{"id":439839,"date":"2026-02-22T15:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439839\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T15:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T15:55:11","slug":"the-absolute-worst-number-one-song-of-the-entire-1960s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/439839\/","title":{"rendered":"The absolute worst number one song of the entire 1960s"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"What<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Billboard Charts \/ Immo Wegmann)<\/p>\n

Sun 22 February 2026 2:00, UK <\/p>\n

If you saw the hit supernatural rom-com Ghost at the cinema way back in 1990, you might recall how it helped The Righteous Brothers\u2019 1965 version of \u2018Unchained Melody\u2019 return to the pop<\/a> charts, thanks to the famous scene in which Patrick Swayze\u2019s Sam and Demi Moore\u2019s Molly get extra sensual making pottery together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, that wasn\u2019t the only hit single from \u201865 to feature prominently in that film. After Sam gets killed and becomes a ghost (spoiler alert), he discovers that he can communicate with a previously phoney psychic named Oda Mae Brown, played by Whoopi Goldberg, and wants her to help him reconnect with Molly and investigate his own murder. <\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t want to get involved, so, as his last resort, Sam decides that he\u2019ll have to be as annoying as possible, infuriatingly obnoxious, in order to get the psychic\u2019s assistance, and toward that end, he starts singing \u2018I\u2019m Henry VIII, I Am\u2019 at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night, as Oda Mae is trying to sleep. <\/p>\n

The ploy works, I suppose, because \u2018I\u2019m Henry VIII, I Am\u2019 was essentially written for the purpose of being obnoxious. While most Americans came to know the song when Herman\u2019s Hermits<\/a> made it an extremely bizarre number one hit in the States in the summer of 1965, sandwiched between \u2018(I Can\u2019t Get No) Satisfaction\u2019 and \u2018I Got You Babe\u2019, the tune actually has its origins way back in the British music hall days of the 1910s, when songwriters Fred Murray and RP Weston created it as one of the signature songs of the comedic cockney performer Harry Champion.<\/p>\n

In the original version, the song\u2019s title is spelt out as \u2018I\u2019m Henery the Eighth, I Am\u2019, leaning into the cockney accent. That vocal delivery was maintained in the song\u2019s 1961 revival by the singer Joe Brown, and again in Herman\u2019s Hermits\u2019 cover four years later, who changed the spelling of the title to \u2018Henry\u2019, perhaps because they\u2019d decided to release the song as a single in America, and not in the UK, a seemingly backwards idea that clearly paid off in the end. Americans hadn\u2019t heard the Joe Brown version, let alone the old Harry Champion version, so it came across as something completely novel and appealingly Dickensian in the midst of the British invasion.<\/p>\n

Herman\u2019s Hermits were also still riding high off their first big US hit, \u2018Mrs Brown, You\u2019ve Got a Lovely Daughter\u2019, which went to number one earlier in 1965. This gave them a built-in audience, mostly of screaming young girls, who were willing to race out and buy a novelty record about a 16th century king and his latest bride: \u201cI\u2019m \u2018enery the Eighth I am \/ \u2018enery the Eighth I am, I am \/ I got married to the widow next door \/ She\u2019s been married seven times before\u201d.<\/p>\n

Famously, singer Peter Noone runs through each verse \u201csame as the first\u201d, and the whole song is over and done in less than two minutes. It\u2019s a remarkably batshit record for a little girl somewhere in Oklahoma to be singing along to, but this was the rapidly changing world that pop music had helped create.<\/p>\n

In fairness to \u2018I am Henry VIII\u2019, the Hermits\u2019 performance of the song was both tongue-in-cheek and cheeky, and the rapid-fire guitar on the record was a legit influence on the Ramones<\/a> as they harnessed their sound a decade later. Still, as number one hits go, it\u2019s hard to find another throwaway quite on this level during one of the most fruitful periods in pop history.<\/p>\n

Just look at 1965 alone, when the US Billboard was topped by the likes of The Temptations\u2019 \u2018My Girl\u2019, The Beatles\u2019 \u2018Yesterday\u2019, The Byrds\u2019 \u2018Turn Turn Turn\u2019, and The Supremes\u2019 \u2018Stop in the Name of Love\u2019. Competition was tough, and \u2018enery the Eighth\u2019 was a bit of a silly dud that cut its way to the front of the queue for one week. More power to \u2018em, but this was still, perhaps, the worst number one of the decade.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Billboard Charts \/ Immo Wegmann) Sun 22 February 2026 2:00, UK If you saw…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19405,4622,96,51500,128,160184,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-439839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1960s","tag-charts","tag-entertainment","tag-hermanu2019s-hermits","tag-music","tag-number-ones","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439839","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=439839"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439839\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=439839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=439839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=439839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}