Sir Cliff Richard, aka the 'Peter Pan of Pop' and his youthful looks have long fascinated the media, but what about his music?

Alongside Elvis Presley, Cliff holds the record for achieving a UK chart single across seven decades from the 1950s to the 2010s, also achieving a No.1 hit in each decade from 1950 to 1990, so he's clearly still selling records, but whether he's still rockin' would appear to depend on which newspaper you read.

Sir Cliff Richard, 80 Years Young

In 2021, Sir Cliff Richard celebrated his 80th birthday with The Great 80 Tour. Each venue was a sell-out, every performance received rave reviews, and the DVD recording went to No.1 in the UK DVD music chart, so where does he get his energy from? Well, Cliff has often said that age is a state of mind adding:

I still think that, regardless of your age, what you need to project is the love of what you do and project energy and fun. For me, that's not difficult to do. If I sing 'Move It' on stage my first record I ever made I still feel 18!

Still a Calendar Pin-Up

Not only do Cliff's concert tickets sell like hotcakes, but also his calendar, with his 2017 offering topping the celebrity calendar sales chart on Amazon and total sales reaching around 1.5 million over the years.

That's an astonishing gauge of his ongoing popularity, yet some radio stations have taken Cliff off their playlists, considering him to be 'too old' and his music too outdated for today's listeners.

Sir Cliff Richard was banned from the radio!

In 1998, Chris Evans stated he'd never play another Cliff song on his breakfast show at Virgin Radio; in 2004, Tony Blackburn was suspended from Classic Gold Digital for going against the station's policy of not playing Cliff Richard records, and in 2011, Absolute Radio '60s announced they wouldn't be playing Cliff's songs as they didn't fit with the cool sound the station was aiming to create, adding

Timeless acts of the decade that remain relevant today are The Beatles, The Stones, The Doors and The Who, not Sir Cliff.

Sir Cliff Richard the British Elvis?

Cliff Richard and The Drifters (the early name of The Shadows) released their first record in 1958. 'Move It' peaked at No.2 in the UK singles chart and it has since been credited by many, including John Lennon and Adam Faith, as the first British rock’n’roll record.

Cliff was 18 in 1958 and his singing career started in a skiffle band. The name change from Harry Webb to Cliff Richard was inspired at the time by American rock and roll star Little Richard, but his early performances as lead singer with The Drifters were very much inspired by Elvis Presley.

In interviews, Cliff has said,

The first time I heard Elvis it was absolutely inspirational because he was so different to everything else‚ I've always said that if there had been no Elvis, there would have been no Cliff Richard.

Move It

Cliff Richard was initially marketed as a rebellious rock and roller. British rock and roll were struggling to make its mark before ‘Move It’ hit the charts.

The early days of rock and roll in the UK was a different world from what was happening across the pond. The British didn’t have a Little Richard or a Jerry Lee Lewis and we certainly didn’t have an Elvis equivalent.

British rock’n’roll before ‘Move it’ was asinine watered-down copies of the American offering, groups like Tony Crombie and His Rockets were pedestrian to see the least. There was simply no electricity and definitely no rebellion.

Whilst Tommy Steele had tried to become the first British rock’n’roll star his records still resided in the ‘novelty’ bin.

After dragging himself out of the skiffle world Cliff Richard was an Elvis disciple and wasn’t about to compromise. Luckily for British music the Sun-tinged rocker, ‘Move it’ was to take the British rock’n’roll scene kicking and screaming into the new hip scene.

On Sept 1958, Jack Good was to unleash his highly stylised Cliff onto the unsuspecting British viewership of Oh Boy! and the rest is history. British rock’n’roll was off and running.

The Movies

Following the Elvis film blueprint, Cliff Richard decided to take his chances on celluloid. Luckily, he wasn’t as bad as many had feared and for the post-war teen population, largely girls, a Cliff Richard film was a great proposition.

Serious Charge

Billed as ‘a biting serious film, the kind that adults can appreciate’, it tackled some pressing issues of the day like teenage delinquency and teenage pregnancy.

