Back in the early eighties, my mate ran a record shop. Every week on the counter was placed the Music Week/Gallup charts, the top 75….. I knew what was in the top ten, twenty and thirty, We had Top of the Pops and the Radio One chart rundown. This document showed the minor movements at the arse end of the charts. It showed producers and songwriters, more useless knowledge to cram into my brain. You could watch unknown acts scrabble for a foothold on the fun 40, major acts under achieving to the fury of their record companies. I followed the chart misfortunes of Radio Stars and Fad Gadget as their singles crept towards the holy grail of the number 39 spot, only to plummet into oblivion the following week. Ever since I was interested in music I knew what was number one, you just know…its like knowing the alphabet.
Recently talking to the now non record store owing mate, we both admitted to not knowing what was number one, but when did I STOP knowing. I went onto the Official Chart site and started trawling. Alright I wasn`t born until 1962 so I can be forgiven for not knowing “Hold My Hand” by Don Cornell but all the sixties ones I recognise. The seventies and eighties are my era, so I could probably reel most of them off without looking. Even most of the nineties songs are familiar ( Though I would have bet against The Offspring having a number one!)
In 2006 Top of the Pops was cancelled, so I expected my blind spot to be around that time but no, it was three years earlier, “Loneliness” by Tomcraft, I had to YouTube it and I still dont remember it. Dance music of the most who cares type, but Mr Craft is a number one artist. I edged forward past the X Factor winners, novelty records (Peter Kay, Crazy Frog) and the fact that Elvis had three number ones in 2005.
As I get to 2009 there are artists I`ve never knowingly heard. David Guetta, Taio Cruz, Iyaz, Jason Derulo, presumably all aimed at the dancefloor and not an old sod like me and all number one artists. As I move from 2010 to present a few things strike me, who or what is “Airplanes” by Bob featuring Hayley Williams?, has Taylor Swift only had 1 UK number one?, is Macklemore a band or an individual?
One sobering thought…. in 1991 Bryan Adams spent 16 weeks at number one with “Everything I Do”, everbody was bloody sick of it and still people were buying it! In 1994 Wet Wet Wet spent 15 weeks at number one with “Love is All Around” and allegedly asked their record company to delete it as it was blocking the release of their follow up single. In 2015 Drake featuring Wizkid & Kyla spent 15 weeks at number one with “One Dance” I have no idea what it sounds like. I am now my dad.
Number one is currently “Promises” by Calvin Harris & Sam Smith
http://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/all-the-number-1-singles__7931/
“Knowing” the charts probably went onto rapid decline when I started work in 1987.
Albums were now my thing, and singles were for kids (big words for a 17 year old).
The charts still held enough importance that you wanted “your hands” to get in there, played on Radio 1 and on Top Of The Pops.
The Blur/Oasis shenanigans of 95 was probably the last time I took any real notice
It was probably around 2005 when I gave up looking at the charts. Having said that I do, occasionally, look at the album charts to see how some old geezer’s latest is doing. Tonight being a prime example as I was interested to see how the ‘Listen to What the Man Said’ hitmakers album would do – number 3 since you asked which I think is quite good. No doubt it will slip to about 27 by next week!
As for singles or whatever they call them now : what is this fascination for nearly everyone having to have either explicit language or ‘featuring’ someone or other? The Rolling Stones never needed to sing ‘Get off my Fu***ng Cloud’ and the Who never needed to feature Benny Hill!
I rest my case!
The “featuring” thing has been going since the 1980s…I don’t get it either.
I did chuckle once when listening to a re-run of a chart show from back in the day and the artist was “featuring Doris”!
With me, I’m guessing I lost touch when the kids left home. During the 90s we shared a lot of their stuff and mine, but I couldn’t name a current chart botherer. It’s a shame – TOTP, for all its faults, was a common touchstone – parents could keep in touch once a week, but there is no longer that shared experience.
I’ve never known what was in the charts, if we’re talking about sales.
Fun Fact: In Sweden that was never a big thing, we had radio chart shows of different kinds but they were all based on votes from the listeners. So I could tell you what charted at “Tio i Topp”, “Svensktoppen”, “Poporama” and “Tracks”, but although I’m sure those shows all in their turn influenced the sales and thus the “proper” chart, we never really knew about that.
About 20 years ago I think it started to get somewhat meaningless to me. I think Westlife had about 10 number ones and too many singles debuted at number one for it to be an event worthy of noting. When Going Underground went straight to the top in 1980, it seemed to be important.
By the time the Blur/Oasis thing was going on, the singles chart was in decline. I tracked the progress of Depeche Mode quite diligently and it turned out the highest ones in terms of chart placings didn’t end up being the most loved, probably because they had to promote them so much at the time of release. Albums-wise when Violator (1990) and Songs of Faith and Devotion (1993) did incredibly well, it was clear that these were big, popular records. By the time Ultra (1997) came out, the number one LP chart placing was engineered and lasted one week. Martin Gore moaned about the fact that a taxi driver only knew Just Can’t Get Enough from 16 years ago – despite the fact that their new album was number one. He failed to take on board that by 1997 the number one single and album meant very little to the public.
