Have to agree with GD, 42 #1 singles in one year is a joke imo. How many of those no. 1 singles are still getting regular airplay 12 years on? Probably not even 1/4 of them are. Just pure "moment tracks" that are hyped to the high hills for 1 week only to plummet and never be heard of after a couple of months.

 

Hence why the prospect of Alyssa Reid scoring a UK #1 this weekend fills me with sincere dread. :( 'Alone Again' is my definitely of a "moment track" - people like it now, but those who buy it this week most likely won't be listening to the track come June 2012.

 

I also said the same about 'Wishing On A Star' being possibly the most undeserving chart topper of 2011. The fact it went 01-02-17-OUT speaks volumes. If it hadn't have been for the wonder that was 'We Found Love' I'd dread to think what the UK charts would've looked like for those six weeks when Rihanna ruled the roost.

I just hope 2012 won't be a repeat of 2000, at the rate we are going the #1 is in danger of changing each week, obviously apart from Jessie J, throughout December 2011 to mid Jan we had a run of 6 different #1's on a trot which never happened before as Xmas week tracks tend to stick around for at least a few weeks. Jessie J just broke the ice.

89-93 for me. If I had to sit through a top 40, I'd pick any from this era with a level of confidence. I'd struggle to sit through any top 40 of the last 6 or so years though!

 

Agreed.

I just hope 2012 won't be a repeat of 2000, at the rate we are going the #1 is in danger of changing each week, obviously apart from Jessie J, throughout December 2011 to mid Jan we had a run of 6 different #1's on a trot which never happened before as Xmas week tracks tend to stick around for at least a few weeks. Jessie J just broke the ice.

 

If the current iTunes top 2 is anything to go by then we could be having some long runners at the top. Of course, if Guetta gets it this week only to be replaced by will.i.am, then Gotye steals a week on the way to being a huge seller before being replaced by something else there'll still be tons of one-weekers :nocheer:

Everyone talks about eras when new genres came along to dominate mainly due to changes in technology, eg New Romantics in the earky 80s, Punk in the late 70s, glam rock in the early 70s, house in the late 80s but is there anything which symbolises the now or do we just have a mismatch of everything?

 

I'd say the late 80s were really the beginnings of dance music as we know it now, ranging from the commercial Stock Aitken Waterman stuff (which was pop at heart, but had a background in European hi-NRG and American 80s disco/soul) to indie-dance crossover (the Madchester scene) toacid house and rave, which weirdly is very influential on the current hip-hop/RnB sound. As for what to call it, I don't think it really has a name but I like the name that Madchester scene originally used, The Second Summer Of Love.

 

As for my period of fascination, although I was most into the charts in the early 2000s, I've always been engrossed by chart books, and I'm really interested in charts from the 80s, the decade I was born in, and when some great music was about. This goes for the European charts as much as UK, though US not so much.

If the current iTunes top 2 is anything to go by then we could be having some long runners at the top. Of course, if Guetta gets it this week only to be replaced by will.i.am, then Gotye steals a week on the way to being a huge seller before being replaced by something else there'll still be tons of one-weekers :nocheer:

 

 

I know...

 

DJ Fresh (this track is actually quite good, I hope the track denies Dappy a #1 track.)

Dappy :nocheer:

There is a difference between a song climbing to no. 1 for its sole week but selling really well in the long run compared to a song entering at no. 1 and plummeting down barely selling 200-300k in total along the way.

I personally love three periods in music 1987-199 0, 1996-2000, and bizarrely 2009-2011. I think things have gotten to be quiet commercial again hence big sales.

We are currently at an interesting time. With the advent of download movement on the charts is at an all time high. A song can build and not rely on the record company pressing CDs. It seems more democratic.

Everyone talks about eras when new genres came along to dominate mainly due to changes in technology, eg New Romantics in the earky 80s, Punk in the late 70s, glam rock in the early 70s, house in the late 80s but is there anything which symbolises the now or do we just have a mismatch of everything?

 

Err, endless r*p? :P

Err, endless r*p? :P

 

I personally think your endless complaining is the most ubiquitous trend in popular music atm.

 

Seriously, you're moaning when you've already lived through both the most high-profile exposure the hip-hop world has ever seen (the shootings of Tupac and Notorious B.I.G.) and the time when the biggest star on the planet was a rapper (Eminem circa 2001-2). Not that you'd know it with the immaturity of your comments.

We are currently at an interesting time. With the advent of download movement on the charts is at an all time high.

 

Movement on the charts is definitely not at all time-high, in fact it's probably close to the lowest it's been for 15 years or so.

 

 

There was under 500 new entries to the top 75 last year, about half of what there was in 2005.

