Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray

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

1989 : We Didn't Start The Fire - Billy Joel

Another interesting one - it's undoubtedly a cheesy track, but it's an impressive cheesy track nonetheless.  I will, however, be surprised if the video hasn't somewhat dated - surprisingly, I don't remember it at all but I'm imagining the verses being cheesy montages and Billy jumping around dancing during the chorus.

Actually, it is 4:01 of cheesy but it's pretty well done cheese - the verses are a family traversing through time in their kitchen (in line with the song) as an un-aging Billy hangs around in the background and the chorus is him singing in front of some fire - do you see what they did there?  It's weird that I didn't remember it at all though.

Wikipedia has LOADS on the song because "its fast-paced lyrics include brief references to 118 significant political, cultural, scientific, and sporting events between 1949 (the year of Joel's birth) and 1989" and Wikipedia isn't going to pass up the opportunity to list them all now, is it?  And it makes it all very clear how heavily biased the song is in terms of the 50s and 60s - loads of those years have references to seven events.  It doesn't actually have a lot more in there other than saying that Billy wasn't overly impressed with the song's melody - and I have to say he does have a point, not that it stopped it being wildly successful with it getting to #7 over here but #1 in the US.

Wikipedia lists several parodies and rewritten versions, but no cover versions at all - it doesn't feel like a song that many people would bother covering.  secondhandsongs.com only lists 23, which is far and away the lowest number we've seen so far and the only artist I recognised in that list was Michael Hasselhoff - it's not great, but it could be a lot worse.  YouTube offers up our old friend Leo Moracchioli with his metal covers - it's fine but not really all that different.

I certainly wouldn't give this track the year but I'm interested to see what the competition is like - I'm expecting some rubbish at the top of the year-end chart, but some decent enough tracks elsewhere.  Looking at the year-end chart, it's actually an odd mix of cool and very much not cool, with the top five being Black Box's "Ride On Time", Jive Bunny's "Swing The Mood", The Bangles' "Eternal Flame", Jason Donovan's "Too Many Broken Hearts" and Soul II Soul's "Back To Life" - out of that lot, I'd give it to Soul II Soul's very cool track,  

Other tracks that jump out of the charts for me are Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy", Mike & The Mechanics' "The Living Years" (I love this track), Marc Almond & Gene Pitney's "Something's Gotta Hold Of My Heart", Roachford's "Cuddly Toy" (very big at uni because they played there - and no-one ever played there!), Michael Ball's "Love Changes Everything" (not a cool track, but still a good track), Sam Brown's "Stop" (she played uni too!), Texas's "I Don't Want A Lover", Madonna's "Like A Prayer" (I remember THAT video!), "Cherish" and "Express Yourself" (one of my favourites of hers), Paula Abdul's "Straight Up", Transvision Vamp's "Baby I Don't Care", Queen's "I Want It All", Roxette's "The Look", Jason Donovan's "Sealed With A Kiss" (sigh), Kylie Minogue's "Hand On Your Heart" (double sigh), Guns'N'Roses "Sweet Child O' Mine", The Beautiful South's "Song For Whoever" (a very clever song), Shakespears Sister's "You're History", Tears For Fears' "Sowing The Seeds Of Love", Technotronic's "Pump Up The Jam", Lisa Stansfield's "All Around The World", Martika's "I Feel The Earth Move" and Phil Collins's "Another Day In Paradise".  An interesting mix of genres this year and there are some cool tracks in there (and some not quite so cool).

Heading over the Atlantic, the top five is, well, how can we put this, "interesting".  The top selling single of the year is, quite obviously, Chicago's "Look Away" - it got to the dizzy heights of #77 over here.  The rest of the top five were Bobby Brown's "My Prerogative" (a bad song), Poison's "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" (CHEESE!), Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" and Janet Jackson's "Miss You Much" - not a great selection.  There's also not a great selection in the rest of the charts, but it does come up with Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting", B-52s "Love Shack" (which wasn't a hit in the UK until '90), Tone Loc's "Funky Cold Medina" (#13 in the UK) and REM's "Stand" (#48 in the UK) - an eclectic mix and no mistake.

I think Billy has come out with some truly classic tracks, but this really isn't one of them and I'm totally unclear how he took the year- but, having said that, I'm not sure who I would give it to.  In the grand scheme of things, it feels like Madonna probably deserved a year (which she doesn't get) and people could do worse than any of her tracks from this year - but in terms of cool tracks from the year, I think anything would struggle to beat Soul II Soul's "Back To Life" and I'd also be happy enough if Black Box's "Ride On Time" took it.  But what I think makes no difference and Billy takes the year, so I gotta get over it.  Which I suspect I'll probably manage.

1988 - Fine, but not a winner for me
1990 - A track I didn't know!