Welcome back my friends to the flamboyance that never ends, as Fabulously Flamboyant Friday sashays up to the crease to deliver yet another light-loafered, lubed-up googly from the gasworks-end of musical magnificence.
Please be welcome to part two in our short series of articles that are, by popular demand, guaranteed to contain no weirdos, nothing obscure, nothing remotely challenging and no tunes that are not thoroughly well known to both the man on the Clapham omnibus and his dear ol’ mum.
Over the next few weeks we shall count down (via a poptastic top 60, no less) the all-time, best-selling artists (as measured by single sales) in the U.K. So rest assured, dear reader, only the most poptastically popular pop performers and their well known choons will make the utterly ruthless cut for these articles – not arf!
And what a way to start! In at No.50, the man, the myth, the legend; a truly global superstar of stage and screen; a well-deserved Oscar winner, humanitarian and tub-thumper extraordinaire; a musician of unparalleled genius, a much-loved Puffin favourite and all-round diamond geezer. There can be only one. Ladies and gentlemen, Fabulously Flamboyant Friday proudly presents the mightiest of the most mighty musical titans: Mr. Phil Collins – YAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!
Sadly, as we have previously dedicated <a href=”https://going-postal.com/2024/02/happy-birthday-to-a-musical-titan”>an entire article to The Blessed Phil</a>, I must keep my comments brief. It is of course a complete travesty of natural justice that this musical God is ranked at a lowly 50 on our popastic chart. On any sane and sensible planet, he and Tay Tay would undoubtedly be in joint first place.
Collins’ solo career has shifted well over 150 million records worldwide and around 6 million singles in the U.K., making him one of the world’s all-time best-selling artists. He is one of a very select group of recording artists (I won’t name the others as they will feature on our chart countdown soon enough) who have sold over 100 million records as a solo artist and have also sold another 100 million records as a member of a band (Genesis, in the case of Mr. Collins).
The Blessed Phil has snaffled 8 Grammy Awards, 6 Brit Awards, 6 Ivor Novello Awards, 2 Golden Globes, an Academy Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He has been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame and the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame. Smoke him a kipper – he’ll be back for breakfast. What a guy!
And so we make our way into the forties with Wham!, aka George Michael and Andrew Rideley, who make it into our chart at No.49 by shifting well over 6 million singles in the U.K. alone.
Mr. Michael met Mr. Ridgeley when they were both in their early teens. They bonded over their love of music and, after a few false starts, formed Wham! in 1981. They managed to become a pretty big deal in a very short time – selling over 30 million records from ’82 to ’86 – and were up to their armpits in screaming girls, prime time TV and sold-out gigs in absolutely no time at all.
But let us not forget (nor should we ever forgive, dear reader) that despite this enormous success and the unquestioning adoration of their loyal and dedicated fans, Wham! were quickly consumed by the dark side and chose to visit horror upon the world.
Their monster hit single, Last Christmas, was unleashed and proceeded to enlarge the already hideously soul-sucking and endlessly looped in-store Christmas mix-tape from hell (Do They Know It’s Christmas? / All I want For Christmas Is You / Simply Having A wonderful Christmas Time / Last Christmas, etc.), thus adding to the nerve-shredding existential horror faced by Christmas retail assistants everywhere, melting their brains and seriously testing the limits of their beleaguered sanity. Happily, some good came of this crime against humanity: Last Christmas became the 10th best-selling U.K. single of all time and the duo generously donated all their royalties to various good causes.
Anyway, despite all the fun, Wham! didn’t last long and disbanded in ’86. George wanted to create music targeted at a more sophisticated adult market and in particular wanted to move away from the duo’s primarily scream-teen audience. They said goodbye to their adoring fans with a farewell performance at London’s Wembley Stadium in the summer of ’86 and an impressive 72,000 punters turned up to say goodbye – and that’s not too shabby at all.
