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[Gezza]

Hello There

Inspired by recent threads on here on the concept of “unlucky” hits- I thought I’d put a bit of sales into the mix to come up with a list of songs that may rightfully claim to be unlucky.

Kylie may have sung “I Should Be So Lucky” but with 5 weeks at No 1 luck was clearly on her side, not so these tracks despite a good respective sale within their chart year and one which on many weeks would have seen them at No 1. Years covered for the survey are 1980 to 2020 and for obvious reasons the Christmas chart has been excluded as naturally sales for that week are artificially high (up to 2010), and so too for the week after Christmas when the “gift card” effect took effect (from 2011 to 2012) then it ceases to really have any effect for the purpose of this thread so all weeks are included from 2013 onwards.

How are we defining an “Unlucky” chart hit?

So in order to focus on the “unluckiest” tracks we’re looking at songs that never made the top 2 but sold enough to make No 1 in at least 11 weeks of the respective year of release. Songs are ranked ultimately in terms of weeks it sold enough to be No 1 then on the weekly sale that brought that figure about.

BUT ALSO

For those of a more sales mind we’re going to start with 17 songs which wouldn’t make the list under the first criteria but did sell at least 90% of the sales of the No 1 in their respective week. There are also 6 that would have made both lists but they are listed in the main list of 107 tracks.

So first up will be those 17 songs ranked by % of sales compared to the No 1 in that week.....