From BBC website:
“The Beatles’ hopes of correcting an historic blip in their chart record have been scuppered by pop superstar Taylor Swift. The Fab Four released new versions of their Red and Blue greatest hits albums last week, hoping that one of them would top the UK album chart.
But Swift wasn’t ready to let go, with her pop opus 1989 (Taylor’s Version) claiming the crown for a third week.
The Beatles faced the same situation when the Red and Blue albums first came out in 1973. Back then, David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane denied them the number one.
This week, the two records end up in exactly the same chart positions as they did 50 years ago.
The Red Album (technically called The Beatles 1962–1966) is at number three and the Blue Album (The Beatles 1967–1970) is at two.”
Oh, my! ———————->
It’s obviously some kind of conspiracy involving
“dark forces” – chief among them not only Taylor
S and David B but also Englebert H!
There’s an article on SDE that goes into more detail and suggests that bundling them together as a boxset caused them to miss (box sets being counted as separate items)….
https://superdeluxeedition.com/feature/saturday-deluxe-18-november-2023/
So that us youngsters can understand this monumental chart battle, who is Blur and who is Oasis?
Well, they’re not Pulp…
That would explain my relatively low levels of engagement. On any other week, I honestly couldn’t tell you who was number one in the album charts.
TBH the only reason I know this week is because I spotted the story on a trawl through the BBC News website.
Knowing the huge HUGE interest in both The Beatles and Taylor Swift on the AW, I thought it was worth reporting here.
‘Tis a great PR spin, and probably more of an event than “Beatles at number one again…”
Also better than “Beatles…meh…”
Taylor Swift is the new David Bowie?
Maybe she’s the new Englelbert Humperdinck?
She’s the new Beatles
That’s mildly interesting for a Sunday morning.
That’s my specialty, Twang…
Where is Scouting for Girls band?
And there goes my tea. Well, done, Fred.
However, it’s not so great news elsewhere in the Taylorverse. The Brazilian leg of the Eras Tour is becoming a horrible mess. A fan *died* of heatstroke before her first Rio show. Temperatures reached 60°, people weren’t allowed to take their own water in and the water distribution inside was an epic fail, with the crowd chanting ‘Water, water, water’ during the show and Taylor herself filmed throwing bottles out into the audience whilst singing. She was also filmed struggling to breathe during the show. Apparently, she’s devastated by the death and wanted to postpone the rest of the dates but wasn’t allowed to by the tour contractors. They were eventually forced to postpone the next night shortly before it was due to begin because of the conditions, so fans had been baking in the heat for upwards of 10 hours. There have been robberies and violence outside the stadium. Now she’s getting death threats on social media. It’s a real mess.
They charted at #2 with the Blue album, #3 with Red and 33 with the box set (£120+
Not bad for an album that has already sold millions in the UK
They only sold about 10K each in the UK. Am guessing mostly bought by people who already have several versions of these albums. Of course there are additional tracks and remixes on these versions. Red is more interesting as these are newly remixed, but Blue sold a little more, maybe because the single was on it. In itself ridiculous as the album is actually called 1967-70
Using SDE maths, Red: 17k + Blue: 18.5k
It did make me wonder; how much does this MAL stuff, plus Giles Martin, cost? I bet neither are cheap, and do 35k sales cover the costs? If not, it might be the last we hear of it. I doubt that somehow.
Wonder if the poor sales are down to people getting sick of being gouged for expensive new reissues.
Certainly hope so as it means prices should be in for a dramatic correction
35k sales at the dealer price of those two is over half a million quid for the label out of one territory (exactly how much over will depend on the vinyl / CD split). They’ll have more than that coming in from the US and Japan, probably a similar amount from Germany, and then all the other smaller markets around the world. That’s one week on sale with the Christmas season still to come. Think they’re doing alright – not pure profit of course, but more than enough to keep the wolf from the door.
Also worth bearing in mind that although they’ll have paid Giles Martin a decent sum, all the costs for the original recordings, production and studio time were recouped a long long time ago.
As for future plans, I saw the other day that With The Beatles hasn’t been available for about a year now, and I don’t suppose it’s quietly slipped out of print…
Taxman will do nicely out of that…..SWIDT?
Rubber Soul next I would think. However since the White Album the SDEs are getting poorer and poorer
I think you talking about the boxes. The remixes are getting better. Have you heard the Rubber Soul tracks on Red?
No, I have heard these songs enough times
And, yes, I said SDEs
Actually I will give them a listen, have heard CD and streaming versions are “brickwalled” though. Atmos and vinyl better apparently
Could be interested in the vinyl, but ridiculously the songs are not chronological there
RE “brickwalling” – I totally agree with you here. Maybe not so noticeable on the old tracks, but the new single I found sounded tiresome really quickly due to sounding so loud and clogged.
It is bad enough applying ‘loudness’ to CD but it really gets on my wick when they apply the same mastering techniques to the hi-res downloads and/or vinyl. People who buy them are not listening on ear buds, or in the car, or a Smart speaker, like the people listening to a streaming service.
It isn’t just the Fabs, either. Recent ACR albums sound fine on vinyl but the Hi-Res download that comes with it contains the same compressed mush as the CD. My conclusion is Martin Moscrop sits in on the vinyl cut, but hands the rest over to Mute’s usual cloth-eared mastering twit.
That’s including “equivalent sales” from streams?
Yes, they add up the most streamed 12 tracks from an album, do a bit of weighting (to avoid the ‘one hit song and 11 fillers’ effect), and divide the total by 1000. So it takes roughly 12,000 track streams from an album to register as an equivalent album sale.
I don’t know for sure (I haven’t read the Music Week article) but I bet most of the 35k sales in the first week were physical units.
Meanwhile, 1989 is the re-recording of an album that’s only ten years old and has apparently sold 1.7million in the UK since its released. The new version sold 180,000 in the first week ( 60,000 on vinyl) in the UK, and sold over 500,000 vinyl copies in the US.
Apparently, she’s the new Beatles!
She’s bigger than Jesus, anyhoo.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-67456426
That’s torn it…they’ll be burning her records next…
Does anyone really care?
Quite right. If you look at the OP again, you’ll see that it’s reportage and not an opinion piece.
On the other hand: if no-one cared, the thread would have died early and you wouldn’t be commenting this far down….weird, eh?
Talking of the charts, there is one branch of the music tree that is hugely interested in placings. If you look across Twitter (x!), it is full of folk musicians commenting on their placing on the “official” folk chart, pleading their audience to improve it. Seems a big thing, with a big fuss in the summer, as one of the apparent 2023 Cropredy highlights was denied an inclusion in the chart, as not folk enough. Given the precarious finances of and multi tasking required of even “famous” artists, I guess any traction to sales is vital.
I always found that odd, too, along with “thanks for buying the vinyl on BC, now please download the files so that we get paid”.
Entered US charts at 15 and 20. That would suggest they are a considerable flop. I wonder if they will hang on in UK for Christmas sales or plummet down the charts immediately