3. Bryan Adams - "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You"

Or, "Is this what purgatory feels like?"

It’s a generally accepted truism that time goes slower when you’re younger. You know the clichés: summers that never end, the waiting for a special occasion that seems interminable, a whole year can feel like forever. Now imagine, as a young chart obsessive, a song that had been Number 1 for 5.9% of your lifetime.

That was what faced me in 1991. By the time “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” by Bryan Adams reached the final day of its record-breaking UK chart-topping run, it had been Number 1 for 112 of the 1,893 days I’d been alive. As a comparison, if today were your fortieth birthday, 5.9% of your life is over two years and four months.

No wonder I was beyond fed up with this damn song.

In a short space of time, I’d come to love the charts and what it represented, and was always excited to see whether last week’s top track would hold its position next time around. In those pre-Internet days, if you didn’t actually hear the charts going out live it could be tricky to find out what the exact chart positions of your favourites were. It would perhaps be in the Monday newspapers and probably mentioned on the radio news bulletins until Monday lunchtime. But if you missed those, you could be waiting for Top of the Pops on Thursday evening.

But the result was always the same. It was that song. Every. Single. Week.

I don’t think I’d ever disliked a song before, but this one was in my bad books on principle. It took the fun out of the charts and it just seemed unfair. Why should this song get to be Number 1 for the whole summer (and a decent portion of autumn, too) when other songs didn’t get a look-in?

At this point in my life — not that I had any inkling of this — the longest Number 1 run I’d been alive for was Black Box’s “Ride on Time”, which spent six weeks atop the charts in 1989. Bryan Adams was Number 1 for sixteen weeks. It’s a record that stands to this day, and one I hope is never broken for all our sakes.

“(Everything I Do) I Do It for You” falls into a weird sub-category of song (and not just because the title’s parentheses come at the beginning rather than the end) in that it was so ubiquitous and successful, it’s impossible to divorce it from its time and place. When was the last time you actually heard it? Do you know anyone who actually says they really like it? Plenty of people must have done, and I’d love to read an accredited psychological study of the people who, after fifteen weeks of this song having an iron grip over the British populace, decided that then was the ideal time to go to their high street record store and buy the single.

Nearly three years later, Wet Wet Wet hit Number 1 with their cover of The Troggs’ “Love is All Around.” Like Bryan Adams before them, their song was a film tie-in and seemed immovable at the chart summit. However, this time I was older, I had context and I had hard-won experience. I would excitedly count down the weeks, looking forward to the day when my nemesis was dethroned and there was a new record holder in town. I didn’t even particularly like the song, but it didn’t matter. I’d lived through the Age of Adams, and I couldn’t wait to finally know that 5.9% of my life hadn’t been in vain.

Wet Wet Wet fell a week short. Bryan Adams still has the record.

I’ve never forgiven him.

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What didn’t get to Number 1 because of this song?

Hoo boy, this is going to be quite the list.

• Heavy D and The Boyz - “Now That We’ve Found Love”

Aw, it’s a shame this never made it — this song’s good. Did you know Heavy D died aged only 44? I had no idea.

• Extreme - “More than Words”

Have you ever heard a less extreme song in your life?

• Right Said Fred - “I’m Too Sexy”

Okay, hear me out. This is campy and fun, and you’d still be saying you liked it if they hadn’t gone full Brexit. Weird that this never made it to Number 1 and the largely-forgotten “Deeply Dippy” did (a fact that might win you a pub quiz one day).

• Salt-N-Pepa - “Let’s Talk About Sex”

Can you imagine the moral panic if a trio of black women rapping a sex-positive anthem had made it to Number 1 in early 1990s Britain? At this point, the only hip-hop/rap Number 1 hits had been “Pump Up the Volume”, “Ice Ice Baby” and “Do the Bartman”. This sounds as good today as it ever did.

• The Scorpions - “Wind of Change”

The Scorpions. In the 1990s, I ask you. Had the British public gone power ballad mad?

• 2 Unlimited - “Get Ready for This”

Spoiler alert: 2 Unlimited will be featuring in a later post. I’m not even sorry.