Can you hear me calling out your name?

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

1988 : Everywhere - Fleetwood Mac

FM's THIRD entry on the list and this is one I'd never have guessed, despite living through the time and remembering, it was, what's the word - oh yeah, everywhere.  It's not a bad track, but I'm suspecting there's gonna be a million tracks I'd pick over this as the winner for the year.  And I've got no clue what the video was like, so I'm expecting some total blandness...

Well, it's not quite bland, but it is obviously nonsense.  It seems to be something to do with a highwayman and some soldiers - the style reminded me very much of Toto's "Africa" with lots of meaningful looks and symbolism, but no real sense involved.  There's actually also a second official video featuring a live version - and that's really very inessential, I can assure you.

Wikipedia actually has very little on the song - it was written by Christine McVie, was the fifth single off Tango In The Night and the critics loved it ("bulletproof pop songwriting" said The Guardian).  It also tells me the video tells the story of "The Highwayman", a 1906 poem by Alfred Noyes (obviously!).  It did pretty well commercially, without necessarily being A-list material - #4 in the UK, #14 in the US and it also recharted in the UK in 2013 after 3 used it for an advert.

What Wikipedia does give us (for a change) is a shed load of cover versions - Moustache (an Australian duo - and they add absolutely nothing to the song), Niall Horan & Anne-Marie (a Children In Need single that I completely missed (nothing special, but worth watching for Anne-Marie's outfit), Chaka Khan (at least she does something different), Vampire Weekend (and it's very Vampire Weekend-ish) and West Of Eden (again, it's different).  secondhandsongs.com isn't able to give me any others, but YouTube pops up with Electric Six (surprisingly similar to the original), Marcia Griffiths (upping the reggae) and Angie McMahon (some interesting Billy Bragg-esque guitar on this).

Having listened to this track again, I actually thought it was less interesting than I remembered, so I'm really quite surprised it took the year - what is the competition like?  Ewwww - you're really not gonna like this.  The top five selling tracks in the UK were Cliff Richard's "Mistletoe And Wine" (what were people thinking?), Yazz's "The Only Way Is Up" (a fine track which has pretty much been forgotten about over the years), Kylie's "I Should Be So Lucky" (not her finest hour), Kylie & Jason's "Especially For You" (jeezus!) and Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" (cheesy, but fine - particularly given the competition).  Kylie has five tracks in the year-end top 50, Jason has two and even Angry Anderson gets involved - we really LURVED Neighbours back then!

Other tracks that leap out of the charts are Terence Trent d'Arby's "Sign Your Name", Bros's "When Will I Be Famous?", Morrisey's "Suedehead" and "Every Day Is Like Sunday" (back when he was merely an arse, as opposed to an utter arse), Vanessa Paradis's "Joe Le Taxi" (amusingly cheesy), The Primitives' "Crash" (a timeless classic), S-Express's "Theme From S-Express", Danny Wilson's "Mary's Prayer" (we don't hear this often enough), Fairground Attraction's "Perfect", Wet Wet Wet's "With A Little Help" (a useful pop quiz answer because it's Billy Bragg's only #1), Aztec Camera's "Somewhere In My Heart", The Timelord's "Doctorin' The Tardis" (The KLF in a different guise), All About Eve's "Martha's Harbour" (most famous for this, which I remember watching live), Yello's "The Race" (used unbelievably often since and it's still a cool track - "chick-a-chick-ahhhh"), Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry Be Happy", Art Of Noise's "Kiss" (the start of Tom becoming cool again), Deacon Blue's "Real Gone Kid", Phil Collins's "Two Hearts" (I like it, OK?) and Neneh Cherry's "Buffalo Stance" (I LOVE Neneh and think she doesn't get nearly enough credit for all she's done over the years).

A surprising number of the '88 US year-end chart were actually released in '87, but it does come up with a couple of zingers - Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine" (it only got to #24 in the UK in '88 which is why I missed it, but it got to #6 in '89) and Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" (no idea why I missed this one though!).

Looking at the list, there are a load of tracks that I prefer, but I'm not sure which one of them I'd call out as potential winners (maybe "Fast Car"?)  But, as we've established, it matters not one jot what I think - Fleetwood Mac took the year and I have to live with it (but giving them three years feels very generous of the record streaming public).

1987 - Good song, bad hair (again!)
1989 - Not his best track