Official Top 40 Best-Selling Songs of 1995

1995 was the year an enduring pop classic finally got its due to become the bestseller of the year: Unchained Melody.

The cover of the popular Robson & Jerome track – composed of actors / singers Robson Green and Jerome Flynn – spent seven weeks at No. 1 in May / June and sold 1.39 million copies to be the best. seller from 1995, according to Official Charts Company data. The single was a double A-side release with another cover, White Cliffs Of Dover, and ranks as the second best-selling debut single in the UK.

As discussed in Channel 5’s new series, Britain’s biggest hits of the 90s, Unchained Melody was written in 1955 and released by many artists that year alone – including Jimmy Young, Liberace, Al Hibbler and The Baxter – and recorded by hundreds of artists since. See all the versions of Unchained Melody that have been listed in the UK here.

Robson & Jerome’s version of the track – recorded and first performed in their Soldier Soldier television series – was based on the 1965 version of the Righteous Brothers, which changed the melody of the final verse and largely established itself as the version song standard.

Building on their huge success, Robson & Jerome landed a second number 1 in November, with a double-sided AI Believe / Up On The Roof and placed third in the year-end leaderboard with 835,000 copies sold. Check out the full history of the duo’s official charts here.

The second British bestseller of 1995 was Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise (882k). The track, which samples Stevie Wonder’s Pastime Paradise, spent two weeks at the top, propelled to the top thanks to its link to Michelle Pfeiffer’s film Dangerous Minds.

The Top 5 bestsellers of the year are completed by Take That’s Number 1 over four weeks and the international Back For Good smash (721k) at 4, and Celine Dion’s Think Twice (696k) at 5. The power ballad was released in October. 1994 and eventually climbed to number 1 the following February, scoring seven weeks at the top.

MORE: Official Top 40 Best-Selling Songs of 1994

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson’s Earth Song – the 1995 Christmas No.1 – finished sixth with 630,000 sales, while another big top of the charts, Simply Red’s Fairground, was seventh with 609,000.

1995 saw the rise of Britpop, led by Oasis, which scored three end-of-year Top 40 entries: Wonderwall at 10 (527k), Roll With It at 21 (345k) and Some Might Say at 34 (260k). The group lost the “Battle of Britpop” for number 1 with Roll With It to Blur’s Country House in August of the same year, which ranks 12th with 486,000 sales.

Official Top 40 Best-Selling Singles of 1995

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