We are currently at an interesting time. With the advent of download movement on the charts is at an all time high.

 

Movement on the charts is definitely not at all time-high, in fact it's probably close to the lowest it's been for 15 years or so.

 

 

There was under 500 new entries to the top 75 last year, about half of what there was in 2005.

The charts are becoming homogeneous - or at least 2 main flavours. Dance/Pop/Rap collabs and singer/songwriter "nu-boring".

1993-1997 for me - all that brilliant techo, hardcore & European dance music via MTV Europe. Before the charts got full of R&B, Hip-Hop & collabs rubbish

Also like 60s music - so many classic bands & singers and with a complete variety of genres.

 

I'd loved to have lived through the second half of the 60s

Edited February 2, 201213 yr by euro music

The 90s was all pretty excellent really, especially the latter part when I first started to show an interest. They were fast paced but songs could hang around a long while and sell by the bucketload, and they were so varied too.

1999 was interesting - the releases weren't stacked quite like they were the following year so you had quite a few two and three week #1s, but everything was still held back so a song that caught the public imagination - regardless of genre - could sell like hot cakes seemingly out of nowhere. Classic example being The Offspring scoring a #1 selling 140k in a week and in the run of chart-toppers it's sandwiched between 911 and Armand Van Helden. Then you had the emergence of Britney as a pop phenomenon, some of the best regarded 'novelty' hits ever and popular classics of pretty much every genre going, from Britrock (Tender) to country (That Don't Impress Me Much) to trance (Better Off Alone).

True, some of the opening sales tallies in 1999 are :o Usually selling 200,000+ in your first week is/was reserved for huge acts with comeback hits or charity singles, but in 1999 you had acts with no chart history at all like Shanks & Bigfoot and ATB easily clearing it based entirely on the fact that people just loved the songs, nothing more than that. And even the filler #1 hits usually had no trouble clearing 100k. Impressive stuff!

Well as a youngster I won't pretend to have a clue what 97 was like (sounds faaaaabulous though) but I've always found the very early 2000s to be interesting. Up to about 2003 I guess. And yes it's absolutely because of the record label manipulation. No artist could have a top 10 streak like Kylie did (16 singles ending with The One IIRC) today and obviously the majority of that was built at the start of the decade with X, the only album released when downloads were really prevelant unsurprisingly being the era where she struggled. Statistics like that are just so fun. Basically the songs storming to high positions and then bombing out was very interesting to me. No idea why but everything felt so different back then and much more fan-oriented (or at least it seems so looking back). Nowadays if the public don't like your singles there's not much your fanbase can do (outside of pre-album singles I guess) while back then so many acts could count on their fanbases to consistently send their singles top 10 (or even #1). I miss those days even if it was ridiculously unfair and not representitive of what the public liked at all.

 

Might have something to do with the fact that my first memories of music were around then of course. I seem to remember seeing the video for Kylie's Spinning Around being my earliest musical experience. Truly shocking that I turned out to be a gayer.

Edited February 2, 201213 yr by Umi

Well as a youngster I won't pretend to have a clue what 97 was like (sounds faaaaabulous though) but I've always found the very early 2000s to be interesting. Up to about 2003 I guess. And yes it's absolutely because of the record label manipulation. No artist could have a top 10 streak like Kylie did (16 singles ending with The One IIRC) today and obviously the majority of that was built at the start of the decade with X, the only album released when downloads were really prevelant unsurprisingly being the era where she struggled. Statistics like that are just so fun. Basically the songs storming to high positions and then bombing out was very interesting to me. No idea why but everything felt so different back then and much more fan-oriented (or at least it seems so looking back). Nowadays if the public don't like your singles there's not much your fanbase can do (outside of pre-album singles I guess) while back then so many acts could count on their fanbases to consistently send their singles top 10 (or even #1). I miss those days even if it was ridiculously unfair and not representitive of what the public liked at all.

 

Might have something to do with the fact that my first memories of music were around then of course. I seem to remember seeing the video for Kylie's Spinning Around being my earliest musical experience. Truly shocking that I turned out to be a gayer.

Yeah, I know what you mean and sometimes I miss it too - it often created some fantastic top 10 hits that wouldn't have got anywhere near in normal circumstances. But then I remind myself that kind of climate is what helped Westlife to get their ridiculously undeserved 14 #1s and suddenly I don't miss it so much anymore :lol:

The first ever top 40 I listened to was the week Whigfield's Saturday Night entered at number 1 - so that kind of late 1994 to early 1995, when Bruno Brookes left, I love all that stuff. I listened to a chart from January 1995 yesterday