All too many of the winners have fizzled rather than dominated the pop charts.
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Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top Ten is on BBC Four on Friday 16 November 21:25 GMT.
Vee-Jay's records were crossing over into the pop charts, but the label could not seem to capitalize on its success.
The song reached the pop charts in the United Kingdom and the United States when Judy Collins released her version in 1971.
She first attracted mainstream attention in 1981, when "O Superman, " a hypnotic 11-minute work, crept to the No. 2 spot on the U.K. pop charts.
Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top 10 will trace the history of the chart and feature contributions from past Radio 1 DJs and pop legends.
He continued to have sporadic hits in the '70s and '80s, including "Rise, " a disco-flavored instrumental work that topped the Billboard pop charts for two weeks in 1979.
The result of that chance meeting is that Kim agreed to stand in for Madonna, and within weeks the song was at the top of the pop charts in Europe.
It was the first rap group to have a Top 10 album on the pop charts, the first to have a gold and platinum album, and the first nominated for a Grammy.
And, as in other parts of the world, certain aspects of hip-hop culture have made their way onto Chinese billboards and pop charts, as well as into Chinese theme songs and television advertising.
The singles "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff" took this disco-rock fusion to the top of the pop charts, while the slow-dance "Dim All the Lights" revealed more of Donna Summer's personality than her earlier hits.
That "horn" is the trumpet with which Mr. Alpert climbed the pop charts first with "The Lonely Bull, " the garage recording he made in 1962 after hearing the sounds of a Mexican bullfight, followed by a string of singles in the '60s with his band, the Tijuana Brass.
Why, as genre after genre rise and fall from the charts, does pop music remain a constant in the top 40?
In the album charts, Madonna denied 90s pop stars Take That's Never Forget - The Ultimate Collection the top spot.
Jon Hein, the creator of the Jumptheshark.com Web site -- which charts the rise and fall of TV shows and other pop culture -- says "The Simpsons" is by far the most popular topic on his Web site, and there have been rumblings that the show has leaped the fish, or at least started turning into chum.
Even though these songs were written long before Billboard charts and Top 40, Sting says he's treating them like pop songs.
Page landed on the charts 111 times, and her blend of genres made her a traditional-pop icon.
And it worked well for the launch of a British pop group called the Arctic Monkeys, whose first record went to the top of the British charts in 2005 largely thanks to being marketed by fans on the internet.
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