The Guardian Top 100 UK No. 1 singles

Their manufactured rule is only one entry per artist, so only one Beatles No. 1 can be on its way.

The keyboard heaves a sigh of relief

Only *gasp* one week to go.....

The G's concise write-ups of the most recent 10. We all can't wait for the final 5. Amirite???

15 Jerry Lee Lewis – Great Balls of Fire (1957)
"Jerry Lee still sounds more lascivious than almost anyone. The sensations simply spill out of him – not only his voice but also his piano playing, too, his right hand sliding down the keys in exhalations of delight. It was the devil’s music, but Great Balls of Fire still sounds like an act of God."

14 Kate Bush – Wuthering Heights (1978)
"The piano gently heralds the arrival of this haunted tale of lost love and longing, then that tight, high melody reels you in. It loops and lilts, ascending, descending, as Bush’s vocal urges the story on, like Catherine striding across the moors. Wuthering Heights turned Bush into a pop star, the rules of which she continues to bend to her own will: her individuality was set in stone from the very beginning."

13 Frankie Goes to Hollywood – Relax (1984)
"With not only its flagrant innuendo, but its wide-open synths, and swooning, psychedelic disco structure, the song was a complete wildcard – and the band performing it even more so. At a pivotal, deeply conservative time in Britain’s history, their crowning glory was what they brought out of the shadows and thrust into the light."

12 Sinéad O’Connor – Nothing Compares 2 U (1990)
"By drawing out the emotional weight that eluded its creator, O’Connor fashioned one of the all-time great cover versions. Time has only cemented Nothing Compares 2 U’s place in the pop pantheon – three decades on, this haunting, heart-wrenching evocation of the grief of lost love remains peerless."

11 The Beach Boys – Good Vibrations (1966)
"Good Vibrations was at once the mumbled inarticulacy and heightened feelings of love, but also the sound of a culture changing – almost in real time. In this collision of sound and sentiment, Wilson and his bandmates succeeded in capturing the moment when everything we thought we knew about pop songs dissolved."

10 Marvin Gaye – Heard It Through the Grapevine (1968)
"Here, Gaye would establish himself as the bad boy of Motown, both a figurehead for rising anti-Vietnam sentiment and archetype of the socially conscious songwriter. With I Heard It Through the Grapevine, we find him stepping out into his independence, all potential buoyed on by the force of his first creation."

9 Abba – Dancing Queen (1976)
"It takes 18 seconds for Dancing Queen to drop into one of the greatest moments in pop. It speaks volumes that the 18 seconds preceding it are pretty wonderful too: that song bursting into life on that impossibly joyous piano glissando, before eight bars of sparkling, effortless mid-tempo pop. Dancing Queen reminds us that having the time of our lives is something that’s always there, and that’s always possible."

8 The Prodigy – Firestarter (1996)
"Firestarter proved that the Prodigy was a squirming, sweating, flesh-bound beast – the very opposite of the futuristic “braindance” coming from the electronic vanguard. It was pure boiling animus, doused in petrol and set off to ruin someone’s birthday party.

7 The Human League – Don’t You Want Me (1981)
"Don’t You Want Me stands as a shining example of what can happen when a bunch of relative amateurs with a point to prove and a keen aesthetic eye get down to work. And after all, part of the charm of the Human League and the moment they encapsulated, the experimentalism of post-punk meeting the new possibilities of electronic music technology, is that it was so refreshingly carefree, the sound of synth-pop coming in from the cold."

6 Michael Jackson – Billie Jean (1983)
"Billie Jean reeks with the paranoia that came to dominate Jackson’s career. It is a hunted, haunted song about a paternity claim, which forsakes the lushness of his earlier work for stark, neurotic future-funk. While Thriller’s title track is cartoonishly scary, Billie Jean is authentically scared."