Gary Numan and Morrissey still regard their own chart placings as important – usually to argue for more record label support. But a top 5 single or album has meant very little for about 20 years now – something that a pop star of their vintage still has trouble acknowledging.
The charts were always bent but they started to get really iffy in the 90s with singles being released at half price in the first week and multiple versions of the same single. Bands like The Bluetones* could enter at number 2 with their debut. All of this put me right off. Add to that 7” singles disappearing from the shelves…
It is remarkable in retrospect that I could get so excited about Firestarter or The Drugs Don’t Work BEING NUMBER ONE IN THE PROPER CHART and within a couple of years couldn’t care less..
(*You may or may not like a The Bluetones – the issue is not quality, but that an unknown band making not exactly à la mode music could crash into the chart so easily)
The singles charts lost their legitimacy for me when you would hear them on heavy rotation on the radio up to a month before the release date. Then they would debut at number one, plummeting to 91 the week after…. what utter crap. That set in in about 1994.
The Stone Roses are probably the last band I remember thinking of in terms of chart success.
I really liked Mike Posner’s 2015 hit I Took A Pill In Ibiza. I was surprised when someone mentioned it was number one in the charts (albeit in an inferior remix versh). I had no idea the charts still existed.
Probably mid-2000s when workplace circumstances meant I was force fed daytime Radio 2 instead of Radio 1, which was kind of a relief at that point. Tomcraft’s Loneliness is a melancholic choon, though! I believe I played my car boot copy on an episode of CBVD, don’tchaknow…
In other out-of-touch news, it was only yesterday that I learned that the Mercury prize is happening next week. Am very surprised that there hasn’t been a mention of it anywhere in my online haunts, including here. It’s all a load of bollocks of course, but this is the first year it hasn’t appeared on my news or social media radar well in advance of the event, and presumably some time after the announcement of the nominees.
What’s up with that?
Our workplace inflicts Radio Two on the staff and the customers. I like it. Commercial Radio is frowned upon and Two is nicely middle-of-the-road.
I normally start a thread on the Mercury Prize because I like to explore the byways of modern music. However, this year’s nominees are dispiritingly mainstream, rather missing the point as I understood it for Mercury.
Radio 2? You lucky b….s! At mine, we have to suffer the local commercial crap, be it Pulse, Heart, Capital – doesn’t really matter. Different station, same atrocious crap.
Ahem
Gets Saucecrafted, but it’s there.
Wow, I have no recollection of that, sorry!
If you haven’t already, you must browse through Tom Ewing’s ongoing review of every number one single ever – some excellent, insightful writing: http://freakytrigger.co.uk/populist/
He’s now up to August 2002 (Blazin’ Squad), which is probably around the time I stopped knowing or caring what was number one. Him too I’d suggest, judging by the way the frequency of entries has dwindled from every couple of weeks to roughly once a quarter.
Probably in the mid 1980s when I stopped watching ToTP and reading the NME.
Yes.
About the same as Carl for me.
Just checked out that site linked in the OP.
1987 is the first year I found a number 1 towards the end of the year that I had no idea of. A few more in 1988, so ’87-’88 must be my tipping point.
Maybe 6 years ago, although I recognise all of the more recent examples you list, but would struggle to know more than the Drake track out of that weeks top ten. I miss not knowing, I don’t actually care what’s in the chart, but it’s another marker on my road to obliviousness 😩
Good question!
As a teenager in the eighties I watched TOTP like everyone else.
In the nineties it was watching Saturday morning chart shows like Ant and Dec – student life, flat sharing life. Looking at the Wikipedia list of uk number ones in the nineties, I have a vivid memory of every single one. And even though most nineties pop music was rubbish, there were still excellent songs at the top a fair amount of the time – I liked Never Ever, I liked Sunscreen, and this went hand in hand with liking stuff like Beck and DJ Shadow.
Continuing that Wikipedia list into the noughties, I would say 2004 is definitely the first year where I had no real interest in the number one spot – just about all the songs that year I either don’t like or don’t recognise. The first one I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever is LMC vs U2 – Take Me To The Clouds Above (?). Assume it’s a dance remix of some kind, but I can’t remember it at all.
So the answer is 2004! I turned 31 that year, so probably related to family/ mortgage/ grown up stuff.
Or maybe pop music just got rubbish….
Aka ‘Take Me To The Travelodge’.
Aaaaah I remember it now….
I was born at the very end of 1962 (number one Elvis Return to Sender) & started avidly following the charts when I was ten – hearing the Tuesday lunchtime countdown from a radio someone sneaked in at junior school (or from the boy who went “home for lunch”)
I used to listen to chart radio quite a bit until the early 90s, when most people of a similar age had stopped – I asked a friend who was working in Japan what was number one & told “we’re no longer teenagers, you know”
I was still quite aware of chart music until about 2002, but working from home, listening to Radio 2, and not being a fan of dance music meant I only picked up on a few things.
