A missing Popular Year poll for your deliberation. As ever, I give a mark out of 10 to every hit – here’s where you can say which ones YOU would have given 6 or more to. The last year of pre-Beatles British pop – dredge your memories….
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I'm writing about every UK number one single, in order. It's taken a while, it'll take a while longer. Wander around in the archives, or join in with the marvellous bunch of commenters we've managed to attract - new voices always very welcome!
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Index of reviews and scores so far
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Voted for all but 4 – the 2 Frank Ifield’s (I hate yodelling), Mike Sarne and Can’t Help Falling in Love which is still tainted by the memory of UB40’s version.
Seven for me. All bar the brace of Ifields (I think I might give the cockeyed Lovesick Blues a 1); Come Outside’s a 4 at best; Good Luck Charm is the most sleepwalky of all Elvis singles; Ray Charles over emotes on a song that deserves shrugging resignation given to it by Roy Orbison. Maybe the first example of an overcooked soulful vocal on Popular?
This is going to sound idiotic, but I had no idea that Elvis had so many number 1s.
Wasn’t 1962 the year of the “loads of hits for Elvis” record, only eventually beaten by the mighty Wedding Present some decades later?
There seems like very few number ones in this year.
I was going to try and stick up the Rock N Roll Years documentary link here, filling in a gap I skipped over. Can’t do it though, as the person who had all the series uploaded onto Youtube has had their account shut down for multiple copyright violations or similar. Shame. I might even have been responsible I guess, given I was linking to his stuff here, in which case, if so, apologies to him/her for causing him grief.
Never mind – it’s not like all the episodes can’t be found anyway, if you know where to look for them. They’re just not in a linkable/immediately viewable format. Kind of taken the wind out of my sails for linking them to the year end polls though – not that there seemed loads of interest in it anyhow.
Now returning you to your regularly scheduled line up.
Oh, I was saving them all up for the inevitable week-in-bed-with-virus. Shame!
Brendan F: TOTALLY AGREED! I personally believe that 1962 was the first year to not have the average at least a 7; 1961 was the best year up to this point.
The first Elvis entry here is quite boring, while “I Remember You” is just not my type. The other two are also stinkers by my standards, and the first two I’d personally recommend you avoid.