At No.48, with U.K. sales of 6.1 million singles, we find The Police. In the mid 1970s, Stewart Copeland had one of the best jobs in rock music – he was the drummer for Curved Air. This meant he could spend all night on stage staring at Sonja Kristina’s bum as she sang lead vocals for the band. Unfortunately, this unparalleled joy was not destined to last. Fortunately however, shortly before Curved Air split up, Copeland met Gordon Sumner (Sting) and they started collaborating. After a bit of jiggery pokery and the usual formative line-up shuffles, they nabbed Andy Summers, called themselves The Police, settled into their classic 3-piece line-up and started performing and recording.
They achieved rapid success and (IMHO) simply got better with each of their 5 studio albums. In 1983 Rolling Stone magazine labelled them as “possibly the biggest band in the world”, included four of their five studio albums on their list of the “Greatest Albums of All Time” and also included the band on their list of the “Greatest Artists of All Time”. They split up in 1986, but when they re-formed in 2007 (for a mammoth reunion tour that lasted well into 2008) their success made them the highest paid musicians in the world for that year.
At No.47 with U.K. sales of 6.15 million singles, we find the Nutty Boys, Camden’s finest Ska export: Madness. The band formed in ’76 and (after a tortuous series of line-up changes and a short period operating as Morris & The Minors) quickly started building a great live reputation. In 1979 they landed their first hit single with The Prince and began a long period of tremendous success and popularity. Between ’79 and ’86, when they first split up, they released 24 singles and every single one of them was a U.K. hit – a feat unparalleled in U.K. chart history. There have been numerous reunions over the years and I’m happy to say the lads are still going strong to this very day.
In at No.46, all the way from Way-ells, with around 6.2m U.K. singles, we find Treforest’s finest vocal export, Jones the Voice, Todger Tom, the Baritone Boyo – the one and only Tom Jones.
He has sold over 100 million records, with 36 Top 40 singles in the U.K., 19 in the US and an impressive worldwide list of hit albums. In 1967, Jones performed in Las Vegas for the very first time and he continued to perform there (with at least one gig a week) each and every year, right up until 2011 – the longest headline performance run in Las Vegas history.
He’s a Golden Globe winner, a Grammy Award winner, has two Brit Awards, an OBE and in 2006 was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music. These days he’s probably best known for his role as a vocal coach on the talent show The Voice, but (despite a few health problems) he is still gigging and still touring in 2024
At No.45 we find the hugely influential singer, songwriter, record producer and actress, Mariah Carey, with around 6.3m singles sold in the U.K..
Carey is one of the best-selling music artists of all time, with over 220 million records sold worldwide and more prestigious national and international awards than you can shake a stick at – and certainly more than I can be bothered to type. Quite honestly, if she was eligible to win it, she’s won it – often multiple times.
In the U.S. she holds the record for the most number-one singles by a solo artist, by a female songwriter and by a female producer. She is also the highest-certified female artist in the U.S. with 75 million certified album sales to add to her humongous list of hit singles.
Ms. Carey’s output is really not my cup of tea, but, blimey- what a set of pipes! She has a five-octave vocal range and can warble away, quite comfortably, in the whistle register. A chap can exceed this register if you slam his nadgers in the car door, but the whistle register is the highest register in which a human can controllably and accurately sing. Ms. Carey doesn’t just squeak in this range – she sings beautifully. In 2023 she was ranked as the fifth greatest singer of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.
However, one horror for which I can not forgive her came in 1994 when she co-wrote, recorded and released the international monster hit single, All I Want For Christmas Is You. This crime against humanity seems to re-enter the charts almost every year and the royalty payments from this one track alone are now though to exceed $100m.
And now it’s time for a quick game of Guess The Artist…
Our mystery artist stands at No.44 in the all-time U.K. singles chart, with sales of around 6.4 million singles. The artist in question was born in Cambridge, but is sadly no longer with us. Half Taffy, half German; on the father’s side a descendant of the Protestant theologian Martin Luther – widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in Western culture and Christian history; on the mother’s side, descended from the bloodline of Spanish royalty.
