I can't think of any great examples right now except one I was listening to earlier today - I'm baffled by the lack of success of Nate Ruess "Nothing Without Love" this year. It sounded like something that ought to have been a huge radio hit but it got no support whatsoever.

 

Edit - sorry, that's not really what you were asking for.. but still

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by AcerBen

I can't remember why Locked Out Of Heaven went 2-9-2 in its first 3 weeks. What caused the massive first week drop you'd expect from a boyband release and then the climb back to its peak the week after?

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by Dobbo

I can't remember why Locked Out Of Heaven went 2-9-2 in its first 3 weeks. What caused the massive first week drop you'd expect from a boyband release and then the climb back to its peak the week after?

 

Don't know why it fell so hard 2nd week, but it was X Factor that pushed it back up

Don't know why it fell so hard 2nd week, but it was X Factor that pushed it back up

Yeah it was definitely the X Factor performance.

 

Probably not quite as big a shock as other songs mentioned in this thread, but Pink's 'Just Like A Pill' always stands out to me as being a huge surprise of a No. 1 when the previous two singles from the era peaked at #2 and #6 (IIRC) - it could have been a low sales week, or maybe it was just me that didn't see it coming.

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by Mangø

I know it was 59p or whatever but I totally didn't see 'Counting Stars' going to #1 let alone top 40 at all and I had counted them out not going top 40 ever again.

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by HonkyBonkXMAS

James Masterton has the answers!

 

Hmm, fair enough, though I still don't get how there was such a DEMAND/huge interest for a Katie Melua/Eva Cassidy duet even with the very good marketing strategy/charity tag. S'pose it was at Christmas and CD singles still had some relevance back then.

I wonder if poor Nadine's ill-fated Tesco deal was inspired by the Katie/Eva No.1!? Bless her.

Westlife's Lighthouse flopping in at No.32 (?) was another one. They'd never even missed the top ten with a proper single before so I have no idea how this did SO badly, I thought top 20 at worst maybe. Same with that JLS token greatest hits single. Not that either were that good, but they both did far worse than even a pessimist could have predicted.

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by gooddelta

The whole Blue comeback - I think people expected a Take That style reunion at one stage. No idea where they are now.

 

Alexandra Burke too. That second album. Say no more.

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by jay727

The whole Blue comeback - I think people expected a Take That style reunion at one stage

Did they really though? :unsure:

Did they really though? :unsure:

 

There was a lot of buzz around them, documentaries etc. They got a lot of coverage building up to the Eurovision too.

Talking of Take That...I'd Wait For Life punctuating their nice string of #1/#2 comeback hits with a #17 was most odd.

 

It was an absolutely dire choice of single from a fantastic album but still, it seemed to be a stage of their career where I could have almost imagined anything they'd released easing into the top ten, so I was gobsmacked that it flopped so hard.

 

On the flipside, I really didn't expect a #1 from These Days! (as much as I love it!). It's hardly a chart mystery but worth flagging up nonetheless.

Edited November 24, 20159 yr by gooddelta

Cliff Richard “The Millennium Prayer” is also a mystery - just WHO was buying it?

 

27/11/1999 - #2 - 88,000

04/12/1999 - #1 - 143,000

11/12/1999 - #1 - 157,000

18/12/1999 - #1 - 159,000

25/12/1999 - #2 - 170,000

 

What??!

 

Surely this was because of one it being December (People will buy anything in December like Mr Blobby) and the obv controversy of it being Cliffs first song not playlisted by BBC radio which made the front page of the major newspapers and evenif news coverage. Always does the trick.

I know it was 59p or whatever but I totally didn't see 'Counting Stars' going to #1 let alone top 40 at all and I had counted them out not going top 40 ever again.

 

Actually yeah!

I bought that album before counting stars was released from it, very good album but there are many better songs on it than 'counting stars'... Shocked that was the song to catapult them back up there.

Talking of Take That...I'd Wait For Life punctuating their nice string of #1/#2 comeback hits with a #17 was most odd.

 

It was an absolutely dire choice of single from a fantastic album but still, it seemed to be a stage of their career where I could have almost imagined anything they'd released easing into the top ten, so I was gobsmacked that it flopped so hard.

 

On the flipside, I really didn't expect a #1 from These Days! (as much as I love it!). It's hardly a chart mystery but worth flagging up nonetheless.

 

Well it did knock Band Aid 30 off #1 after just one week! I don't think anyone would have predicted that.

I thoroughly enjoy a radio 2 hyped record like Candy and These Days breaking the top spot(I know they got heavy capital support too)!

Let's Get Ready to Rhumbles return. Yes it had a TV performance but just lol. That was a highlight in chart history. :P

James Masterton has the answers!

 

ISTR the Wet Wet Wet one was (at least in part) due to their giving away blank CDs at a gig for fans to download the track onto (James Blunt - Carry You Home and Hard-Fi - I Shall Overcome also got into the top 40 via a similar trick).

 

Can't believe nobody has mentioned Ja Rule - Wonderful reaching #1 in 2004 (it was a low sales week even by 2004 standards, but it still seemed a mystery at the time).

 

Not a mystery in terms of the overall size of the hit, but the chart run of Good Charlotte - Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous (13-20-8-12-17-23-31-40-47-59) contained a seemingly random jump in week 3 (the chart run being otherwise normal). Again, that week was a relatively quiet one (in the top 20 anyway), but such a climb was still a WTF moment (bearing in mind this was in the days before downloads).

Considering the popularity of other American female singer-songwriters (Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morrisette, Tori Amos) at the time, Jewel's lack of success in the UK gets me a little. 'You Were Meant For Me' is one of the biggest records of all-time in the U.S. peaking at #2 and being on the chart forever, whilst here it limped to #32. It doesn't seem like a record that would have alienated the UK record buying public too much, and certainly seems radio friendly enough. 'Hands' peaking at #41 is much the same deal, perhaps to a larger extent as it is certainly a lot more typically commercial sounding than 'You Were Meant For Me' is

 

The same can be said, I feel, to acts like 3 Doors Down and Matchbox Twenty who did nothing in the UK despite their sound being perfectly commercial and radio friendly. 'Here Without You' by the former has X Factor staple written all over it.

 

 

 

 

The one that always stood out for me is Nakatomi's 'Children of the Night' having one random week in the top 40 in October 2002, years after first being released in the mid-1990s. And this was before downloads so it would have been entirely on physicals. As an old 90s happy hardcore track it doesn't fit in with the Flip & Fill/pop-trance musical era of the time at all, but lots of old hardcore hits were being covered at the time so maybe it just rode the wave.

 

Another was N-Trance's 'Set You Free' spending a week at #64 in January 2005, again before downloads. Did it have a remix/re-release or was there a store chain who found a load of old copies and sold them at a low price? Given how miniscule sales were that month it probably only sold a few hundred copies to get that high.

 

EDIT: Looking at the top 100 that week (08/01/2005) there's actually a lot of old All Around the World hits at the bottom end (Shooting Star/Pretty Green Eyes/Come With Me, even Cafe Del Mar) etc so there might have been some re-releases going on.

Edited November 25, 20159 yr by BillyH