Widely regarded as one of the finest one-hit wonders ever, ‘Spirit in the Sky’ was recently voted as among the greatest 500 songs of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. We’ve also tended to be rather fond of the underdog and the one hit wonder so it’s hardly surprising that in the punkish year of 1978 Jilted John should win the nation’s heart with his eponymous anthem to doomed nerds ticking every box. Greg Kelley (2020), "Colonel Bogey's Parade of Parody", Chapter 1 in Unruly Audience, Utah State University Press, pp. I’m not a prude, but this isn’t something I’ve never had to consider in my seven hundred and seventeen previous posts.

It was written by comedy duo Gareth Hale and Norman Pace who, despite being TV mainstays throughout the 1990s, somehow never managed to become a part of my childhood. They continued to proliferate in the early years of the 20th century, some rising to be among the biggest hits of the era. That Cigarette)" topped the Billboard best-sellers chart for six weeks and the country music chart for 16 weeks in 1947 and 1948. During his fame as Jilted John, Fellows had first appeared on Coronation Street in a very brief cameo role in which he meets Gail, single at the time, on the street in Manchester. Gershon went on to become a pioneer of electronic music through his discovery of the Moog synthesizer.s " Move It On Over", his first hit song, has some humor and novelty elements (about a man having to share the doghouse when his lover kicks him out of the house), but contemporaries (among them Jerry Rivers) disputed this and noted that many men had been faced with eviction under similar circumstances. Instrumentals may not have been the biggest musical influence in the 1980s, but there were some notable exceptions. Consequently, with no artiste available to promote them, both the excellent debut album and the single stiffed (the LP ended up selling around 15,000 units). The first was 1,837 Seconds of Humour in 1962, the latest Encyclopaedia of Recorded Comedy Music in 2012. If you include remixes, people have listened to "Combine Harvester (Brand New Key)" by The Wurzels – a song that clambered to number 1 in the UK charts and hung on there for two whole weeks and has been played on radio shows and at weddings for the last 40 years – more than a million times on Spotify.

You need a strong stomach to listen to it even now: the mix of banjos, fiddles and heavy synths makes me feel very tense, something the horse and gunshot sound effects don’t do much to alleviate, while the aggressive chanting makes me wonder if hell is actually being locked in an eternal barn dance. Certain movies have musical moments that help progress the plot, while others include songs for comedic effect or to offer a weird cameo for a famous celebrity.

Not sure if Rod was influenced by samba or sambuca when this official single was put together, but it never really caught on. As with all novelty singles, I approach this next number one with trepidation, my finger hovering reluctantly over the play button. It’s also an odd number one for this moment in time, wedged in among the dance tracks and ballads, one that might have been a hit in any era, that is as likely to get your granny dancing as it is your five-year-old nephew. Written by vocalist and guitarist Doug Fieger in just 15 minutes in homage to his close friend Sharona Alperin, The Knack’s infectious debut single ‘My Sharona’ peaked at Number 6 in the UK in 1979.