Directed by Terrence Young the film was not an obvious screen debut for a young British rock’n’roller but the youth liked it and the critics weren’t too scornful of Cliff Richard’s big screen debut. Also, the film delivered to the British public the biggest-selling single of 1959, Living Doll.  Terence Young went on to direct two of the best James Bond films of the 1960s Dr No and From Russia with Love.

Expresso Bongo

The 1959 vehicle for Cliff Richard playing opposite respected British leading man Laurence Harvey.

A music business satire that saw Cliff take on the role of Bongo Bert. As terrible as it sounds it was in fact a not-so-bad outing compared to some films Elvis was to produce in the early ‘60s.

Whilst Cliff’s performance is tolerable Laurence Harvey’s cockney wide boy agent routine is a joy to behold and worth the admission fee alone.

Summer Holiday

Probably the best-known of all his films, Cliff Richard’s joyful Summer Holiday is every teenager’s dream. Let’s take a double-decker bus and drive it across Europe.

Obviously, there’s much more to the premise than that but to be honest not that much more. Regardless, the hijinks and great support cast make the romp a pleasure from beginning to end. Shot in technicolour and with a decent string of songs Summer Holiday was a box office hit in 1963.

Surprisingly it still stands the test of time if you are willing to suspend belief and hitch a ride on the fun bus.

The Young Ones

Cliff Richard pulls together how to save his local youth club. Not the most original concept but again another hugely successful venture for the ever-easy on-the-eye cliff with his Shadows in the background. The Young Ones was the second biggest British box office hit of 1961.

The films were not just promotional vehicles for Cliff but also allowed The Shadows to become the biggest instrumental British band of the 1960s fuelling the British invasion of the US synonymous with the early 1960s.

Wonderful Life

The last of the quintet and probably the most ludicrous of all. Whilst you may not look to teen musical films for much cinematic credence you might at least expect something by way of a credible narrative. Sadly, not in this instance, imagine Benny Hill directing the Beatles in ‘Help’ then you might get a flavour of this mid-'60s nonsense.

The high points are The Shadows, again demonstrating why they were one of the best British acts on the scene with ‘Theme for Young Lovers’ and of course ‘On The Beach’.

This one should come with a warning sticker ‘Only for die-hard Cliff fans.’

Mid ‘60s Middle of the Road Pop

It was the arrival of Beatlemania in the '60s that began the change of image and the middle-of-the-road pop sound associated with Sir Cliff Richard today the sound that today's radio stations consider to be no longer relevant. Beat music and rock music sounded the death knell for the King of Pop, Cliff Richard.

Famed for his clean-cut, squeaky-clean image, Cliff has said,

I had a sort of spiritual adventure in the late'60s and it changed my life. It gave me a whole attitude that I liked and I enjoyed being what I was and so I didn't do what everyone else did. In a way, it made me kind of radical because I wasn't throwing television sets out the window and stuff like that.

Sir Cliff Richard, Making the Uncool Cool

Radio stations may consider Sir Cliff Richard to be uncool, but at the end of his 2017 UK tour, a review headline in The Telegraph read:

Cliff Richard wins over cynics and leaves his audience in tears.

The reviewer wrote,

I arrived as a cynical, 24-year-old hipster, ready to jeer at the prince of cheese and his blue-rinsed followers. I left as a Cliff convert.

To his generations of fans, Sir Cliff Richard is undoubtedly still reelin' and a-rockin' and will always be number one among all British rock and rollers. In his long career spanning seven decades, he has released 146 singles, achieved 14 UK No.1 hits, recorded 42 albums, sold over 250 million records worldwide, starred in 12 films, and won three Brit Awards and two Ivor Novello Awards. Making Cliff one of the most successful acts in British popular music of all time.

In UK chart history, only the Beatles and Elvis Presley have sold more singles than Cliff, and with 67 of them making the Top Ten, each generation has its own Cliff favourite. So, is Cliff still rockin'?

Perhaps the last word should go to music critic Tony Parsons who once said,

If you don't like at least some Cliff Richard, then you don't like pop music.

What are your top 3 Sir Cliff Richard songs? Let us know in the comments section below - we'd love to hear them!