What is the biggest UK city to have never produced a number one single?
As much as other places around the country have plenty to offer to the rich musical heritage of the UK, they’ll often complain that others tend to pretend that London is the epicentre of our cultural output.
This isn’t exactly a lie, as a disproportionate amount of artists hail from our nation’s capital, and when it comes to chart-topping acts, there are more artists and bands from London who have made it to number one in the UK. Given how close being in London puts you to a large number of the opportunities that lead to international fame, this is hardly a surprising statistic, and gives credence to the idea that the capital does, in fact, rule over all other cities.
That doesn’t mean that there aren’t other major cities in the UK who have had their fair share of success, with Liverpool having produced far more than just The Beatles and Gerry and the Pacemakers, Manchester being known for Oasis, New Order and plenty more chart-toppers and Sheffield being home to the likes of dominant forces like The Human League, Arctic Monkeys and Joe Cocker. Music doesn’t simply end when you leave London; it continues to thrive, and these are major examples.
Some smaller places that one might not expect to be on the international map can also claim to have scored number one hits as well. For example, the Suffolk town of Ipswich may well be happy that Ed Sheeran has brought their town more attention, but at the same time, they’re receiving attention for the fact that their most famous son is Ed Sheeran, so their success is something of a double-edged sword.
The musical makeup of the UK is broad, but there are some cities in the country that don’t tend to have the same levels of success, and some that have failed to register a hit altogether. You might think that Bristol would have achieved more than just a solitary number one artist in Russ Conway, who topped the charts twice in 1959 with ‘Side Saddle’ and ‘Roulette’, and similarly, Stoke-on-Trent only has Robbie Williams to offer, even if he was incredibly successful.
But what’s the biggest place in the UK that has never managed to produce an act that has made it to the top of the UK charts, and why exactly has it failed to achieve what Grimsby and Swindon were inexplicably able to do?
The biggest UK city to have never produced a number one
Out of the way from all of the major cultural centres of the country, Devon’s largest city, Plymouth, is the largest place in the UK to have never managed to have a hit, and despite boasting a population of over 300,000 people, none of them has ever managed to make much of an impression on the UK charts.
Save for composers such as Stanley Bate and Ron Goodwin, and avant-garde guitarists like Bob Downes and Keith Rowe, there haven’t been many notable musicians to even hail from Plymouth, with very few of these ever likely to find their way climbing the charts in the first place. Even when you travel to nearby Devon towns like Totnes, you’ll find acts like Metronomy and Muse only hail from just up the road in Teignmouth, but neither of them has ever managed to top the charts in the UK either.
If the tiny Somerset town of Nailsea can have a number one, then why can’t Plymouth? Devon is a culturally rich part of the UK, but sadly for Plymouth, very few of their musicians have made it to the big time or achieved any sense of notoriety, and it seems unlikely that there will be a sudden influx of internationally famous acts emerging from the city in the near future.
