admit, somewhat catchy.

I had probably drifted a fair way from the pop charts at this point. I don't think I heard Umbrella until it was everywhere. Everywhere it was.

Times were busy in 2007. I got my first real DVT, bought it at the five and dime. That kept me busy for the first few months of the year. Got on facebook around April. Doom. Went to All Tomorrow's Parties (Cave and Newsom etc), Latitude, Lovebox and End of the Road. Also fitted in two weeks in New York. Blair stood down. The smoking ban came in. It rained a lot.

Somewhere within all that I noticed Umbrella was everywhere like very few songs are ... Wonderwall, Angels, Amarillo, Get Lucky. ... everywhere. And that it was good.

I remember it being sung in the changing room of my football team, after I started playing football again, after I'd stopped taking warfarin, before I broke my leg. I remember the Manics covering it at the O2.

It's the greatest, but not the only good, Number 1 of 2007 - Grace Kelly, Ruby, Shine is not a bad start to the year. With Every Heartbeat, Stronger, Bleeding Love, towards the end of it. Feels like Bleeding Love owes something to Umbrella. That's another great single, in any case.

I have a funny little Rihanna postscript, in any case. I think, I'm not certain but I think, that Rihanna watched my team play cricket in April 2003. We were on tour to Barbados, playing one of several games against a collection of promising teen Bajans (we were an adult team, not bad, not great) - that day their team definitely included someone called Ryan Hinds who'd already played a test match, 

Anyway, during the hot afternoon, a glamorous young woman came to watch and chat with the Barbadian team. Rihanna would have been 15 at the time, her first hit was a year or two later. It was clear this was someone who was already a significant person in Barbados. It's possible one of the players was her boyfriend, I can't remember. Rihanna definitely likes cricket, she's been seen at quite a few West Indies games, and was at a school called Combermere with the likes of Carlos Brathwaite and Chris Jordan. Barbados is a small place. I don't know for sure it was her, but it tickles me to think part of her journey to global superstardom was an afternoon watching a bang-average team of English ex-public schoolboys struggling to keep pace with a team of Barbados teenagers.

I remember the food after the meal that day was sensational. I don't think it rained.

Birthday Number 1s: 2006 - Don't Stop Me Now/ Please Please

For the summer of 2006, when

Don't Stop Me Now/Please Please - McFly 

was Number 1 for a week, I will be comparing McFly to the Beatles, and not entirely as a joke.

McFly were seen as Busted Mark 2, a new and improved Busted, reasonably enough, since Tom Fletcher was almost in Busted, wrote songs for them, and they were under the same management.

Busted annoyed me, and rock people, on several levels. It was weird visually - three guitars, where's the drummer? Their songs were catchy but annoying, puerile, with extra transatlantic accents and gurning.

McFly worked better for the casual observer. They were a classic four-piece, they didn't mug quite so much, their songs, though also coming from a pop-punk direction, allowed for more of a 60s feel

Tom Fletcher met Danny Jones when the latter was auditioning for a boyband which he thought played its own instruments but didn't. In some ways, they were as organic as plenty of other acts. They went their own way from there. Harry Judd and Dougie Poynter saw ads in Melody Maker. Jones, in particular, had/has a non-boyband voice - it made their songs sound more grown up than a lot of other stuff, though they still dealt in teen melodrama. But they were neat songs - I always liked Obviously and All About You.

They had seven UK Number 1s pretty quickly, and something like 15 consecutive top 10s (though they never broke the USA). They are one of the most successful chart-orientated, teen-orientated conventional UK rock bands that I can think of since ... well, the Beatles.

Could McFly have been the Beatles? Were McFly at all like the Beatles? The thing about the Beadles was (said in Macca voice ...) they were just a crackin' liddle blues band, ya know? No, that's not it. The thing about the Beatles was the incredible luck of it - the combination of two then three heroic songwriters, four great players, great singers, and then, to top it all, four personalities people truly fell in love with and are still in love with.

