Category: Did you know?

Last week I covered the 1950s, 60s and 70s where there were only 14 UK number ones where the title was a question. This week it’s 1980 to the present and there are nearly double, here’s the list.

I’ll do this over two weeks, but in the 1950s, 60s and 70s there were only 14 UK number ones where the title was a question. Not all of them have a question mark, but, nonetheless, they are a question. Here is the list.

Obviously, not covering every charting record label, but here is a list of the first UK charting single of various labels.

Here is a list of 20 singers who died in a different country from which they were born.

Here is a list of 20 acts who took their name from a film/TV show title or a character from it.

When Elvis Presley’s mother first heard Gene Vincent’s Be-Bop-A-Lula, she mistakenly thought it was her son’s latest single.

When Ian Curtis from Joy Division hung himself in 1980 he was listening to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot.

When Rupert Holmes wrote Escape (The Pina Colada Song), he originally wrote it as ‘If you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain’.

British singer Kenny Lynch was the first artist to cover a Beatles song when he recorded Misery in early 1963 but it failed to chart. He later wrote Cilla Black’s Love’s Just A Broken Heart and The Small Faces’ Sha-La-Le-La-Lee.

At Amy Winehouse’s, the last song played was Carole King’s So Far Away.

New York newspaper and radio commentator Walter Winchell first coined the term disc jockey in 1934 for radio announcer Martin Block.

The first song known to have used a multi-track recording technique was How High the Moon by Les Paul in 1951.

Steven Tyler of Aerosmith will not allow anyone to refer to him as Steve and David Gilmour of Pink Floyd will not answer to Dave.

Adam Ant changed his name from Stuart Goddard after realising who an insect-related moniker worked for The Beatles.

John Denver was an avid flyer and sadly died in 1997 when his plane crashed, but in 1961, his father briefly held the world speed record in his B-58 bomber.

The songwriter Barbara Campbell, who wrote Only Sixteen and Wonderful World was actually a pseudonym for the collective of Lou Adler, Sam Cooke and Herb Alpert! The name is actually Sam Cooke’s wife’s name.

Paul McCartney’s inspiration to write Ebony and Ivory came after hearing Spike Milligan say black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony folks.