40: The Adventures, “Broken Land” (no.20, 1988)

The video - all hands-on-keyboards and florid botanical imagery - is a little sub-Talk Talk, if we’re being honest, but “Broken Land” remains an oddly timeless (and, Celtic pipes and whistles aside, placeless) single: you could almost read it as a heartfelt, poetic riposte to the failings and iniquities of the Thatcher era, were it not being sung by a man recalling grinning Wet Wet Wet cheesemonger Marti Pellow.

41: Indeep, “Last Night a DJ Saved My Life” (no.13, 1983)

The glittering phoenix that rose from the ashes of the last days of disco. Never has a bassline sounded so much like a lifeline, rescuing both the singer from her early 80s ennui and - in the decades since - any party that appears to be petering out. Somewhat regrettable that in this TOTP clip, the DJ in question (who sounds on the record like Isaac Hayes) should so strongly resemble Noel Edmonds (“There ain’t a problem that I can’t fix/If you’re looking for a Radio One goody bag, and the chance to meet Smiley Miley”), but I guess it could be worse: when Mariah Carey performed her cover version in the 2001 flop Glitter, she was singing to former Surf Potatoes host Max Beesley (“There ain’t a problem that I can’t fix/If you’re making a rubbish film, and can’t afford Ewan McGregor”).

42: Breeders, “Cannonball EP” (no.40, 1993)

If not the greatest one-hit wonder of all time, then quite possibly the hippest - and such is the visceral impact of the title track that it almost doesn’t matter that the rest of the EP (a cover of Aerosmith’s “King of the Thighs”, for heaven’s sake!) was mere filler. It arrives bearing guitar riffs like engine revs: a few verses to get us up through the gears, and then it’s off, and practically unstoppable - well, at least until those naughty Soulwax chappies mashed it up with Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” a decade later. Yet, even as it dropped off the production line, “Cannonball” always was something of a cut-and-shut: one half Noo Yawk noise experiment, one half calculated pop hit, fusing those melodic girl-group “hey now”s and a seriously catchy bass riff to crashing guitars and wails of feedback. Entirely apt it should have only reached no.40 - too vital (too essential, damn it) to remain underground, this was a song both of the hit parade, and not quite of the charts.

43: Paul Davidson, “Midnight Rider” (no.10, 1975)

The Allman Brothers’ (considerably duller) original “Rider” never emerged as a single, so we have this cover by Jamaican reggae producer/engineer Davidson to thank for making so readily apparent the percussive thrill of making one’s way through the night on empty pockets and a full tank of gas. (Loving that harmonica, incidentally.) You can find a full stereo version here, though surely this is one of those overlooked 70s singles made to be heard on vinyl, each crackle and pop only contributing to the song’s romantic allure.

44: Danny Kaye, “Wonderful Copenhagen” (no.5, 1953)

Kaye’s only UK hit, yet (mostly) sung by another actor entirely in the film (1952’s Hans Christian Andersen) in which it was first featured. You’d never get anyone singing this about, say, Malmö. *ducks and runs*

45: LaTour, “People Are Still Having Sex” (no.15, 1991)

Chilly dance artefact from another era - one which gave us Government-sponsored AIDS adverts with falling tombstones, and suggested that even thinking about coitus might send you to an early grave. (As the lyric goes, “This safe thing’s not working”.) Oddly enough, LaTour has ploughed an altogether jollier furrow elsewhere: as a morning radio DJ and parody-songwriter (re-recording Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” as, ahem, “Puka”), and you’ve surely got to have a sense of humour to allow your breakout single to be critiqued by Beavis and Butthead (as Beavis puts it, “What people? On what days?”). No further LaTour offerings - not even his Michael Jackson parody “The Way You Make Me Squeal” - have charted since, although one of his tunes showed up on the soundtrack of 1992’s Basic Instinct - where people really were still having sex, and where the sex proved no less deadly.