And what of McFly - perhaps after several Number 1s and winning the hearts of the teenagers all over the nation and earning the respect of some of the snobbier fans, they could have had a Rubber Soul and a Revolver - really made people go, holy shit, they're good ... but, no that didn't happen. Their musical star gently faded .... but ... one can still see McFly as a pretty remarkable happenstance of , for want of a better term, polymathic affability. Seriously, over the last decade +, the four McFlys have just been constantly on our screens being good at stuff. Do the dancing, win the dancing, do the jnugle, win the jungle, do the children's books, sell in droves, celebrity football - great at that, celebrity cricket - great at that. McFly will probably be remembered as the ultimate reality TV good guys.

For what it's worth, this single's not good - Please Please is overly brattish but unmemorable punk-pop, more like Busted than anything else, and Don't Stop Me Now, is, well, a cover of the Queen, which was probably fun to do but not great to listen to. But, you know, that Queen song is a bit special. Even when I went off Queen in a big way, I was still impressed and thrilled by the welly Freddie gives this one. So McFly sound like children by comparison.

There was some pretty good Number 1s in the latter half of 2006. These years are, to me, a slightly surprising golden age. Here we have Maneater, Hip Don't Lie, Deja Vu,, SexyBack, I Don't Feel Like Dancing, America by Razorlight, Black Parade, Smile by Lily Allen, Patience, Take Thar's greatest song, in my opinion - also Crazy by Gnarls Barkley earlier in the year, which i suppose is a classic, though I wouldn't listen to it now if you paid me.

I was going to say I remember nothing about the summer of 2006, but actually I've pieced it together, and it's quite an interesting little slither of time. 

I'd started this here job I still have early in the year, shortly after moving into a flat in Clapham South where I'd be for four years (probably my favourite London flat). I was running a lot of quizzes, travelling a lot, doing a couple per week, about 150 over my first couple of years. I was getting to grips with the job, was really keen to do well. Didn't have time for that much else, but was able to relax a little over the summer.

I was still not on facebook. Not many were. It took off in the UK in 2007, I think. I had bought my first iPod in around April 2006. Revolutionary. In fact, that's when I first got broadband, really when I first got online in a significant way.

It was the summer of the Football World Cup in Germany, and I ran World Cup quizzes, but also watched lots of games. It was a hot summer. Still so much fun and wonder in a World Cup summer back then. Especially as we didn't have Sky Sports. It still felt special.

Then Benicassim, around the time of my birthday, for the second time - I recall I massively enjoyed it, a) cos I was getting the hang of festivals b) solid fun mid-2000s headliners - Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Pixies, Madness, Morrissey, Walkmen etc c) i did a lot of dancing, and I think that's the first time I realised that dancing all the time was really really fun. Only took till I was 28 ...

That was the summer before my first DVT, but, you know what, I remember on the flight back looking at my ankle after the days of alcoholic disrepair, and thinking it looked weirdly swollen. Jesus, only just remembered rhat. How funny. So, here I am 28, just about to get a bit older.

Oh, and, I've just spotted, the key fact from the week of my birthday in 2006 - it was the last ever weekly Top of the Pops. 

Birthday Number 1s: 2005 - You're Beautiful

Once more into South London, with

You're Beautiful - James Blunt

Where to start?

My journey with Captain Blunt started a year earlier, at the legendary -  now long gone - small venue the Borderline off Charing Cross, where I was one of the pricks chatting at the bar while JB played a support slot for Irish troubadour Damien Dempsey, who we'd gone to see.

I don't remember anything Blunt played, not that I had heard anything by him before that, but I feel I do remember, when he finished, that the ovation was more fulsome than one might expect from third on the bill at the Borderline on a week night.

And a friend of mine went to see him a few months after that, bigger venue, top of the bill, and said he was good. Really? I said. That guy? Because by then I'd heard some of the music.

