And what was it?
Do collaborations count?
I can’t decide. Should they?
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Like it’s probably Four Five Seconds if they do
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^this. There were the tracks with Idris Elba and Kanye/Rihanna that did pretty well.
His albums always sell well, too. McCartney III was a number 1 in the UK
Reckon purely solo you’re going back about 40 years.
Not sure if you’d count Hope of Deliverance (1993) as a hit, but it should have been.
A bit more recently, I think Jenny Wren (2005) got fairly decent radio play, but if you’re talking Umbrella-by-Rihanna standard of hits, I guess you’d have to go back to the early/mid 80s, something like We All Stand Together, Spies Like Us or No More Lonely Nights.
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Was he on Band Aid 2 - Do they know it’s Christmas in 2004?
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I don’t like the way you’d be 80 now if you were 40 in 1982.
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Disappointed to find there are no readily available images of him taking a hit from a bong
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Yeah, Band Aid 20. That’s technically his last big hit single, in the same way that Cliff Richards technically had three Christmas number ones in a row between 1988 and 1990.
He also had a charity number one with Ferry Cross the Mersey in 1989 for Hillsborough.
Dunno if this counts…
If not then you have to go back to Once Upon a Long Ago, which was Once Upon a Long Ago - 1987 to be precise. When you’d have been 45 if you were 40 in 1982.
Just listening to Jenny Wren, he sounds a bit like Guy Garvey crossed with Michael Head. It’s good.
Does Free As A Bird count?
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Computer says no
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Never thought of that!
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Maybe it does actually especially as he wrote the “whatever happened to” bit didn’t he?
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I had a memory from childhood that We All Stand Together was a hit one Christmas… just looked it up and it went to #3 in December 1984.
After that… well, if you rule out charity singles it doesn’t look like he had another top 10 single until FourFiveSeconds. Whoa!
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