Welcome to our final instalment of our UK Christmas Number One Singles review. And it has to be the Fifties we’ve arrived at where purely instrumental pieces (Winifred Atwell – “Let’s Have Another Party”) and artists with such names as Conway Twitty could still dominate the charts. Rage against the machine and X-Factor: you’d better run and hide !

The official UK Singles Chart began in 1952, so there are no listings for 1950 or 1951.

1952 Al Martino “Here in My Heart”

1953 Frankie Laine “Answer Me”

1954 Winifred Atwell “Let’s Have Another Party”

1955 Dickie Valentine “Christmas Alphabet”

1956 Johnnie Ray “Just Walkin’ in the Rain”

1957 Harry Belafonte “Mary’s Boy Child”

1958 Conway Twitty “It’s Only Make Believe”

1959 Emile Ford & The Checkmates “What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?”

Welcome to our UK Christmas Number One Singles review. We have arrived in the Swinging Sixties, where we have the unlikely combination of The Beatles, Cliff Richard and Rolf Harris battling for Christmas chart supremacy. It’s not often that you can mention all of those in one sentence!

1960 Cliff Richard & The Shadows “I Love You”

1961 Danny Williams “Moon River”

1962 Elvis Presley “Return to Sender”

1963 The Beatles “I Want to Hold Your Hand”

1964 The Beatles “I Feel Fine”

1965 The Beatles “Day Tripper” / “We Can Work It Out”

Day Tripper

“We Can Work It Out”

1966 Tom Jones “Green Green Grass of Home”

1967 The Beatles “Hello, Goodbye”

1968 The Scaffold “Lily the Pink”

1969 Rolf Harris “Two Little Boys”

Welcome to the Seventies, where we witness the next instalment of our UK Christmas Number One Singles review. Could you think of a more diverse group of artists (in the most broad sense of the word) than Pink Flloyd, Benny Hill, Little Jimmy Osmond, Queen and Boney M? Well, they all shared number one hits in the Seventies.

1970 Dave Edmunds “I Hear You Knocking”

1971 Benny Hill “Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)”

1972 Little Jimmy Osmond “Long Haired Lover From Liverpool”

1973 Slade “Merry Xmas Everybody”

1974 Mud “Lonely This Christmas”

1975 Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody

1976 Johnny Mathis “When A Child Is Born (Soleado)”

1977 Wings “Mull of Kintyre”

1978 Boney M “Mary’s Boy Child”

1979 Pink Floyd “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)”

Welcome as we roll back the years further as we reach the Eighties in our UK Christmas Number One Singles review. Band Aid make two appearances, the original (and best in my opinion) version in 1984 and then the re-hash in 89. That makes three number one spots for Do They Know It’s Christmas in total: 1984, 1989 and 2004. Will there be fourth cover-version?

1980 John Lennon “(Just Like) Starting Over”

1981 The Human League “Don’t You Want Me”

1982 Renée and Renato “Save Your Love”

1983 The Flying Pickets “Only You”

1984 Band Aid “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

1985 Whitney Houston “Saving All My Love for You”

1986 Jackie Wilson “Reet Petite”

1987 Pet Shop Boys “Always on My Mind”

1988 Cliff Richard “Mistletoe and Wine”

1989 Band Aid II “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (I think in this case the original was not bettered…)

Hello

Welcome to our second installment of UK Christmas Number One Singles – this time we’re taking a look at the nineties, when The Spice Girls, Cliff Richard and Queen were still fighting for the top spot (seems like a long time ago now).

1990 Cliff Richard “Saviour’s Day” (Strange, my memory must be failing me, as I thought Millennium Prayer was his last Christmas Number One.)

1991 Queen “Bohemian Rhapsody” / “These Are the Days of Our Lives” (To quote wikipedia: “Bohemian Rhapsody reached number one again in 1991, after Freddie Mercury’s death, achieving total sales of 2,176,000 and becoming the UK’s third best selling single of all time—beaten only by Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and Elton John’s “Candle In The Wind 1997″.)

