The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Taylor Richard

The book takes 45 chart toppers and writes their story. Themusic, the lyrics, the artists, producers and writers are all discussed, aswell as any side or back stories to do with the single. For example, when andhow “Release Me” by Engelbert Humperdinck kept “Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields”by The Beatles off the top spot in 1967, is discussed in Chapter 4. Anotherexample of a “you could not make it up” back story might be the that the writerof “Grandad”, by Clive Dunn from 1971and a light novelty No. 1 song, was alsothe bass player on Lou Reed’s hit single “Walk On The Wildside” a heavy weightdose of art rock with dubious lyrics, which came out in November 1972. Perhapsyou could not get too more contrasting songs for Herbie Flowers to be involvedin.    I picked 45 singles, as that was the rpm speed of a typical7 inches vinyl single in the 1960s. With regard to time span I took one No. 1single per year between 1964 and 2006, that would be 43 songs and I added intwo bonus tracks to make 45. This was when Top Of The Pops was running on BBCTV and seemed an appropriated year span for the book. I wanted to mix up the No.1 singles, not just to get thebest selling or most popular song of a particular year. I chose pop songs,novelty songs, children’s songs and all time classics to have a range of mixedup No. 1s. This is hopefully a particular unique selling point of the book,where I compare and contrast
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