Now, there are very few tv shows with a music slot, shops don’t have radios playing, and the pop radio stations play something five years old as if it’s new. This means there’s no longer the “music by osmosis” where you’d hear one big song everywhere you go.
I was always the one who went home for lunch, myself and my elder sister and brother would all have a 1 to 20 empty list and agree which numbers we were going to write down, the DJ went far too fast for any one of us to write them all. We’d then amalgamate our lists and go to school with “the knowledge”. Tuesday afternoon was the only time I can remember being popular at school. My other abiding memory of the charts was volunteering to do the washing up after Sunday tea-time (I’m working class northern, we had breakfast, dinner and tea in that order), and listening to the top twenty run down when the whole chart was played. For many years I knew the words to virtually every single that was in the top twenty and with the added bonus of earning a couple of bob for doing the dishes. I still quite like washing up! I lost touch with the charts in the mid/late 80’s.
Your evocative story has reminded me that I once (very uncharacteristically) squeezed through a tiny window because my radio station of choice used to rundown the new chart half an hour after I finished school and there was no-one home and I really needed to know who had gone up and down this week.
Proud of my athletic feat, I mentioned it to my Big Bruv and he pointed out that there was about a 50% chance that I would have been “sliced in half”.
“Still”, I thought, “Worth it”.
The last record I was aware of before it was number one was Brimful of Asha. A mere… twenty years ago.
Tune!
Vastly preferred it before Norman Cook did his Bombalurina/Throw in the Kitchen Sink remix.
The hihats on the original are delicious.
Ponce.
As an paid-up Afterword grump, you’re supposed to say “vastly preferred it when it was an old Velvet Underground riff”
You are wrong. They are both good, but the Norman Cook remix takes it to a new level.
Ugh. Norman’s gimmicks make me feel very tired. Unless it’s his cheeky basslines with T’Housies.
Using that really good website link, I travelled through tne nineties and had a passing acquaintance with all of the number ones. 1998 arrives and I’d forgotten that Tori Amos had a number one and by the time we get to “Spacedust – Gym and Tonic” I have arrived at the acceptance that I don’t remember that one at all and it goes downhill from there. So officially I was about 32 when I stopped knowing/caring about the number one single.
5 minutes after I last looked.
Probably in the 90s. Interesting when I look at top 40s on old 80s TOTP episodes often I know more than 30 of the songs in the charts. I must have listened to Radio 1 a lot in those times.
That sums me up perfectly as well!
Circa 1990 when a) I no longer recognized the names of any of the artists (they didn’t feature in my albums collection anyway), and b) I stopped caring.
I would have said around 1990 until I read the list. It turns out I was well aware of most number ones right through to 2003.
The first one I remember was Help! number one early August 1965. I sang it constantly that summer, whole days wandering through the countryside with my dog, aged seven, no mobile phone, leaving home early morning, armed with sandwiches, and only returning at a solid Northern working class tea-time. Couldn’t happen today.
Are you not allowed out on your own with sandwiches any more?
I’m ok without sandwiches but I’m barred from singing a capella.
Early 80s for me. I wasn’t that interested in the charts before that but by 82 I’d lost interest completely.
Very early 1990s.
Crikey! Not just me, then!!
About 1994. But do ‘the kids’ know or indeed care who is Number One? They have a vast archive of recorded music at the touch of an iPhone so why would they care? I was in a cafe this week which was playing some current ‘Chart Music’ – and it was just the same 3 chords, the same emoting and a bit of vocal pyrotechnics. Like most modern Pop it’s offensive to my ears because of it’s lack of ambition, ideas and it’s alarmingly generic nothingness – the musical equivalent of those vapid, weirdly ubiquitous photos people take with dog ears/noses superimposed on their faces – a slow, creeping sleepwalk to nowhere. The Charts don’t work now, that model is broken – there are now billions of charts and everyone can make their own, personalised “Top of the Pops” via YouTube that is on 24/7 and has infinite possibilities and doesn’t feature Simon Bates – but also doesn’t establish any sort of common ground. So it’s impossible to be ‘out of touch’ – because there is nothing to be ‘in touch’ with.
I agree with you actually. But if Disappointment Bob was still here he would be all over this comment and argue that it’s all relative and you’re just old.
Dr V nails it, although I feel slightly more positive about the state of music. It’s less varied, I would say (possibly due to the global availabilty of music now) but there are still some gems out there.
Try this from last year. I think it’s ace. Note to possible detractors: just because you hate it, that doesn’t mean it is difinitively bad 😉
Oh, and about the mid nineties probably.
About 1975
Probably when the local wine bar held A Britney Spears night and I’d never heard of her or “hit me baby one more time”. Certainly by when the first time I heard Crazy was when they were deleting it because it had been Number One for too many weeks. Obvs I then went and bought it and it turned into the black hit of space….