Chart Watch Weekly - November 14th 2022
Platty Jubs!
Happy birthday then to the canonical British singles chart, the promotional activity of the last few weeks all converging on today, the 70th anniversary of the cover date of the New Musical Express which published the first Top 12 Hit Parade (which featured 15 records in all) and sent in motion a cultural juggernaut.
This is to gloss over slightly the rather haphazard nature of the way the first listings were put together (editor Percy Dickins phoning up 20 record shops in London and asking what their top discs were) and the fact that this NME-compiled list was an entirely different product to the one we now call the Official UK Singles chart. This is the historical descendant of the Record Retailer Top 50 which first appeared in March 1960 and upon which was not bestowed "official" status for another nine years.
In a way I feel a bit sorry for Music Week who are not part of the conversation despite originating the current product and remaining part owners of it for several decades. Alas, they are now reduced to the status of the primary print licensee, despite no longer actually publishing a weekly physical print edition, subscribers to the now monthly print magazine granted access to a weekly digital "chart pack" containing all the relevant weekly data. So it seems only appropriate to acknowledge their contribution to history here. The Official Chart was the Record Retailer/Music Week Top 75 and they remained part of the partnership for over 30 years.
Fun fact: for a period in the 1970s Music Week was owned by Billboard Publications meaning the same company were publishing the UK and US music charts.
The final flourish was the release this morning of two tables of data. The first, the fully up to date list of the biggest-selling singles of all time, a table which has by and large ground to a halt with the arrival of the streaming era. Although the presence of Happy by Pharrell Williams at No.8 is a pleasant new surprise.
The second was the interesting and most currently relevant one, the table of the most-streamed tracks of all time. Yes, this is indeed based for now on just eight years of data, but it will only grow in relevance over time. And for now the big news is that the man you see above, Lewis Capaldi, has the biggest one of all with Someone You Loved out in front with 561.8m streams, closely followed by a brace of Ed Sheeran tracks Shape Of You and Perfect which are the only others to have in excess of 500m plays to their name.
However there's an interesting footnote to this. Those streaming numbers almost certainly only include YouTube plays from 2018, the point at which they were included in singles chart compilation. But that means the two Sheeran tracks from 2017 are actually at a disadvantage, the vast bulk of their video plays having come before the data was gathered. Meaning they probably should be in first place after all. But I suspect that is a wrinkle which will be lost to history in time.
Other media coverage has included this BBC piece tracking some famous chart stories (although pleasingly giving the Sex Pistols myth a swerve):
The UK's singles chart turns 70 this week - but the countdown has not always gone smoothly.
My friend Ian Jones did some amazing research for the Press Association, tracking the way the construction of pop music has changed over the years, with technology having killed off the key change, brought back the ending and reduced the length of the average pop hit by a quarter. I assisted with quotes in the original wire copy, prompting a Mail journalist to approach me for some expansion. Meaning it all got a very nice writeup here:
But there always has to be room to be a hawk in this matters. Hence a piece from Alexis Petridis in The Guardian predicting the imminent death of the singles chart. Although his points are indeed all relevant, the continuing lack of profile of the "hit parade" compared to its heyday still something we all wrestle with. Although as I always like to note, the list of the biggest hits of the week and its evidence of what is and isn't working promotion-wise means the data generated is still incredibly valuable across the music industry as a whole. And they are the ones who pay for it after all.
Return Of The One Week Wonders
Onto more up-to-date matters now, and if there is one thing worse than a singles chart clogged up by interminably long-runners, it is one populated by one-week wonders. You cannot fail to have noticed that the Top 10 has been demonstrating some remarkable fluidity over the past month or so, helped not a little by a string of large hits invading it... and then charging straight out again.
Hence two weeks ago we had Taylor Swift's er, swift trio of hit singles which very nearly gave her a Top 3 clean sweep. Anti-Hero remains triumphant at the top for the moment (in the process becoming her biggest chart hit ever) but the other two have since melted away to irrelevance.
Then last week Rihanna made her sensational musical comeback with Lift Me Up, and although it did not reach the Top 10 SZA's two years in the making Shirt landed in the Top 20. This week? The Rihanna track has dropped out of the 10 (although the release of the Black Panther movie from whose soundtrack it is taken will give it another boost this week) while the SZA track collapses to No.21
So this doesn't bode well for at least two of the trio of Top 10 entries that arrive this week, all taken from the Drake and 21 Savage collaborative album Her Loss which smashes its way to the top of the albums chart this week, and as we will see has made considerable waves overseas.
