Every day this week Steve Lamacq will be counting down some unusual Official Top 10s on his radio show on BBC 6 Music. Yesterday he revealed The Official Top 10 Singles With A Colour In The Title.
As part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Official Singles Chart, Steve Lamacq challenged his listeners to come up with unusual subjects for an Official Top 10.
In turn, we agreed to mine the Official Charts Company’s sales data, and come up with some Official Top 10s, no matter how weird. Yesterday (Wednesday, November 14) Steve revealed The Official Top 10 Singles With A Colour In The Title.
Boney M’s 1978 double A-Side Rivers Of Babylon/Brown Girl In The Ring takes the top spot with sales of over 2 million. It is also the UK’s sixth biggest selling single of all time. Robson Green & Jerome Flynn - AKA ‘The Singing Squaddies’, as Steve’s BBC 6 Music colleague Mark Radcliffe calls them – are at Number 2 with their 1995 double A-Side Unchained Melody/(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs Of Dover. This World War II anthem, made famous by Dame Vera Lynn, name checks not one colour, but two, and is the ninth biggest selling single of all time.
Will Young is at Number 3 with yet another double A-Side - Anything Is Possible/Evergreen. Released as the winner’s single for the inaugural series of Pop Idol in 2002, Anything Is Possible/Evergreen is the biggest selling single of the 21st Century and 14th biggest selling single of all time with a sales tally of 1.79 million copies.
Chart legend Sir Tom Jones is at Number 4 with his 1966 classic, Green, Green Grass Of Home. New Order complete the Top 5 with Blue Monday, narrowly beating Eiffel 65’s Blue (Da Ba Dee).
