"Heeee-re in my heart..."

Observant readers of The Pop Web will have noted our sister project "Every 1" which reviews and contextualises every UK number 1. In honour of this quest, we thought we would try and take on a connecting challenge which spans a huge swathe of the history of the UK number 1. The first UK number 1 was achieved by Al Martino with "Here In My Heart" in November 1953. 50 years later, this song was the UK number 1:



Christina Aguilera - Dirrty

Yes, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the UK number 1 was a song with a video featuring bare-knuckle boxing and all manner of hedonistic activity (interestingly, the video for Dirrty was only banned in Thailand after it was revealed that at one point in the video Christina was standing in front of a wall which contained grafiti advertising child prostitutes). Apart from the accidents of history which placed them at these milestones of the UK chart, what else connects these two?

Well... Al Martino, in addition to his singing career, also had a part in the Godfather as the singer Johnny Fontaine.

"Starring" alongside Al was none other than Diane Keaton. But before we hear the hundreds of voices of complaint, bear with us, we haven't turned into a "connect the movie star" blog, the good folks at imdb have already sorted that out for us. Diane Keaton, in addition to being an actress has also tried her hand at directing and crucially, made a brief foray into the world of the music video and directed this 80s classic:



As we've discussed elsewhere, we wouldn't want you to go away thinking that "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" is the unchallenged pinacle of Belinda Carlisle's career but, needs must, and this is the link that the chart web has provided. Belinda Carlisle's career was driven in part by the songwriting genius that is Rick Nowles who, in his time has wrote several absolute smashes (e.g. this, this and this). If that amazing collection of writing credits wasn't enough, he also co-wrote one of the strongest ballads for the Queen of Pop:



Power Of Goodbye by Madonna takes us on to our home stretch. In 2002, the stars (and their schedules) aligned and Madonna teamed up with Britney Spears on Me Against The Music



It's a shame really, you'd think with two of pop's most entertaining and compelling women on a record they'd be able to come up with something a little less... well... a little less "third single off the album", wouldn't you? Sadly, in the world of pop 1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2 so there you go. Anyway, you can probably see where we're going now, can't you? Yes. Well, if not, this picture should give it away...

Britney's career set off in the Mickey Mouse Club in 1993, as Christina Aguilera reached the end of her tenure (Justin Timberlake was also knocking around but forget about that for now). Christina and Britney's career have operated in remarkable parallel with one another in one sense (i.e. the "sense" of most tabloid media), and with completely no correlation in another (i.e. in an actual comparison of the two's chart career). The comparison between Britney and Christina may have been a little fair at the start of their career but as time has gone on, the two have actually traversed fairly discrete routes. In any event, that's an article for another day. The journey is complete. Number 1 at the start of year 1, and Number 1 at the start of year 50, united by The Pop Web.

Al Martino - Diane Keaton - Belinda Carlisle - Rick Knowles - Madonna - Britney Spears - Christina Aguilera

Oh, but before we forget, can we just emphasise that whatever else Christina has relased throughout her career, in our view she's never been much better than she was on this.