LISTEN: Louis Walsh's Greatest Pop Songs Ever

The new issue of Hot Press is a bona fide pop extravaganza, so it seemed fitting that we would enlist Ireland's own svengali of the genre, manager supreme and X Factor judge Louis Walsh, to choose the 10 numbers he feels are the Greatest Pop Songs Of All Time...
'Summer Wine' – Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood
A cinematic duet that captured the dark psychedelic magic of the '60s.

'Love Grows' – Edison Lighthouse

A song, by Tony Macaulay and Barry Mason, so good that a band formed just to play it.
A one hit wonder, but what a wonder.

'God Only Knows' – The Beach Boys
Brian Wilson wanted to write a "teenage symphony to God". This finds him at his most heavenly.

'To Love Somebody' – The Bee Gees
A slice of gorgeous blue-eyed soul from the ace Aussie songwriters a full decade before disco.

'Everlasting Love' – The Love Affair
Originally recorded in Motown style by Robert Knight, The Love Affair went on to top the UK Singles Chart with their definitive version a year later.

'...Baby One More Time' – Britney Spears
The global smash that encapsulated pre-millenium pop and introduced a 16-year-old Britney to the world, controversial lyrics and all.

'Dancing Queen' – ABBA
Melancholic, totally melodic: this found the Swedish hit machine at the peak of their powers.

'Back For Good' – Take That
They came back last decade bigger and better than ever but 'Back For Good', one of the original line-up's final singles in the '90s, remains Gary Barlow's crowning achievement.

'In Dreams' – Roy Orbison
No chorus to speak of, a strange, ever-changing structure and the most astonishing voice in popular music. Rendered terrifying after David Lynch used it in Blue Velvet.

'Starman' – David Bowie
Otherworldly in every sense, when Bowie played this as Ziggy on Top Of The Pops, complete with orange hair and mismatched eyes, everything changed.