67: Bodyrox, “Yeah Yeah [remix]” (no.2, 2006)

We might save the debate about gratuitous nudity in music videos for another occasion. In the meantime, listen to what “Yeah Yeah” - not a Matt Bianco cover, thankfully - does to those synths (“bendy”, my muso friends call it; “downright perverse”, I’m saying), and watch as a mad part-Italian pyro who once worked alongside Donna Air negotiates between snaking cables and milky fluids to insist she could, in some way, re-educate us, then - like myself in any given nightclub - abandons her project of reform to douse the whole place in petrol: disco inferno encore. Wikipedia assures me “this version of the song was used during a breakdancing competition in the 2007 Jamie Kennedy film Kickin’ It Old School”. I have not seen this film. (Nor, I would venture, has anybody else, save perhaps Jamie Kennedy’s parents.)

68: Archies, “Sugar Sugar” (no.1, 1969)

(And yes, I suspect we’re due a Kids from Glee cover version any moment now.) There is a genre of pop specifically targeted at the sweet tooth of hypoglycaemics such as myself: see also Stephen “Tin Tin” Duffy’s “Icing on the Cake” and Mandy Moore’s still shamefully underrated “Candy” (a song that, had Britney recorded it, we’d all now regard as a pop classic along the lines of “Baby One More Time”). Urban legend insists this spin-off from the animated TV sitcom The Archie Show (based on Bob Montana’s Archie comics; Archie’s the one on lead guitar, if that helps) was originally offered to the Monkees by impresario Don Kirshner; Monkee Michael Nesmith - enraged by the song’s (to these ears, magnificent) childishness, the polar opposite of the new “mature” sound he’d been seeking - reportedly put his fist through a wall in response. So it went to the Archies, an entirely fictional act over which Kirshner could have complete creative control. Upon its initial release, “Sugar Sugar” was issued on cardboard records fans could cut out from the back of cereal boxes - a distribution method that sounds a good deal more charming than heading to Spotify. By the way: any kids watching the above clip, this is how you play the guitar.

69: Cherry Ghost, “People Help the People” (no.27, 2007)

A provisional one-hit wonder: after a long delay caused by label issues and the general Cowellification of the music business, the second album from this Bolton group named for a Wilco lyric finally hit record shops (or iTunes, as is the way of the world these days) in July 2010. This beautifully produced second single from the band’s debut album “Thirst for Romance” won the Ivor Novello for Best Contemporary Song in 2008, and perhaps owes some of its success to what we might call the Elbow effect: a growing fondness for keening Northern melancholia featuring cherishably atypical lyrical cadences, and piano chords that strike to the very depths of your being. If your heart doesn’t fracture even slightly during the line about “a thousand slowly dying sunsets”, then you simply don’t have one to be broken.

70: Sly Fox, “Let’s Go All the Way” (no.3, 1986)

I swear to God I saw this once, and if anyone can uncover the actual footage, my doubting and defensive memory banks will be eternally grateful. Somewhere in the middle of the BBC’s Music Live beanfeast of March 2000 - 24 hours of performances televised en direct from around the country - the coverage cut back from some item about plainsong singers in Yorkshire, or a live performance from Atomic Kitten or some such, to the studio, where - for a full five minutes - John Inverdale and Simon Callow (together at last!) aired their mutual admiration for this semi-forgotten U.S. duo’s only chart hit. Sly Fox - former Parliament member Gary “Mudbone” Cooper and jazz balladeer Michael Camacho - are a classic example of an act that ran out of ideas around the 3:40 mark of their debut single, a pop masterclass that, under the guise of saying something vital and relevant about Reagan’s America, actually says very little at all, albeit in a supremely tuneful manner. Callow was fucking LOVING it.

71: John Farnham, “You’re the Voice” (no.6, 1987)

“We’re all someone’s daughter/We’re all someone’s son/How long can we look at each other/Down the barrel of a gun?” Mm. If the UK charts weren’t being besieged by Aussie soap stars in the 1980s (such as this flamin’ galaah), they were playing host to a new wave of socially-minded Antipodean rock (hear also: Midnight Oil, of “Beds Are Burning” fame). Here are some Things I Didn’t Previously Know About John Farnham:

1) He was born in Dagenham, of all places, and moved to Australia as a child;
2) He became the Australian equivalent of Cliff Richard, by having a number one hit in five consecutive decades;
3) There is a monument to him in Melbourne - note the flowing bronze mullet;
4) Shortly before recording “You’re the Voice”, he turned down the chance to record the song that would later become Starship’s “We Built This City”.

Greatest use of “You’re the Voice” in pop culture? Not that episode of Home & Away where naughty Sally (Kate Ritchie) bunked off school to go and see her idol in concert, but this priceless montage from 2007’s underrated Andy Samberg vehicle Hot Rod - love those bagpipers.

72: DeBarge, “Rhythm of the Night” (no.4, 1985)

Oh look, it’s the American Five Star. Written by Diane Warren, and guaranteed to make even a seasoned party-pooper like myself want to hit Miami wearing an appallingly florid shirt of some description, “Rhythm of the Night” exists as a prime slice of 80s synergy: the breakout success from the soundtrack of Motown Films’ The Last Dragon (a.k.a. Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon), a post-Karate Kid martial arts movie starring one-time Prince squeeze Vanity that concerned a teenager attempting to master the special move known as “The Glow” (which makes it sounds awfully like a Ready Brek commercial). Amazingly, The Last Dragon - along, it seems, with every other 1980s movie that made anything more than $10 at the box office - has just been earmarked for a remake starring Samuel L. Jackson and Rihanna. Whatever: just as long as we don’t get the JLS cover version.