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Credit: Far Out / NASA / Uwe Conrad
When you have to put Ed Sheeran and Lad Baby in the same bracket as sharing a nugget of chart history, you can’t shake the feeling that something must have gone severely wrong.
And yet, here it is, still unfortunately the truth. Amid the decades upon decades that the charts have existed, the thousands of songs that have gone to number one and the illustrious artists behind them, Sheeran and Lad Baby do criminally share an exclusive space among a chart elite who have managed to pull off a certain feat.
That is, of course, having a song that went to number one for two different artists within the space of the same year. If you want to get really technical about it, or if you, justifiably, hate Sheeran and Lad Baby and want to find a way to boot them off the list, you could argue that they were an exception.
Sheeran went to number one with his Elton John collaboration ‘Merry Christmas’ in 2021, which was then parodied by Lad Baby, with the original pair unforgivably joining them for his version, ‘Sausage Rolls for Everyone’. So it was the same song, but different titles, therefore helping the argument that they shouldn’t qualify. I know, we’re clutching at straws here.
But sausage rolls aside, it does bear to be seen that two different artists hitting the top spot with the same song, in the same year, is a pretty rare occurrence, and certainly not one that happens all that often in the 21st century. To find the most frequent examples, you have to travel a hell of a long way back in chart history, to a time when corny Christmas hits and terrible collaborations were nothing but a fever dream.
What other times did artists chart at number one with the same song in the same year?
It was way back in the 1950s, unsurprisingly, when the charts had first launched, and when the most events of artists going to number one for the same tune within 12 months happened. There was no sense of illusion about it; the mantra at that time was that if one person had found success, others had to replicate it, hence the reason for so many doubled-up cover songs.
The song ‘Answer Me’ was the leader in this regard, being released by both David Whitfield and Frankie Laine over the span of 1953. The latter has also separately been responsible for the same song going to number one more than once, but in the case of ‘I Believe’, it didn’t reappear at the top until Robson and Jerome’s version in 1995.
The other examples of the era followed in quick succession, with ‘Cherry Pink (And Apple Blossom Wine)’ heading to number one in 1955 for both Pérez Prado and Eddie Calvert, and then ‘Singing the Blues’, going to the top for Guy Mitchell and Tommy Steele in 1957. After that, you wouldn’t find the next example until 2004, when the well-remembered Eamon and Frankee both shot the song ‘Fuck It (I Don’t Want You Back)’ to number one.
All in all, it’s a rare chart feat but also a very mixed bag, and probably for the best that artists have stopped the trend of replicating each other’s songs so soon after their original release. Sure, it was an integral part of how the charts launched back in the ‘50s, but when Sheeran and Lad Baby are coming up behind, it’s better left as a relic of the past.
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