How many covers have topped the UK charts?
As many artists will attest, playing covers is not as easy as it might seem.
When a cover is done well, you’ll often get an act delivering the song in a completely novel style, reinterpreting it in a way that feels both respectful to the original, but adds an extra sliver of personality and individuality. In other cases, it’s best when someone does a down-the-line cover and barely changes anything, because if a song is so perfect in the first place, why would you need to change anything about it?
However, it’s so easy to go disastrously wrong when covering someone else’s material, and if the song selection isn’t suited to your style, then you’re automatically setting yourself up for failure. Why on earth would someone with a baritone vocal range think it’s a good idea to cover Kate Bush and make zero effort to hit the high notes? I’ve seen someone pull off ‘Wuthering Heights’ before, and that’s because they absolutely fucking went for it. If you half-ass a song as dynamic as that, you deserve to fall flat.
The other way this can go wrong is when all life is drained from a song, and if you’re taking something that was originally a hit because of its vibrancy, then presenting the world with a sterile rework is only going to add you to the increasingly large heap of detritus – a cover version landfill, if you will.
Or is it? You might think that there’s absolutely zero worth in hearing an X Factor finalist pour more dirt on the grave of Leonard Cohen through excessive melismata, but for some reason, the Great British public – and I use ‘Great’ here facetiously with a touch of disdain – loves a cover of this ilk. They love hearing vapid warbling that tarnishes the work of legends, and they love when a comedian dicks around on a forgotten hit from yesterday for a charitable cause they couldn’t give a toss about. To put it bluntly, they love trash.
Understanding the whims of the UK’s record-buying habits has never been easy, considering how they’ve famously allowed Joe Dolce to keep Ultravox’s ‘Vienna’ off the top of the charts in one prominent example of their sins, but why are the inhabitants of our peculiar isles so obsessed with covers in particular, and just how many times have we managed to get a cover version to number one?
How many cover versions have topped the charts in the UK?
At the time of writing, there have been 1443 number one hits in the UK in total.
Going into writing this article, I would have predicted that covers would count for a meagre 5% of this figure, perhaps less, thinking that there has been a bounty of original material that has made it to the top of the charts. Maybe a modest 60 to 70 covers have hit number one – that sounds about right. To learn that since the UK charts first started in 1952, a total of 264 covers have been number one in the UK, is a staggering figure to comprehend.
However, upon further consideration, this isn’t quite as insane as it seems at first glance. You have to consider that in the early days of popular music, it was common for songs to be written and given out to multiple different recording artists at the same time, in the hopes that one of them would be able to transform it into a hit. This commonly led to the first recorded version being released to the general public, and multiple covers of it surfacing within a matter of months.
A prime example of this is the song ‘Singing the Blues’, which went to number one with recordings by two different artists in January 1957, with Guy Mitchell achieving the feat first, and Tommy Steele taking the spot only a week later. However, neither of these are the first recorded version of the song, and while Marty Robbins can claim to have got his interpretation out first, his recording didn’t even chart in the UK, meaning that both ‘covers’ were more popular.
This only scratches the surface of the country’s relationship with cover versions, though. Another common occurrence throughout chart history is for foreign-language hits to receive translations into English in order to broaden their accessibility on a global market. Examples of songs that have received English-language translations by different artists and have topped the charts are also predominantly from the 1950s, and include Eddie Calvert’s versions of ‘Oh Mein Papa’ (originally in German), and ‘Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)’ (originally in French).
While the early years of the charts were responsible for a significant portion of the chart-topping covers, with around 20% of the total arriving within the first 10 years of the charts being formed, that doesn’t mean that the obsession died down soon after.
The rise of talent shows in the early 21st century led to lots of covers being performed by the winners and finalists of competitions such as The X Factor and Pop Idol, with these artists often earning the coveted Christmas number one gong courtesy of a cover version. The prestige that comes with earning such a title often meant that there was often a rush for these artists to have a hit in time for the festive period, and choosing something that was familiar over an original song was more likely to assist artists in their quest to dominate Yuletide record sales and make an instant impact.
Does the UK have an obsession with cover versions?
Answering this question without a hint of subjectivity is difficult, as gauging whether the general public are always cognisant of the fact that a song is a cover can’t be measured accurately. Sifting through the full list, a larger portion of people are going to know that The Byrds’ ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ was originally recorded by Bob Dylan, but may not realise that The Walker Brothers’ ‘Make It Easy on Yourself’, which was sent to number one a month later, isn’t their song.
However, there are a number of statistics that suggest otherwise, and appear to show that we do indeed crave familiarity when we’re consuming music. Three different covers of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from the musical Carousel have reached number one in the UK, while The Beatles’ ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’ has been taken to the peak by Joe Cocker, Wet Wet Wet and Sam & Mark. ‘Unchained Melody’, perhaps the most covered song of all-time, has had four separate covers reach the top of the charts.
Everyone knows these songs, so why on earth would a cover of it by another high profile artist fail to reach the same heights? Even a crap version of it stands a chance to reach the top of the charts, because people who haven’t heard it are going to immediately be drawn in by a sense of intrigue as they wonder whether this alternative version of a beloved tune is going to stand up to the original.
Perhaps the most shocking statistic is that since 1952, the first year in chart history to not have a single cover version make its way to number one was 2016, meaning that the charts had been going for 64 years before they finally allowed original material to top the charts for an entire calendar year.
The one caveat to this factoid is that it also happens to be the year with the fewest unique number ones in chart history (excluding 1952, where the chart only ran for the last two months of the year), with only 10 different songs taking position at the top of the charts for the first time. Drake’s ‘One Dance’ remained at number one for 15 weeks throughout the summer, while Clean Bandit’s ‘Rockabye’ stayed there for nine weeks in the lead-up to Christmas, meaning that cover versions had little to no chance of taking top spot during the periods in which they’re most likely to garner success.
That said, the last cover to top the charts was LadBaby’s ‘Food Aid’, a (parodical) cover of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, which despite its intended message of goodwill, is one of the most inauspicious ways to end a longstanding relationship between the UK public and number one covers, with it having been almost three years since its success. 2023, 2024, and so far, 2025, have all failed to register a single cover at number one, which begs the question – are we finally done with lauding cover versions?