These Are the Days of Our Lives

1992 Whitney Houston “I Will Always Love You” (Originally released by Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston covered this tune for the movie Bodyguard, in which she starred alongside Kevin Costner.)

1993 Mr Blobby “Mr Blobby” (No comment!)

1994 East 17 “Stay Another Day” (The band’s lead singer Tony Mortimer had written this song about his brother’s suicide, and had not intended it to be a Christmas tune at all, but the record company thought otherwise, added some bells and released it just before Christmas.)

1995 Michael Jackson “Earth Song” (along with “We Are the World“, “Man in the Mirror” and “Heal the World“, Michael Jackson is here trying to show his more socially conscious side.)

1996 Spice Girls “2 Become 1” (This was the first ballad the Spice Girls released as a single.)

1997 Spice Girls “Too Much” (The sixth consecutive number-one single in the UK for “girl-power”.)

1998 Spice Girls “Goodbye” (The first single without Geri Halliwell for The Spice Girls, and the beginning of the end for the group.)

1999 Westlife “I Have A Dream” / “Seasons in the Sun” (Seasons in the Sun is actually a very loose English translation of the song “Le Moribond” by Jacques Brel.)

“Season’s in the Sun”

Check out the original English version by Terry Jacks here:

Hi

Christmas is drawing ever closer, and here in the UK there is a real fascination about who will have the Number One Single on Christmas Day. In the last few years it has rather predictably always been the winner of X-Factor, so if things go to plan for Simon Cowell and Co this would mean that Joe McElderry’s version of “The Climb” will take the No.1 spot.

Anyway, I thought I might take you through the UK Christmas Number One Singles, decade by decade, starting with our current decade.

2000 Bob The Builder “Can We Fix It?” (probably one of the more embarrassing No. Ones)

2001 Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman “Somethin’ Stupid” (Nicole and Robbie cover Frank and daughter Nancy Sinatra’s hit)

2002 Girls Aloud “Sound of the Underground” (groovy guitar line a la Misirlou)

2003 Michael Andrews & Gary Jules “Mad World” (a hauntingly beautiful reinterpretation of the Tears for Fears original from the eigthies, which sounds very different. It featured in the movie Donnie Darko. This video was shot by French director Michel Gondry, who also made the movies Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind and The Science of Sleep)

2004 Band Aid 20 “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (I have to say, I think the original version sounded better – but we’ll get to hear that when we get round to the eighties)

2005 Shayne Ward “That’s My Goal” (I have to be honest here, I cannot remember this one at all!)

2006 Leona Lewis “A Moment Like This” (another X-Factor winner)

2007 Leon Jackson “When You Believe” (… more X-Factor)

2008 Alexandra Burke “Hallelujah” (… is it me, or do the X-Factor winners al sound the same?)

Last time round I explained how sus chords are constructed.

Here I’m going to show you a little trick on how to voice (play) any 7sus chord quite easily on the piano, and you’ll get a nice, full sound.

I’ll explain this in the context of a C7sus:

Take the root (bottom note), so in this case a C and play it in the left hand. Then look at the root in the right hand again, but go down two keys, So C to B to Bb. Now construct a major triad on this note, so a Bb major triad. Then play this with the C root in the left hand, and you’ll get a really nice sounding voicing. (Note that this chord includes a 4th (F) as well as a 2nd (D), but no 5th (G)):

As this chord is made up of a root and a completely separate major chord in its own right you can also write this chord as a slash chord: Bb/C.

Let’s pretend we have a slightly more difficult chord, say an Eb7sus.

So play the root (Eb) in the left hand, then go down two keys in the right hand, so Eb to D to Db, then construct a major chord on the Db, so a Db major triad and put it all together and you should get this:

The nice thing about sus chords and this type of voicing them is that you can even shift these around to different keys at random and get really nice textures. Here is an example – you can try this yourself by just shifting this voicing around the piano:

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Random sus chords

Lincoln Jaeger