As I noted in this piece on the Projects Menu (“A UK #1 for every year”) I can sing and play at least one UK chart-topping song from every year between 1954 and 2013. This repertoire developed from over 20 years’ worth of learning the odd song here and there and finding that many of the tunes that I played most often had reached #1, including “The wonder of you”, “Always on my mind” and “What a wonderful world”. Back in 2012 I set out to fill in the gaps to end up with an unbroken run of songs incorporating at least one for every year of my life. I then went further, all the way back to 1954, many years before I was born, but haven’t added anything to the list since “Get Lucky” in 2013. If you ever see me sat at a piano I will invite you to name any year in that range, paraphrasing “With a little help from my friends” (a UK #1 in 1968, 1988 and 2004). Instead of “Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song”, it’s “Give me a year and I’ll sing you a song”.

A simple, literal way to build up a repertoire like this would be to learn one song for each year, 60 in total, but I allow the same song to cover multiple years, if multiple versions have made it to #1. This is the case with “Unchained Melody”, for instance, which made it to the top four times (in 1955, 1990, 1995 and 2002). In fact I play other songs for those last three years (“Sacrifice”, “Up on the roof” and “Suspicious minds”) but could play “Unchained Melody” for any or all of them if I choose. Similarly, “Do they know it’s Christmas?” made it to #1 four times (in 1984, 1989, 2004 and 2014, a different version for each release). It was the Christmas #1 on the first three occasions, and stayed at the top through to the following year, so technically it has been #1 in seven different years. “Bohemian Rhapsody” was #1 at Christmas in 1975 and again when the original recording was re-released in 1991, and stayed there into the New Year both times. It’s the only recording of a song that has been #1 in four different calendar years. Neither of these last two songs is in my repertoire, yet.

Last weekend, while listening to the charts from this week in 1972 on Paul Gambaccini’s “Pick of the Pops”, I began trying to work out how few songs you would need to cover all the years from 1954 to 2013, but not allowing the Christmas #1s to cover two different calendar years. I didn’t find the answer, but have spent rather a long time trying to work out how many songs have been #1 in different years, either in multiple versions, or when the original was re-released (which happened with “My Sweet Lord” in 2002, and three Elvis singles in 2005, as well as “Bohemian Rhapsody”). This information may be out there on the web already, but I couldn’t find it in the format I wanted, so have worked on a few spreadsheets to come up with data that I can manipulate.

The answer, for now, is 39 songs in 83 releases, as shown in the tables below, but there are some grey areas, noted at the end of this piece. Before those lists of songs, artists and years, here are some observations.

• The first song to reach #1 in at least two different versions was “Young Love” (Tab Hunter in 1957 and Donny Osmond in 1973).
• The most recent duplicate chart-topper is “Bridge over troubled water” (Simon & Garfunkel in 1970 and most recently Artists for Grenfell in 2017).
• As noted above, two songs have been #1 in four different versions: “Unchained Melody” and “Do they know it’s Christmas?”.
• A further four songs have been #1 in three different versions: “You’ll never walk alone”, “Spirit in the sky”, “With a little help from my friends” and “Bridge over troubled water”. (For the latter I am including the 2015 release by the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir, “A bridge over you”, which incorporated the Simon & Garfunkel song with Coldplay’s “Fix You”.)
• In 14 different years there were no duplicates, i.e. no chart-toppers which also reached #1 in a different year, either as a re-release or in a different version: 1956, 1961, 1964, 1966, 1976, 1977, 1982, 1992, 1997, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2016.
• “One Night” / “I got stung” by Elvis Presley is the only example of a double A sided release reaching #1 twice. It counts here as the 30th example of a title getting to #1 more than once, but it contains two different songs.

Simple chronological list, 1953-2017

In order of when a second version, or re-release, made it to #1

Alphabetically by song

Grey Areas

I have included “A bridge over you”, the 2015 release by the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir, as a version of “Bridge over troubled water”.

I have not included the following, which feature significant elements of previous #1s:

• “Right round” (Flo Rida featuring Kesha, 2009), which uses words and melody from “You spin me round (like a record)” (Dead or Alive, 1985);
• “I’ll be missing you” (Puff Daddy & Faith Evans, 1997), which uses the melody from “Every breath you take (Police, 1983).