Bizarre facts

A persistent story says that Michael Jackson slept in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to age more slowly. The photos of him in such a chamber reached the public through the gossip press, and the story is linked to his burns during a Pepsi shoot, after which a hospital received such a chamber. Jackson is said to have called the story 'completely made up'; according to the same article, the photos were leaked to promote Captain EO. That he really slept in it has not been confirmed.

Van Halen's contract contained a clause that no brown M&M's were allowed in the dressing room, on pain of the show being forfeited with full payment. David Lee Roth wrote in his book Crazy from the Heat that it was a test: if there was a brown one after all, the band knew the organisers had not read the technical requirements properly and checked the entire set-up.

On 20 January 1982, Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off a bat during a concert in Des Moines (Iowa). He later told David Letterman he thought it was a rubber toy. After the show he went to hospital for a series of rabies shots. Whether the bat was dead or still alive depends on the source.

Phil Collins performed at Live Aid in both London and Philadelphia on 13 July 1985. After his performance at Wembley he took Concorde to be in America in time.

During a court case at the High Court in London, it emerged that Elton John spent £293,000 on flowers. The source article gives no period.

Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys had a sandbox built in the dining room of his house in the Hollywood Hills, with his grand piano in the middle of roughly eight tonnes of sand. It was meant to give him a beach feeling while writing. A piano tuner found sand in the piano and called it 'an unforgivable assault on a precious instrument'. The story comes from the book Curious Little Stories by James Picco, as quoted by KCRW.

In 1993, on his 35th birthday, Prince announced that from then on he would use a symbol instead of his name: the Love Symbol. It was a protest against his Warner Bros. contract; Warner had registered his name as a trademark. He used the symbol until his contract with Warner expired in 1996. In the Top 2000 he appears under three names: Prince, Prince & The Revolution and Prince & The New Power Generation.

Cat Stevens converted to Islam on 23 December 1977 and took the name Yusuf Islam in 1978. In 1979 he auctioned his guitars for charity and in 1980 he sold almost all of his music equipment. He only returned in 2006, with a pop album. In the Top 2000 he is still listed as Cat Stevens: 'Morning Has Broken' appeared in it 27 times.

Terence Trent D'Arby officially took the name Sananda Maitreya in 2001, although he had begun distancing himself from his old name in 1995. He later said he did it 'to survive' and called it 'that or death', during his struggle with post-traumatic stress. In the Top 2000 he is still listed under his old name: 'Sign Your Name' 10 times, 'Dance Little Sister' once.

The first Queen albums proudly stated that the complex sound came from guitar, piano, bass, drums and voices, without synthesizers. The Game (1980) was the first album with synthesizers in the credits, on 'Play the Game', 'Rock It (Prime Jive)' and 'Another One Bites the Dust'.

In February 2024, according to Variety, Sony Music bought half of the Michael Jackson estate's share in the music publisher Mijac Music, for 600 million dollars; the rights were then valued at more than 1.2 billion dollars. At the exchange rate of 16 September 2026 (1.1537 dollars per euro) that is about 520 million euros. An iPhone 18 Pro (256 GB) costs 1,479 euros in the Netherlands: that is more than 351,000 iPhones, for that one deal alone. A worked example, not a valuation of his fortune.

The Zombies split up after a final gig in December 1967, four months before their album 'Odessey and Oracle' came out; the spelling 'Odessey' was also a mistake by the sleeve designer. 'Time Of The Season' only became a US hit in March 1969, when the band no longer existed. Promoters then sent out on tour fake versions of The Zombies that passed themselves off as the real band. The song appeared in 16 editions of the Top 2000, with No. 710 as its highest position.

'In The Year 2525' was, according to Wikipedia, recorded in a studio on a cow pasture in Odessa (Texas), with producer Tommy Allsup, who in 1959 lost his seat on Buddy Holly's plane on a coin toss. In 1969 the song spent six weeks at No. 1 in the American chart and three weeks in England, but the duo never had another hit on both sides of the ocean. In the Top 2000 it appeared in 20 editions (1999 to 2018), with No. 410 as its highest position.

After watching a gospel song by Porter Wagoner on TV, Norman Greenbaum figured he could do that too, even though he knew nothing about gospel. He says he wrote the lyrics to 'Spirit In The Sky' in a quarter of an hour, even though he is Jewish and the song is about Jesus. The fuzz guitar comes from a Fender Telecaster with a fuzz circuit running on a nearly empty 9-volt battery inside the guitar. His later records sold poorly; in the 1980s he worked as a sous chef and kitchen manager in restaurants. The song appeared in 9 editions of the Top 2000 (1999 to 2008 inclusive).

Saxophonist Raphael Ravenscroft reportedly received £27 for the famous solo in 'Baker Street'. He later said he took the riff largely from an old blues melody; Gerry Rafferty denied that and said: 'It was my line, I sang it to him.' After the end of Stealers Wheel, Rafferty was barred from releasing anything for about three years because of a contract dispute. The story that the broadcaster Bob Holness played the saxophone was a joke from an NME parody in the 1980s, yet it was widely repeated. The song appeared in all 27 editions of the Top 2000, with No. 298 as its highest position.

Ray Dorset says he wrote 'In The Summertime' in about ten minutes. The recording was only about two minutes long. Producer Barry Murray therefore played the band's track twice in a row, with a slightly different mix for the second half, and added a motorbike sound in the middle. No recording of a motorbike could be found, so the sound engineer rode a Triumph sports car past the studio while the producer held the microphone. The song appeared in 8 editions of the Top 2000 (1999 to 2008 inclusive).

The song is an English adaptation of 'Le Moribond' by Jacques Brel. Terry Jacks says the Beach Boys asked him to produce their recordings for 'Surf's Up' and that they tried the song in 1970, but the session went badly. Mike Love later called their version 'wimpy' and 'the wrong song for us'; that recording only appeared in 2021 on the compilation 'Feel Flows'. Jacks says he changed the lyrics because the original was too macabre for him, and then released his own version, which reached No. 1 in 1974 in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom. In the Top 2000 it appeared in 4 editions (1999 to 2005).

Steven Greenberg wrote and produced 'Funkytown' by Lipps Inc. with Cynthia Johnson on vocals. There are two music videos: in one, a woman who is not named lip-syncs to her voice; in the other, Doris D, who represented Lipps Inc. in the Netherlands and West Germany. Johnson says on her own website that she was never asked to appear in a Funkytown video. The song appeared in 6 editions of the Top 2000 (1999 to 2004 inclusive).

Los Bravos was formed in Madrid in 1965 from two pop groups, Los Sonor from Madrid and The Runaways from Mallorca. Singer Mike Kogel was born in Berlin, bassist Bruce Game was originally called Behrouz Ghaemi and comes from Qazvin in Iran, and some Englishmen played in the band too. 'Black Is Black' was written by three Englishmen in their studio in Kent, and reached No. 1 in Canada: the first Spanish group to do so. In the Top 2000 it appeared in 9 editions (1999 to 2008).

Georg Kajanus of Sailor built his own 'nickelodeon', an instrument made of pianos, synthesizers and a glockenspiel, so that the four band members on stage could play the acoustic arrangements from the studio. Besides the nickelodeon, band members also played accordion, marimba, calliope and xylophone. Sailor is in the Top 2000 with, among others, 'Sailor' (13 editions).

Jan Akkerman says that 'Hocus Pocus' was a parody of themselves. In the solo verses Thijs van Leer yodels, scats and whistles, and plays organ, accordion and flute. In 1971 the song did not chart outside the Netherlands; only after a performance on The Old Grey Whistle Test did it reach No. 20 in England in January 1973, and it became No. 9 in the American Billboard Hot 100. In the Top 2000 it appears in all 27 editions, with No. 206 as its highest position.

'Crazy' appears in the chart with five different artists: Aerosmith, Gnarls Barkley, Icehouse, Patsy Cline and Seal.

The longest title in the chart is 'San Francisco (Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers In Your Hair)' by Scott McKenzie, at 57 characters. The shortest have two characters: '19', '99', 'As', 'Du', 'If' and 'Pa'.

In 2005, Katie Melua jumped from position 1926 to 72 with 'The Closest Thing To Crazy'. Pearl Jam did the same with 'Alive': from 1870 to 49 in 2009. And in 2007, Jan Smit climbed from 1855 to 131 with 'Als De Morgen Is Gekomen'.

In 2003, 'Rose Garden' by Lynn Anderson fell from position 228 to 1974. Alicia Keys' 'Empire State Of Mind (Part 2)' went from 129 to 1773 in 2015.

'Dolce Vita' by Ryan Paris was in the chart in 2000, was missing for 20 editions after that and came back in 2021. 'Just The Two Of Us' (Grover Washington jr. & Bill Withers) was away for 19 editions, 'Rasputin' by Boney M for 18.

On 326 occasions, a song held exactly the same position as the year before.

There are 62 songs with a number in the title, such as '1999' (Prince), '1979' (The Smashing Pumpkins), '1948' (Gerard Cox), '2000 Miles' (The Pretenders), '2000 Light Years From Home' (The Rolling Stones) and 'New York Mining Disaster 1941' (Bee Gees).

Of 27 editions, 'Bohemian Rhapsody' was No. 1 in 22 and No. 2 in five. On average the song sits at position 1.2.

On 343 occasions, the chart contained a song released in the same year as the edition. The year with the most: 2012, with 37 songs from that year.

In 1999, the songs in the Top 2000 were on average 23.7 years old (edition year minus release year). In 2025 that was 32.7 years. The rise was not steady every year: in 2009 the average age fell from 29.8 to 27.5 years.