What would you have given the No.1 hits of 1963? Tick all those you’d have handed a mark of 6 or more to (on whatever criteria you fancy!)
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Tom in FT /Popular • Pop/popular year poll • 554 views
All the UK number ones since 1952, reviewed in order and rated by whim. As featured on Radio 2, The Times, Metro, Paul Cornell's LiveJournal, etc etc.
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Index of reviews and scores so far
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Also feel free to give general comments on the year, etc.
It’s a rum old year, isn’t it! The first half dominated by Cliff, the Shadows, and the Shadows spinoffs. (Apart from Diamonds they are all, I think, from the soundtrack of the film Summer Holiday – which I mention because that was the first film I ever saw in a cinema. The Plaza Birkenhead to be precise. And then Epsteins boys take over, again and again. A seismic year, but not a lot in retrospect that really presses my buttons.
Probably the first year I definitely remember listening to & responding to pop music (namely of course The Beatles) and of course the year they were also introduced into most peoples lives. As regards the years number ones – did someone say ‘Merseybeat’ ?
One of these years where it’s clear that a transition is taking place but that news hasn’t really reached the top of the charts yet even with the Mersey influx in the second half of the year. Harder to analyse subjectively as well of course because this is literally just before my time. But I’ll go for “Diamonds” which I think still sounds the most dynamic of these number ones and to offset the (justifiably) many votes which “SLY” and “IWTTYH” will get (one hopes).
Just for comparison purposes, the list of American number ones from the same year is as follows:
Tornados – Telstar
Steve Lawrence – Go Away Little Girl
Rooftop Singers – Walk Right In
Paul & Paula – Hey Paula
Four Seasons – Walk Like A Man
Ruby & the Romantics – Our Day Will Come
Chiffons – He’s So Fine
Little Peggy March – I Will Follow Him
Jimmy Soul – If You Wanna Be Happy
Lesley Gore – It’s My Party
Kyu Sakamoto – Sukiyaki
The Essex – Easier Said Than Done
Jan & Dean – Surf City
Tymes – So Much In Love
Little Stevie Wonder – Fingertips Pt 2
Angels – My Boyfriend’s Back
Bobby Vinton – Blue Velvet
Jimmy Gilmer & the Fireballs – Sugar Shack
Nino Tempo & April Stevens – Deep Purple
Dale & Grace – I’m Leaving It All Up To You
The Singing Nun – Dominique
I think the term is “a different world.”
Oh bugger, I forgot that you’re allowed to tick as many as you like and I can’t go back and add any more. Let the record stand, then, that I would have given 6 or more to the first and second Pacemakers ones and the second and third Beatles ones. Otherwise there are an awful lot of 5s here.
Oh, and a pedant writes: the Billy J Kramer one was “Bad TO Me.”
So it was! I can edit that I think. I wonder if I can also erase your votes MC so you can do it again? I will check.
Success! I have added the extra votes requested.
It’s a bit fiddly though so I’m not going to do it again – lesson to voters: VOTE EARLY VOTE OFTEN :)
haha I like your use of a TARDIS to create these polls
Marcello @ 4: Ah, Ruby and the Romantics! Was that really as late as ’63? I seem to remember it being a couple of years earlier, part of my formative experience (ie listening to Radio Luxembourg just because my big sister did. Anyway, I liked Our Day Will Come at the time.
That American chart wasn’t entirely a different world; many of those records made the British chart too, or at least got significant airplay on Luxy. And of those that didn’t, well, the US is a foreign country after all. Interesting what a high proportion of the British list is home-grown product.
Of course, Diamonds was the first drum’n'bass number one…
I just think it’s generally a livelier list and if “Fingertips Pt 2″ had made it to number one here I would have given it approximately 48,000 out of ten.
Note for free jazz fans: the Willem Brueker Kollektief do a fabbo version of “Our Day Will Come” on their Live In Berlin album from ’76.
There’s not one in the year that I really care about – I wouldn’t have given more than 7 to anything there, and could only find three that I am pretty sure would have got over 5 from me. Can’t be many years like that. Nothing I like remotely as much as Surf City or He’s So Fine in the US list (a 9 and a 9 or 10 there).
Yes I should remember to put a none of the above box on.
I cast my votes on this earlier today, but decided to wait until now to post my comments, as I had been the first person not to vote for all three Beatles songs, and I wanted to see how that would go down.
A pretty poor year for UK No1s, I would have to say, and it appears the voting bears that out with only the Beatles and Elvis gaining pass marks from more than 50% of the voters. (I’m surprised the Brian Poole and the Tremeloes track isn’t more popular – it was always one of my favourites)
The US No1 s list is undeniably more impressive, with the exception of the three which were later covered by assorted Osmond clan members. “Surf City”, “Fingerprints”, and “My Boyfriend’s Back” are all way in front of just about everything from the UK list (possible exception – “She Loves You”).
Even the surprising foreign language US No1s (“Sukiyaki” and “Dominique”) both had memorable tunes, although I couldn’t sing along with either!
Keep up the good work!
The Dave Clark Five’s “Do You Love Me?” TOTALLY pwns the Brian Poole one!
DJ Punctum,
I wholly agree with you regarding DC5, it is a far better version, their first hit IIRC, but I’d still give Brian Poole more than a five!
I went with the marks I’d handed out when I reviewed the tracks, which were generally on the low side – even the ones I ticked didn’t go much over 6.
No love for Ifield I see :(
I need to go back and listen to a bunch of these before I vote. PS, Tom – this entry isn’t showing up in the Popular column…
No, it’s not meant to – it’s because I inserted it chronologically to sit between the end of 63 and the beginning of 64!
Daha! Makes sense. I was looking for some sort of sub-page (in the same section as the UK Number Ones reference, maybe); the chronological approach is reasonable enough though.
I’ve had to vote for a few of these on the basis of the title, so I gave support to “I Like It!”
To give this list a sense of upside down context, only one single got to numer 40 on the same charts in 1963, but it’s pretty good;
6 Jun He’s The One – Billie Davies – 1 week
I’m surprised that “You’ll Never Walk Alone” isn’t higher in the poll, esp. after hearing the documentary on it a while back on R2.
As with a lot of the year-end polls, a back-end switch has messed the stats up a lot (though the ranking won’t have changed)
BAH – must fix – think it was easy. i blame the poll plugin. probably.
if i fix it soon, tom you have to promise to tag up all these polls so that we can present them in a page of their own :-D
The notorious phantom number one of 1963, that topped the other (NME) chart;
The Beatles – Please Please Me (2 weeks)
Just noticed 1963 was a bit of a sausage-fest at the top wasn’t it?