Abba Finally Top Annual Request Chart
Radio Brockley’s most requested act of 2025 has been announced, and for the first time in the request chart’s 41 year history, Abba finally reached the top of our chart – being the most requested artist of the year by patients at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital. It was a very tight race, with the lead changing hands several times in the last month, but Abba improved on their previous best of No.2 last year and have now made our chart for the last 33 consecutive years – a total only bettered by Queen (and equalled by Elvis Presley).
Just losing out on the top spot were The Beatles, who also get their best ever position on our chart at number two. Their previous best had been Number 3, in 2008 and 2010. Surely it’s only a matter of time before the “fab four” make our number one.
Queen remained in third place having previously become the first act ever to top our annual request chart for four consecutive years, and a fifth time in total (1992, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023). They have been on our annual chart every year since 1990, and have still never missed our Top 20 in that time.
Elvis Presley makes our Top 5 for the 10th year in a row, and finishes 4th for a fourth consecutive year. He’s been our annual number one three times before (2005, 2018 and 2019). He hasn’t missed the Top 20 since 1992.
Ed Sheeran rounded off the top five – falling from last year’s number one, meaning that yet again we have the “big five” artists in our top five for the 3rd year in a row.
The closest to breaking into our Top 5 was Taylor Swift who had her best year on our request chart since 2015. She was the most requested artist of the year on the Adolescent ward, and also on Rehab ward.
Bruno Mars had his highest position on our request chart since 2013 as he climbed back up to number 11.
There were four first-time appearances on our chart. Van Morrison amazingly had never appeared on our artist chart before but enters this year at Number 23. One place behind were the big surprise appearance of the year from 90s pop act D:Ream! And two current chart superstars made their request chart debut – Sabrina Carpenter (34) and Billie Eilish (35)
The chart was announced on Radio Brockley by Alan Joyce for his 34th year in a row, and live posts on Instagram were sent out by Macie Lewis.
Here’s the full Top 20.
MOST REQUESTED ARTISTS OF 2025
1 (2) Abba
2 (5) The Beatles
3 (3) Queen
4 (4) Elvis Presley
5 (1) Ed Sheeran
6 (11) Taylor Swift
7 (8) Elton John
8 (7) Coldplay
9 (12) Fleetwood Mac
10 (6) Eagles
11 (22) Bruno Mars
12 (re) Tina Turner
13 (9) Bob Marley and the Wailers
14 (re) Simon and Garfunkel
15 (re) Rolling Stones
16 (18) Michael Jackson
17 (19) Rod Stewart
18 (20) Whitney Houston
19 (30) Neil Diamond
20 (re) Bon Jovi