And a woman on my PGCE at Roehampton was a massive fan, and not only that, it turned out he lived near her on the Fulham Palace Road, and she'd see him in the Tesco Metro.

There was an ad for him on billboards and he was on the platform on Clapham Common, or North, I can't remember which - one of the incredibly unsafe ones packed with commuters with tracks on either side.

And in his interviews, he talked about hanging out in the afternoons in the tacky nightclubs of Putney and Clapham. He was just a standard south-west London early 2000s guy, James Blunt, of a certain type, a different type from Mike Skinner, from Roots Manuva.

We were slightly obsessed with James Blunt in my flat ... in a weird, ironic, hateful, way. I think we had a picture of him on a fridge or something. He really bothered me. Because that was the style of music I was into. I'd have stood up for reedy-voiced, oversharing, acoustic-wielding well-off white boys against anyone, yet this one ... fuck no. Come back, it's usually better than this. He was ruining the genre.

A few years ago, you may recall, I listened back to Back to Bedlam and David Gray's White Ladder, I think with the intention of giving them a fair re-evaluation, and I quite liked White Ladder after all, but Back to Bedlam - hoo boy. Time had not healed. On the contrary.

So, saying all that, You're Beautiful - Number 1 for five whole weeks in the summer of 2005. A slow burning hit, a feel good story. The summer of the tube bombs, of the greatest Ashes, the summer my teaching ambitions fell apart and I lost my wallet at Benicassim. The summer of James Blunt taking his clothes off in the ice and snow. 

I'm afraid I've developed a fondness for the song. Purely a comical fondness but a fondness nevertheless. It is certainly not the worst song from that album, or the worst song to get to Number 1. Some of James Blunt's later songs were ok, and his tweets are excellent. 

At that point in time, Mr Brightside is already in the charts, and Top of the Pops is in its final year. There are some quite interesting Number 1s in 2005 - rock has quite a strong showing: U2, Stereophonics' best song Dakota, the last two tolerable Oasis hits Lyla and the Importance of Being Idle (back to back with Dare by Gorillaz, Battle of Britpop fans), Arctic Monkeys, not to mention pop classics like Push the Button and Hung Up.

I'm almost a grown-up by now, but still, not quite.

Birthday Number 1s: 2004 - Dry Your Eyes

I am quite fond of

Dry Your Eyes - The Streets

which unexpectedly went to Number 1 for a week in the summer of 2004.

It reminds me of South London, where I lived from 2003 until 2012. Pleasingly, both this and the Number 1 on August 1 2005 have a strong South London connection.

Although Mike Skinner was originally from the Midlands, The Streets was a South London thing.

When I first heard Has It Come to This, from the 2002 debut Original Pirate Material, it was exciting to me primarily because I had imagined this kind of music for about a decade. a kind of specifically English adjunct to hip-hop which was not really hip-hop. I had often thought there was a space for something like that to be successful, and the Streets finally was that. Mike Skinner was clever, talented and droll and carried it off for a while.

Dry Your Eyes, a couple of years later, was both the triumph and the end of it. On a concept album - his second album A Grand Don't Come for Free - it was a pop ballad, a regular little heartbreaker amongst twisting narratives. It worked, but it also narrowed The Streets (into a one-way street maybe, arf) and left him nowhere to go. It also, for me anyway, now that it was all over the radio, just made the very sound of The Streets annoying. I went to see them at Brixton Academy around that time and it was very much not for me.

I don't think it's just because of I'm one of those real rock, real instrument guys, though I admit there was that a little bit, but also it just, all of a sudden ... sounded like a nice little idea that had gone sour.

I still quite like Dry Your Eyes. I particularly like the line where he goes "I'm not gonna fuckin' just fuckin' leave it all now" - that's a touch of class. I think the Streets have been really influential - you hear loads of speaky-singy white-working-or-middle-class-guy chatty songs now, I think there's a touch of The Streets in everything from Ed Sheeran to Sleaford Mods.

Mike Skinner always seemed like a pretty nice, super smart, man and he pops back up every now and then, but has never been able to replicate the success, either commercially or critically, of Dry Your Eyes or A Grand Don't Come for Free, which was a huge hit album.

I think quite a lot of pop music in the early 2000s was surprisingly good, but 2004 wasn't a great year for Number 1s - Toxic probably the best of them. Top of the Pops was on its last legs, but in our top floor flat near fancy Clapham and Brixton Prison, with Freeview but not Sky, we used to watch pop video channels if there was nothing else on, so these are the last few years I'm really closely attached to the charts.

That summer, I'd been working at Blackwell's London Business School, was enrolled and ready to go with my PGCE, which I was righty fearful about, and went to a few weddings, lots of films and lots of gigs. But I'd never watch The Streets again.

Birthday Number 1s: 2003 - Crazy in Love

OK, we come, with a certain sigh of relief, since I realise I haven't been overwhelmingly positive about anything for quite a while, to one of the greatest songs of all time,

Crazy in Love - Beyoncé ft Jay-Z

which was the UK Number 1 on my 25th birthday.

That summer was my last PHSP playscheme, so, you could say, my last "childhood" birthday, where I was away, with people I knew, as part of some trip/project.

It was extremely hot that fortnight - it got up to the mid 30s. I remember, on the way to Portsmouth, smoking out of a train window (legally!) - smoke and rushing wind and blazing heat all at once. 

I also remember returning to London, to the flat on Kings Avenue I'd recently moved into, and hearing Crazy in Love for the first time, and yes, there it was, a truly great pop single. I'm sure there are plenty of people that don't think so, but I haven't met them or read them.

20 years ago! Crazy in Love, 20 years old. Good god ...

It was not a debut, as such, for Beyoncé. Destiny's Child had become one of the biggest bands in the world, and her star status was unquestionable. And it was not her first solo single - there'd been Work it Out, the previous summer, from the Austin Powers movie (a minor hit in the UK but not the US), then a feature on Jay-Z's 03 Bonnie and Clyde - but, still, the was the real start of it. The announcement of the century's greatest musical star.

Number 1 for eight weeks in the US, only two weeks in the UK. You might have thought it would be longer, but, to be fair, 2003 had some crackers. All The Things She Said, Beautiful, Ignition (I know, but it was), Bring Me to Life, Breathe, Where is the Love, Leave Right Now, Hole in the Head, Mad World. A lot of competition.

Beyoncé's performance is incandescent, Jay-Z's guest slot really adds something (which won't necessarily be the case for one I'll come to in a few years), it comfortably crosses several genres, has several memorable hooks, is just a thing of pure joy.

The man behind the sound was Rich Harrison, and the sound he found was Are You My Woman (Tell Me So) by the Chi-Lites. Harrison, in his early 20s at the time, has had a solid career, but only three megahits ...Crazy in Love, 1 Thing by Amerie and Get Right by Jennifer Lopez, which is less of a megahit than the other two, more a retread. It's fair to say Harrison had a shtick which wasn't infinitely repeatable, but Crazy in Love and 1 Thing are two of the most glorious peas in a pod you'll find.

As an aside, I don't think Jennifer Lopez was a very good pop star. Everything she did seemed to be a few months behind something better that someone else had done.

Beyoncé, on the other hand, is a great pop star and considerably more, someone who, over almost 25 years has hardly ever done something that has been poorly, or even lukewarmly, received, yet has hardly ever done the obvious thing, has always been a step ahead. The hype, the cult, can be a bit unbearable sometimes, but it is more justifiable in this case than most others.

Finally, thinking about Crazy in Love vs Livin' La Vida Loca four years earlier - by the age of 25, as opposed to 21, I was able to recognise that, though I wouldn't be able to light up the floor if Crazy in Love was on, though it had an unabashed joy, a universality I shunned, it was still ok for me to like it, and I didn't have to look askance at all the other people enjoying it.