On this day 10 years ago (2 April 2006), history was made as Crazy by Gnarls Barkley became the first track to reach #1 on downloads alone. It was only the 4th week of tracks being able to chart on downloads the week prior to their physical release.

 

It would be over 9 months before it would happen again (Mika - Grace Kelly), but obviously it soon became a regular thing.

 

Top 40 plus other notables:

 

1 (-) Gnarls Barkley - Crazy

2 (1) Ne-Yo - So Sick

3 (-) Morrissey - You Have Killed Me

4 (2) Embrace - Nature's Law

5 (3) