On my mind: The Guardian's 100 greatest UK No 1s

The Guardian's 100 greatest UK No 1s had some pretty good selections. It's hard to go wrong when you're picking 100 highlights from fewer than 1,500 songs, most of which are hogwash. Take a random year as an example: 1999 number ones by Chef, The Offspring, Boyzone or the Mambo No 5 bloke were hardly going to trouble the list.

Pet Shop Boys' topped their poll, which is entirely the correct choice. Their take on Elvis's Always On My Mind has an incredible energy, like a firework exploding in the boot of a car – I've always considered this the best Christmas number one, so I'm happy to extend it to the best chart topper of all time. Sadly, the Guardian opted for West End Girls as the greatest number one; any fool knows that the other PSB number ones, Heart and It's A Sin, are better than 'Girls. Pfffrt. Just you wait till I get you home, The Guardian.

The Chemical Brothers were just inside their top 50, while the Prodigy soared into their top ten, troubling the likes of Michael Jackson and the Human League. Steve 'Silk' Hurley's Jack Your Body was also in the mix, with it being labelled as "the most minimal No 1 of all time". Black Box and Daft Punk were included, although the latter's only number one song is hardly their best.

Killer made it into their list, with the Guardian praising its perfect design, as did I just last week. Kraftwerk's The Model is also in there, with a welcome shout-out to its brilliant flip-side Computer Love. And while we're doing k-words, the KLF's 3am Eternal made it quite high up the list, proving the ancients of Mu-Mu still have some mojo. This made me sad that Last Train To Trancentral never got to number one. Still, all of these were great to see.

They chose Snap!'s Rhythm Is a Dancer, which I'm sure they were as serious as gout about, but I would have probably have gone for Snap!'s other number one, The Power. That track was so strange and discordant, confusing my head at the time before my heart fell in love with it. The Power knocked Beats International's Dub Be Good To Me off the top spot – another missed contender in this list.

They should have included Pump Up The Volume by MARRS, which incidentally stands for band members Martyn, Alex, Rudy, Russell and Steve. They're like ABBA but with less knitwear. The band didn't get on, and it was a miracle they ever released anything, never mind create a chart-topping acid house classic. And how on earth The Guardian missed The Shamen's Ebeneezer Goode, I have no idea.

There were some outsider choices I would have like to have seen, and would have no doubt made a top 200. For the 1990s, I love the indie spirit of White Town's pin-sharp Your Woman ("So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways, just use me up and then you walk away"), while I mourn the exclusion of Flat Beat by Mr Oizo, which was a blow to yellow puppets everywhere.

There are some 21st century outsiders I'd liked to have seen: Rihanna's Diamonds (they chose Umbrella); Duck Sauce's Barbra Streisand; David Guetta's epic Titanium; Tinie Tempah's Scunthorpe-namechecking Pass Out. Nothing much interesting to say about them – I just like the tunes, dammit.

Like I say, it's an easy list to generally get right, even for people like me who find it difficult to focus on anything before 1987. And not a single mention of Lou Bega's fifth Mambo, despite its remarkable lyric "It's all good, let me dump it, please set in the trumpet". Pardon?

Further Fats: Delirious' bid for number one: the rock delusion? (2010)

Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one? (2013)

Charts in crisis: here's why there are so few number one singles

There are no more UK number one singles left.

In 2016, there were only 11 UK number one singles. This equals the lowest record set in 1954 when Doris Day and Yorkshire warbler David Whitfield dominated the charts.

This is a huge drop off considering 2014 had 38 chart toppers. If this trend continues, in 2017 there will be -2 chart toppers. That's right. We'll go into the minuses. If they do another Top Of The Pops, it will simply be a video of antimatter.

To demonstrate this alarming statistic, I've made a graphic (above). This shows the number of separate number one singles over the past decade expressed in sizes of Drake. Drake is not a duck: he is a hugely successful music artist who enjoyed 15 weeks at number one last year. Drake should be used in all bar charts.

There can be only one explanation. It's upsetting, but I don't want to hide the truth from you.

ALL THE MUSIC STARS ARE DEAD. Let's face it: all the celebrities popped the bucket in 2016. Kicked their clogs. Maybe there was no-one left to have number one singles.

No, wait, hold on. That's not right.

The actual answer seems to be volume of weekly sales. There are two clues. 1992 and 2007.

In 1992, the year of Ebeneezer Goode (pictured) and Rhythm Is A Dancer, single sales tanked. There were only 12 number one singles that year. Likewise, in 2007, the CD collapsed as a format and single sales again fell: you could top the chart with a fraction of what you needed just a few years earlier. And as you can see in the chart above, in 2007 there were relatively few number ones.

By contrast, the measuring of downloads and streams saw single sales rocket at the start of this decade. So the opposite trend happened: as sales increased, we saw a big increase in the quantity of chart toppers in any one year.

Seems odd?

Nope. It's mathematics in action. Low weekly sales means a single's chart run is exhausted slowly. The songs then stick around like musical farts. Conversely, high weekly sales sees their sales potential exhausted in no time at all. Sometimes after just one week. Theoretically, a track with 200,000 sales could spend one week at number one in 2013 - or ten weeks at number one in 2007.

Which also reveals something else quite sobering.

There are certain totems that stick around at number one forever. In 1992, Whitney Houston spent 10 weeks at number one. In 2007, Rihanna spent 10 weeks at number one. In 2016, Drake spent 15 weeks at number one.

Notice something about those years? I bet the same is true for Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet too. Record-breaking chart toppers? Or merely mathematical musical farts?

Footnote: This is based on a theory once posited by James Masterton. Although the fart metaphor is my own, as is much of this analysis. Tell others: please tweet this article using the hashtag #musicalfarts.

If all that has left your head exploding, here's an old tune to lighten things up.



Further Fats: It's not a pie chart but I called it a Bri Chart because that was the only pun I could think of (2008)

Further Fats: Whatever happened to the cheeky New Year number one? (2013)

Rihanna has ruined everything

Rihanna's latest single is the death of creativity.

That's it. It's over. Unplug your guitar. Put down your paintbrush. Leave that ice sculpture for the sun. Rihanna has ruined everything.

It's bad enough that the X Factor bursts with so many brands (the contestants' phones, Syco, the hotel they stay in, more Syco, even the cups on the desk in the US version) that there's barely space for the soundwaves what with all that money flying about.

But now Rihanna has released an advert and it's got to number one. An advert.

I'm not naive. I'm used to Levi jeans once belting up the the charts and Mr Latest Bling Bling Hippety-hop getting jiggy with cars and expensive fizz, but the Rihanna thing is quite unbelievable. Let me explain.

A few years ago, Emporio Armani launched a fragrance called Diamonds. Cue a launch party with Beyonce, Josh Hartnett getting his nips out in black and white commercials. and a forthcoming tie-in with MTV.

Diamonds is, according to its maker's website, "inspired by both the past and the present, the traditional and the modern". Such unique selling points are "particularly reflected by the ingredients". Better the actual 'ingredients' than, say, the bottle coming with a buffalo that constantly points at a watch as it screams "don't think about the future, NEVER THINK ABOUT THE FUTURE" in Buffalese.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the empire, Rihanna designs things for Armani: bags, pants, jeans, that kind of thing. It's an odd profession for someone who wears so little of anything, but she will earn a universeful of cash as did her preceding shill Posh Spice.

Nothing new, just people doing stuff.

So I can only imagine the writing process with Rihanna's latest single (no, I'm not calling her RiRi: she's not a panda), because she really has jumped the shark, punched the buffalo and bashed the bishop on this one.

RIHANNA: Shine bright like a... Shine bright like a... like a... I'm really struggling with a simile to finish this chorus.

PRODUCER: Star? Sun? Giorgio Armani's tanned face?

THE LIGHTS FLICKER. THE ROOM GETS COLD. ARMANI FLOATS INTO THE ROOM.

ARMANI: Someone mention my name?

RIHANNA: Georgie boy, we're struggling to finish--

ARMANI: Get a load of this.

ARMANI SPRAYS THE DIAMONDS FRAGRANCE INTO RIHANNA'S FACE. HER EYES GLAZE OVER. MEANWHILE, THE PRODUCER RUNS SCREAMING FROM THE BUILDING. HE RETIRES FROM WORKING IN STUDIOS, ALTHOUGH IN 2019 IS SPOTTED IN AN EARLY X FACTOR AUDITION DRESSED AS A BAD LEO SAYER.

"Shine bright like a diamond" it is. And that, dear reader, is how Rihanna's new single Diamonds came to be named after her employer's fragrance Diamonds, with both snuggled so close on this screenshot on the Official Charts Page (below), they could mate and give birth to, um, a parallelogram.

