Posted January 1, 201015 yr The UK Charts throughout the decades What were the charts really like? From time to time there has been a discussion on this site especially in the Retro forum about how good or bad the charts were in X year; etc. So a few months ago I thought I would utilize the quite excellent UK Chart Stats site and look at the Top 10 of each weekly chart on a Week by Week basis from 1960 up until the end of the 2009. I used a personal scoring rating system for each track in the Top 10: 2 Love 1 Like 0 Don't Know/Indifferent to -1 Dislike/Hate So providing a weekly total for the Top 10 of any given week. I would then add up all the weekly totals of each year and divide by the number of weeks in that chart year (usually 52, occasionally 53) to come up with a yearly average: The yearly weekly averages were as follows: 1960 4.60 1961 5.19 1962 5.90 1963 7.02 1964 7.77 1965 7.87 1966 7.15 1967 7.50 1968 7.27 1969 7.15 1970 6.79 1971 5.83 1972 5.17 1973 5.77 1974 3.79 1975 3.58 1976 4.69 1977 4.87 1978 6.69 1979 7.73 1980 7.62 1981 6.48 1982 7.35 1983 7.94 1984 7.94 1985 7.15 1986 5.60 1987 4.92 1988 3.21 1989 3.37 1990 3.79 1991 5.46 1992 5.62 1993 5.12 1994 5.06 1995 6.19 1996 6.71 1997 6.71 1998 6.35 1999 5.08 2000 4.13 2001 4.75 2002 3.98 2003 4.08 2004 5.08 2005 5.13 2006 5.67 2007 5.81 2008 5.23 2009 5.33
January 1, 201015 yr Author So for my usical tastes the best 10 years in UK chart music were: 1st 1983 7.94 1st 1984 7.94 3rd 1965 7.87 4th 1964 7.77 5th 1979 7.73 6th 1980 7.62 7th 1967 7.50 8th 1982 7.35 9th 1968 7.27 10th 1966 7.15 10th 1969 7.15 10th 1985 7.15 So for me the 1960s & the 1980s were the golden age of music coinciding with the two British invasions where UK acts dominated the US charts and others worldwide. In contrast the worst 10 years for UK chart music were: 41st 1976 4.69 42nd 1960 4.60 43rd 2000 4.13 44th 2003 4.08 45th 2002 3.98 46th 1974 3.79 46th 1990 3.79 48th 1975 3.58 49th 1989 3.37 50th 1988 3.21 With the SAW, manufactured pop tale end of the 1980s & the awful nadir in the mid 1970s between the demise of Glam Rock and the rise of Punk/New Wave; and the beginning of the noughties dominating the low points in UK chart music. Similarly the Decade averages were: 1960s 6.742 1970s 5.491 1980s 6.158 1990s 5.609 2000s 4.919 So the 1960s were Best; 1980s second; followed by the 1990s; 1970s and last the 2000s. What do you think of my findings and do you agree with me or not?
January 1, 201015 yr If I ever find the time to do a similar exercise I suspect there would be a fair degree of agreement between my scores and yours. Some of the years around the early part on the noughties would probably get a lot of zeroes - particularly the songs which went straight into the top ten but only spent a few weeks in the top 40.
January 1, 201015 yr I'd love to do this myself but just can't be arsed and don't have the patience. I do think mine would come out fairly similar too, although I may find the mid 90s might do slightly better due to the 'britpop' stuff
January 1, 201015 yr as you may know, early last year i went through every chart from 1960 until 2007 and scored every hit. ok there were a few glareing omissions but the general gist resulted in this http://www.buzzjack.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=92097 the results of which which are pretty close to richards . broadly we agree that the mid 60's and the early 80's (a big surprise was that in my chart 78 and 79 scored much lower then expected) were the best times for uk music. . we both didnt like the mid 70's or late 80's/early 90's. 2003 though scored very highly in my chart..
January 1, 201015 yr I think the laste 80s to early 90s would score the highest on mine. I'd struggle to accurately score prior to the mid 80s purely due to my age however.
January 4, 201015 yr My favourite era's would be, early 80's, late 70's, late 60's, early 70's and mid 60's. So that is pretty similar to Richard's.
January 5, 201015 yr Dont even have to dig deep, year 2000 easily the best year for me, 90s the best decade. The last 20 years for me: 01. 2000 02. 1999 03. 1998 04. 1997 05. 2001 06. 1994 07. 2002 08. 1993 09. 2003 10. 1995 11. 1992 12. 2009 13. 2004 14. 1996 15. 2008 16. 1990 17. 2006 18. 1991 19. 2007 20. 2005
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