Spoiler alert! Next week, I’ll be having an article published on the site entitled The Top 10 Number Ten Singles Of The Past Ten Years. Whyso? Well, it obviously looks quite nice numerically. Number tens are also a godsend for the music trivia bore, because they can casually toss out questions like “So, what was Supergrass’ first top 10 hit?” and then laugh in the faces of whoever says it was “Alright”. In another way, number tens can be used as scapegoats by proper music types for keeping superior songs out of the top ten. Or they can be a source of unexpected joy for those that make it: going ‘top ten’ = crack open the bubbly!; going to #11 = “encouraging”.

So, to whet your appetite a bit for that, here’s three other #10’s that all came a bit too early to be included. There were others that I was considering, but then I rather forgot that I was doing this this week and so just pulled out the first three to come to mind. They’re all quite good, anyhow. So, prepare for th’edification:

Tanita Tikaram – Good Tradition, [entered at #10: July 1988, taken from the album Ancient Heart]

Y’know how, when people talk about the records their parents listened to, they always make it sound really cool and deep and stuff, like they were brought up in a veritable Wonka Factory of tuneful bliss? Well, I sense I might have gone that way had I not sat on my parents’ record player aged two. It broke, and from then on my early musical upbringing consisted of the top 40 on Sunday nights in the bath, Top Of The Pops, maybe The Chart Show on Saturday mornings every now and then (oh, how exotic the Inspiral Carpets seemed back then) and whatever tapes mum & dad had in the car. These tended to be Simon & Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, Carole King and Joe Cocker. However, only one artist fell into all the categories—step forth Ms Tikaram.

One could say she was a kind of proto-Katie Melua—hit the big time aged 18, came from a diverse background (mother from Borneo, father from Fiji, thus she was born and raised in… Basingstoke), top ten album, one top ten single, one top thirty single, then no hits thereafter. Then the precocity aspect—her voice was staggeringly deep and breathy, she sounded at least two or three times her age. Which Melua doesn’t, really, so we’ll end the comparisons there…

And this is her biggest hit, her only dalliance with the top ten. It’s got a slightly dodgy background that shoots for country but just comes out a bit Harvester ad, with some rather naff-sounding trumpets for company. Tanita doesn’t let it affect her, singing with a peculiar worldliness up front as the tune jaunts its way along in a mildly inappropriate fashion. Chances are you won’t really go for this much, but I quite like it, so nyeh.

(P.S. Odds are this was #10 when the eldest of my two younger brothers was born. He likes the Donnas now.)

[visit Tikaram’s website here, buy Ancient Heart here]

Divinyls– I Touch Myself, [entered at #10: May 1991, taken from the album Divinyls]

I was hoping I could find some kind of backstory as to how this became a hit, and more to the point how it turned out to be The Divinyls’ only entry in any UK chart. I thought it was something to do with the Kylie Minogue film The Delinquents, but it turns out that was just me being confused by Australian things that start with the letter D. Their official website (not a particularly recommended destination) isn’t much use either, since its ‘Bio’ section ends at the end of the eighties, two years before this came out. Basically, all I can find is something off Allmusic that says it had a controversial video with singer Chrissie Amphlett tied up and wearing fishnets. Thus, their only big international hit. Hmm.

But never mind, cos this is really, really ace. Radio guitar pop wiv a gurl and the gurl she is singing about wanking hurrr. The chorus has that miraculous spiralling ‘abowwwwt yew’ bit, that almost screams for the long-gloved arm-sweep like the backing singers in the fifties did. The song’s got this wondrous intensity about it, the tension fizzing like potassium as Amphlett builds herself up into a lather at the thought of the man, “I forget myself, I want you to remiiind me…” The desire so latent, the backing so tightly wound, the vocal so overcome—it’s practically impossible to imagine anyone doing this badly. Apart from Jet.

(P.S. Why didn’t The Divinyls actually have another hit? Any ideas in the comments box, ta…)

[despite William’s reservations, you can visit Divinyls’ website here and buy Divinyls here]

Chris Isaak– Wicked Game, [entered at #10: November 1990, taken from the album Heart Shaped World]

But this one here, this is it. The premise for the hitdom itself is improbable enough, going from unknown to a top 10 single off the back of… being on the soundtrack to a David Lynch film. And something this eerie going top 10…

Fuck it, you hear that intro? You know you hear that intro. The first sound and you’re there, the slide guitar… and then those drums, brushing quiet, smooth in the background, with a bass (a stand-up one—I don’t know why, but it just has to be) plucked, quietly, so cool it’s hardly there, but it’s there, just quiet and resigned, dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum, de-dum… and god, that’s not even the bit you notice. ‘Wicked Game’ feels like the loneliest thing in the world, echoes all around, Isaak and the guitar, the constant, tappy brushing of the drum, that bass man in the shadows at the back, lost in their own world, no gas for… well, just no gas at all. Somewhere far off, the backing singers murmur something you can’t quite make out, fading in and out of the chorus. And down the front, as those things happen in the back, Chris Isaak, so lonesome he’s almost forgotten how to be any other way, and doomed, so very, very doomed. The voice entre peur et volonté, the woman tears him in two— “I never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you… and I’d never dreamed that I knew somebody like you – no, Iiiiii don’t want to fall in love… no, Iiiiii don’t wanna fall in love… with you…” What’s he gon’ do? He don’t know. What’s he gon’ say? He ain’t sure. “What a wicked thing to say—you ‘never felt this way’—what a wicked thing to do—to make me dream of you, no Iiiii… don’t wanna fall in love…”

The guitar gently falls away, twanging softly down in the silence. “I never dreamed that I’d love somebody like you… and I never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you…” Finally, as the backing singers continue their murmur, he leaps, “No, Iiiiiiii…” into the black. And the epitaph— “Nobody… loves no-one.”

I’m probably gonna be listening to this all night now. Sleep well, kids.

[visit Isaak’s website here, buy Heart Shaped World here]

Note: This song are no longer available for download.