Well done, Rihanna. More than anyone in the history of the charts, you've reduced the number one spot to a commercial. Let's hope you do the same when you're saggy and old and advertising Farmfoods.

(Click for bigger.)

Further Fats: Rihanna will knock out a cover version of Hangable Auto Bulb as soon as she claps her eyes on this pile of blog waffle (2007)

Mr Scruff's dried rabbits, LD's deep woofs and Mujava's drained drums

Here are some tracks that ought to be caressing your pretty ears right now.

Potato-drawing tea evangelist Mr Scruff (pictured) has teamed up with preacher's son Roots Manuva for a track called Nice Up The Junction. It's a solid piece of dub skank with some meaty "wooh" action, and the video features a jumble sale flogging used tea bags and "dried rabbits".

Dubstep label Hyperdub lit a really slow fuse when they let LD loose on new 12" Traumatic Times.  With its deeply woofing bass, the title track is so low-down, it's doing the limbo underneath your carpet. Flip side Woodblock is a slap round the chops in comparison, and is worth hunting out for its simmering, insistent, rolling techno.

And while I'm a techno tip, if you come across Boy 8 Bit's remix of Mujava's Township Funk, it's worth stopping to say hello. I should point out that Township Funk is minimal house music's version of Rihanna's Umbrella: it's simply massive. Boy 8 Bit magnifies the moodiness. eliminates the tribal drums, and uses menacing synth lines to drain any possible happiness from the track until the glass is indeed half empty. Stupendously, stunningly stern.

Rihanna will knock out a cover version of Hangable Auto Bulb as soon as she claps her eyes on this pile of blog waffle

I am a blithering hypocrite and you should pap me on the nose with the back of a spoon.

I was going to excrete a post about chart-topper Rihanna making the dullest r 'n' b since R Kelly and Aaliyah. (No disrespect to the deceased, but Aaliyah's music was the very epitome of r 'n' b medocrity.)

The post would have been magnificent, and would have finally exposed r 'n' b for the drivelling middle-of-the-road dross it is.

But then, I am the sort of manchild who spends hours listening to clicks and beeps and barely distinguishable melodic themes. My music taste by nature means I can get lost in a repetitive mantra which, essentially, doesn't change for six hours. My middle road is so narrow, I have to build bridges over the cats eyes instead of going round them.

And I confess to liking some r 'n' b, no more so when I saw The Ladyboys Of Bangkok do Usher's Yeah routine at the Lowry a couple of years ago.

It does seem strange that the very week Rihanna claims this decade's record of the longest run at number one whilst simultaneously releasing her own range of umbrellas in the wettest period of UK history, the queen of r 'n' b she is hoping to depose Beyonce Knowles "falls down some stairs" in Orlando, Florida.

Actually, the umbrella move is shrewd. You see, her single is called Umbrella. And she has released a range of umbrellas. Her single is called Umbrella. Umbrella. And she has released a range of umbrellas. Umbrella. Umbrellas. Subtle, isn't it?

This could be the start of a new and startling range of cross-promotional opportunities. All sorts of records could be used to shift product. It's the kind of business acumen Tesco would kill for. No, seriously, they actually kill people. With hammers. This sounds like bad stand-up, but they do really kill people with hammers.

I have trawled the backlist of Warp Records, and sifted out some electronica albums that are desperately needing some merchandising spin-offs. Rihanna had better watch for that discarded roller skate at the top of the stairs...

>AFX's Hangable Auto Bulb (pictured): a light connected to the ceiling that is somehow turned on remotely, maybe with a switch.

>Boards Of Canada's In a Beautiful Place Out In The Country: estate agents

>Aphex Twin's Windowlicker: a rather unpopular window cleaner.

>Autechre's Amber: Jurassic Park tie-in, a new range of actual dinosaur DNA in actual amber.

>Autechre's Anvil Vapre: a tool for converting unwanted blacksmith equipment into gas.

>Squarepusher's Big Loada: trucks, obviously.

>Squarepusher's Budakhan Mindphone: a microchip in the shape of Chaka Khan dressed as the Buddha inserted underneath the skin in the forehead and enabled to take telephone calls.

>Squarepusher's Burningn'n Tree: cigarettes.

>Squarepusher's My Red Hot Car: Ferrari dealerships. You're getting the hang of this now, aren't you?