Grandchild of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Max Born, who, along with Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, laid the foundations of Quantum Mechanics and empirical cat bothering. Our mystery artist’s father was the MI5 officer who took Rudolf Hess into custody during the second World War and was also deeply involved with the Enigma project at Bletchley Park.
Now be honest – that’s not a bad family tree by any standards. Unfortunately, our mystery artist seriously blotted their genealogical copy book by being third cousin to that most tedious of tedious left wing “comedians” – Ben Elton.
A successful star of stage and screen, with over 100 million records sold, our artist remains one of the best-selling music artists of all time. A four-time Grammy Award winner, whose career included 30 hit singles in the U.K., a string of Gold and Platinum albums worldwide and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. We are of course talking about Australia’s hottest pop babe (sorry Kylie): Olivia Newton John.
Cue the world’s oldest teenagers…
In at No.43, with around 6.6m singles sold in the U.K., are Birmingham’s UB40. Named after an unemployment benefit form, I’m sorry to say this band were a bit of a disappointment for me. I really enjoyed their first three albums and they seemed to be growing and developing really well, both as songwriters and performers, with each passing album.
UB40’s early sound was a wonderful magpie assembly of ska, reggae, rocksteady, lovers rock and dub. Unfortunately, their 4th album, Labour of love, was a very lazy album of unimaginative covers that sold about a gazillion copies worldwide and made them very rich international stars. I suspect the lessons from this adventure were not lost on the lads: minimum effort, maximum results. From that point on (IMHO) UB40 have been in cruise control, with only the occasional decent track here and there.
Nevertheless, UB40 are one of the most commercially successful reggae acts of all time, with over 50 hit singles and global record sales now well in excess of 70 million.
At No.42, with around 6.7m singles sold in the U.K. and over 200 million records sold worldwide, we find the “Queen of the Power Ballad” and best-selling Canadian recording artist of all time: Celine Dion.
She is also the best-selling French-language artist of all time and one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. She is currently ranked as the sixth most successful female artist in the history, as one of the highest-grossing touring artists in history, is only the second female artist to accumulate US$1 billion in concert revenue and, according to Forbes, was the world’s highest-paid female musician for big chunks of the late-90s and early noughties.
To be quite honest, I find her stuff to be somewhat overwrought and she is definitely not my cup of tea. Frankly, if I was given the choice of sitting through one of her concerts or sucking on the applicator nozzle of a recently used tube of Preparation H that was owned by a syphilitic rent boy with pustular anal polyps, I would need to give the matter careful consideration before reaching a decision. However, I guess it takes all sorts and her massive and sustained international success clearly demonstrates the futility of my position, so please feel free to click play if you dare.
In at No.41 and our final entry for tonight, pop pickers, we find yet another of the Midlands’ seemingly endless run of pop and rock exports from the sensational ’70s: The mighty Slade with around 6.8m singles sold in the U.K.
Formed in 1966, Slade rose to fame in the early ’70s glam rock era, which was no mean feat considering they looked more like a bunch of brickies’ hod-carriers that glam-rock pop stars.
Their releases have spent a total of 315 weeks in the U.K. charts and they have earned 24 top 30 U.K. hit singles, with most coming in their most popular period between 1971 and 1976. Six of their singles made No.1, three reached No.2 and two peaked at No.3. No other U.K. act of the period enjoyed such consistently high chart placings in the U.K. and this feat is the closest any group has come to matching the Beatles’ incredible record of 22 Top 10 records in a single decade.
Slade sold more singles in the U.K. than any other group of the 1970s. In 1973 alone, Merry Xmas Everybody sold over one million copies – and it’s still selling now. Slade were a sensational live act and IMHO Noddy Holder possessed one of the finest voices in rock.
Anyway, that’s yer lot for this week’s edition of Fabulously Flamboyant Friday. We shall continue our countdown in part three of this series, but for the moment it’s TTFN Puffins – Good night, and may your Frog go with you. Not ‘arf.
Featured Image: Birchflow, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
© Ivory Cutlery 2024