Festive Elephants
Bad news though, with grim irony at precisely the same moment the singles chart itself is a big media talking point it is about to begin its annual slide into irrelevance, at least as far as contemporary hits are concerned.
There is no escaping or avoiding it, with every beat of the drum, with every turning of the page, Christmas moves closer and with it the annual influx of superannuated catalogue tracks of various festive themes. Nudging aside contemporary hit singles almost in their entirety to dominate matters for three weeks at the end of December. If you are releasing new singles product after the next fortnight or so, you aren't doing so to ensure a presence in the charts over Christmas, you are hoping for a piece of the action when things clear out in the new year.
What is the reason for this depressing perspective on matters? Well just cast your eyes lower down the ranking this week.
All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey is currently No.56. Last Christmas by Wham! is No.71. And debates about the Christmas No.1 are largely irrelevant. If it isn't a naff charity record gatecrashing proceedings it will end up being one of those two. The British public simply cannot resist.
Oh Quack
With a sense of grim inevitability the American charts this week are dominated by two men. The collaboration between Drake and 21 Savage was always going to be a very huge deal in that particular market, and just as they together chart to the fullest extent possible in Britain, so too the pair dominate the American Top 10.
But it is some way short of the clean sweep that Taylor Swift achieved a fortnight ago, and indeed she still remains #1 and glorious, outgunning her superstar rivals.
21 Savage grew up in Atlanta, but it wasn't until his 2019 arrest by US immigration officials that it was revealed he had actually been born in Plaistow, moving to America with his mother when he was seven years old. This does however mean we can legitimately claim him as our own, so let us note that fully eight of the Top 10 singles in America this week are part-performed by British artists in something of a quite spectacular invasion.
Curse the presence of Backoutsideboyz at No.9, one of a handful of Her Loss tracks performed entirely solo. A friend points out that 8 of the Top 10 are performed by Canadians - even if it is all the same Canadian.
A Land Down Under
A fortnight on from the near Taylor Swift clean-sweep of the ARIA Top 10 she is still holding her own with two entries there, with Anti-Hero remaining what is clearly the biggest song worldwide of the moment. But the Drake/21 Savage combination has power on the other side of the world as well. Four of the tracks from Her Loss impact the upper end of the Australian charts.
On the other side of the coin there are pleasingly three Australian acts in their albums Top 5, even if one of them is only through the conceit that Joji is a native.
Joining him is Dean Lewis at No.4 and at No.5 is Daisy Chain, the fifth and most successful album to date for Melbourne pop-punk rockers Slowly Slowly. Well, it is better than an endless series of rap embeds anyway.
Clog That
Bucking what you might view as a global trend, the Dutch charts remain in thrall to David Guetta and Bebe Rexha's I'm Good (Blue) which as the Tweet above indicates has been there for the best part of eight weeks now. Unholy as a result languishes at No.2 while Taylor Swift is having to make her way slowly up the table, Anti-Hero lifting to No.7 in its third week around.
Holland's highest new entry of the week is this track, debuting at No.13. It is the latest hit from Maan de Steenwinkel, a graduate of the talent show universe, her career having begun with her victory in the sixth series of The Voice Of Holland back in 2015.
Midweek Teases
Taylor Swift is locked in for a fourth week at No.1, although with the likes of Lewis Capaldi falling to ACR and the inevitable instant exit of the Drake/21 Savage songs there is once more set to be a very active look to the Top 10. The extraordinary success of Meaghan Trainor's Made You Look continues as that is set to advance into the Top 5. Surely nobody expected her return to her old style would cause her such a career resurgance.
The albums battle is shaping up to be a two way one between the unlikely bedfellows of Louis Tomlinson and Bruce Springsteen, with the former more of an edge than the midweek update would have you believe - he after all is more likely to benefit from additional streaming data as the week progresses.
OK we nearly made it to the end without embedding an impenetrable rap hit. This is set to be this week's highest new entry, sneaking inside the Top 20.
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The new UK charts are announced by Radio One from 4pm every Friday, can be seen in full on officialcharts.com and musicweek.com, and you can read by own detailed charts analysis - now approaching its own 30th year online - at chart-watch.uk.
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