Why was Santa Maria excluded originally? :o

It was due to bulk buying

 

James Masterton posted this back in 1997 on usenet :

 

> Didn't some record by Tatjana ("Santa Maria" or "Santa Lucia" or something ?)

> get banned from the charts a few years back for irregular (buying in) sales

> patterns ? Didn't make much difference, because they just re-released it

> recently and it was allowed into the UK charts !! Unsurprisingly, Roger

> Cook and his team failed to mention this.

 

Very famous story this. 'Santa Maria' was all set to become one of the

smash hit singles of the summer, plenty of pre-promotion which had even

included Tatjana being groped by Eamonn Holmes on GWTV. The record was set

for a Top 20 placing according to the midweek charts in the week of

release. On the Friday a series of suspicious looking bulk sales triggered

alarms at Millward Brown and so to protect the integrity of the chart the

sales of the record were discounted totally. Mike Stock, who was behind

the British release of the single, went absolutely apeshit as all the

effort that had gone into the record had been wasted, not to mention the

several thousand sales of the single that would count for nothing. A

subsequent investigation showed that there had been an attempt to 'buy-in'

the single but it had been nothing to do with the record company or anyone

associated with it - hence the single was cleared for a re-release

whereupon it stuttered into the bottom end of the Top 40 and then sank, a

waste of a rather fabulous single. Roger Crook probably failed to mention

this case as although it showed that buying-in occasionally happens, it

doesn't work.

 

https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.tv...f378e12628dbb7e

 

It was due to bulk buying

 

James Masterton posted this back in 1997 on usenet :

 

> Didn't some record by Tatjana ("Santa Maria" or "Santa Lucia" or something ?)

> get banned from the charts a few years back for irregular (buying in) sales

> patterns ? Didn't make much difference, because they just re-released it

> recently and it was allowed into the UK charts !! Unsurprisingly, Roger

> Cook and his team failed to mention this.

 

Very famous story this. 'Santa Maria' was all set to become one of the

smash hit singles of the summer, plenty of pre-promotion which had even

included Tatjana being groped by Eamonn Holmes on GWTV. The record was set

for a Top 20 placing according to the midweek charts in the week of

release. On the Friday a series of suspicious looking bulk sales triggered

alarms at Millward Brown and so to protect the integrity of the chart the

sales of the record were discounted totally. Mike Stock, who was behind

the British release of the single, went absolutely apeshit as all the

effort that had gone into the record had been wasted, not to mention the

several thousand sales of the single that would count for nothing. A

subsequent investigation showed that there had been an attempt to 'buy-in'

the single but it had been nothing to do with the record company or anyone

associated with it - hence the single was cleared for a re-release

whereupon it stuttered into the bottom end of the Top 40 and then sank, a

waste of a rather fabulous single. Roger Crook probably failed to mention

this case as although it showed that buying-in occasionally happens, it

doesn't work.

 

https://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.tv...f378e12628dbb7e

Thanks Robbie - I never knew that. Fabulous record, one of my faves from the mid 90s.