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The 100 greatest singles  of all time: Our critic ranks all the classics from 1960s chart-toppers to new pop bangers... so does YOUR favourite song make the cut?


Pop classics, soulful ballads and 80s smash hits all feature in pop critic Tim De Lisle's pick of the 100 greatest singles. Read on to find out what to listen to this weekend and which song takes top spot...

A great cover version makes the song famous, which is what happened when Marc Almond and Dave Ball got hold of Gloria Jones’s half-forgotten Northern Soul floor-filler and turned it into a piece of charming sleaze. The story begins with McLean working as a paper boy in 1959, reading about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, and swells into an epic tale of lost innocence, packed with playful clues and pinpoint rhymes (‘drove a Chevy to the levee’). The music is gripping, with its plush sound, crisp hook and groggy guitar (caused by jet lag, according to Bowie’s co-writer Brian Eno: the guitarist, Robert Fripp, had just joined them in Berlin by taking a red-eye from New York).

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