The track that annnounced Radiohead to most of the world.

Granted, it’s not the cheeriest of songs, but it still has a certain something.

(I must only have heard radio edits before as I don’t remember the [repeated] swear word.)

This became one of my elder son’s favourite songs when it was released. (He was somewhat precocious about liking music.) It is a great joyful piece of pop.

I had heard the song myself but it was some time before I realised what the band’s name was and made the connection to To Kill a Mockingbird.

The Norman Cook remix of Cornershop’s Brimful of Asha which got to number one in the UK in 1998.

Still a joyful sound.

About ten weeks ago I noted the death of Wayne Fontana and featured (along with his later solo hit Pamela, Pamela) Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, a top five song when he was with the Mindbenders. Except the way Fontana enunciated the lyric it sounded more like this song’s title. The first – and biggest – UK hit for the band Crash Test Dummies. This was around the time when my eldest son, not yet in his teens, was getting into music seriously. Ah, memories.

This was always going to be a hit: it just has so many hooks. Once heard never forgotten.

The band’s name (apparently an abbreviation of Epsom Mad Funkers) always made me think of voltage (emf, or electromotive force, is measured in the same unit – volts. Oh, the joys of a scientific training.)

Not that you would necessarily have thought that Tom Jones would have taken it up for his own shows.

Here’s the man himself singing with the band (after a wee chat with two of them.)

There’s something about this I just like. Perhaps it’s the mandolin. Or maybe the lyric. Or that it actually ends.

Whatever, it’s a great pop song.

James formed in the 1980s but didn’t trouble the upper reaches of the UK charts till the 1990s.

This was one of the good lady’s favourites from that time.

A bit of “Hey Nonny Nonny” this week. Not from the middle ages but from 1994.

(The oboe is a wee bit reminiscent of Jethro Tull’s Coronach.)

A two-for-one offer today as these songs were released as a double A-side to become Pulp’s second number two hit in a row (after Common People.)

This first song caused a rumpus, with press comment claiming it was pro-drugs, which lead singer Jarvis Cocker said was a misinterpretation. I must say I agree with him. Even on first hearing the song the claim seemed to me to be ludicrous.

Mis-Shapes wasn’t so controversial. There’s a James Bond film chord sequence in the refrain though.

The one that broke Gray in the UK as far as singles were concerned. I remember watching him playing his set (I think at Glastonbury) that year and introducing this by saying, “I suppose it’s time we played our hit.”