Shortlist for Official Charts Pop Gem #72: Goodbyes

This week we celebrate swansongs and goodbyes – tunes about leaving or moving on, or the farewell singles of amazing pop acts.

Each week we ask you to nominate the songs you feel deserve a bit more attention – overlooked Pop Gems or former big hits that should be celebrated. This week’s theme? GOODBYES.

If Elton John is right about sorry being the hardest word, goodbye has to be a close second. We wanted tunes about leaving, moving on, or farewell singles from your favourite popstars. A literal swansong, if you like.

There was a lot of support for the more literal tunes out there – the word goodbye featured heavily. A few of you also spotted the opportunity to nominate songs that signalled the end of an era, like Queen’s The Show Must Go On, the last single to be released while frontman Freddie Mercury was still alive, and Never Forget, Take That’s final single featuring Robbie Williams. Well, for another decade or so anyway.

In the end, we got it down to 14 contenders. Check out our video playlist of all our finalists, plus the Spotify and Deezer playlists of every Pop Gem ever!

Here’s the shortlist – who are you backing?

ARTIST	TRACK	PEAK POSITION	YEAR
SATURDAYS	FOREVER IS OVER	2	2009
AMY WINEHOUSE	BACK TO BLACK	8	2007
JOJO	LEAVE (GET OUT)	2	2004
FIVE	CLOSER TO ME	4	2001
ATOMIC KITTEN	SEE YA	6	2000
WESTLIFE	SEASONS IN THE SUN	1	1999
HONEYZ	END OF THE LINE	5	1998
SPICE GIRLS	GOODBYE	1	1998
SARAH BRIGHTMAN & ANDREA BOCELLI	TIME TO SAY GOODBYE	2	1997
TAKE THAT	NEVER FORGET	1	1995
MARIAH CAREY & BOYZ II MEN	ONE SWEET DAY	6	1995
M PEOPLE	MOVING ON UP	2	1993
BANANARAMA	MOVIN' ON	24	1992
QUEEN	THE SHOW MUST GO ON	16	1991

Video playlist

Check out all 14 of our ultimate farewells. Warning: it’s totes emosh.

Every Pop Gem ever

Fancy reliving those perfect Pop Gems we already picked all over again? No worries, get your ears wrapped round these playlists on Spotify and Deezer. SLAY.

Spotify

Deezer

And the winner is…

All will be revealed on Saturday, when we announce our Pop Gem pick on Facebook and Twitter.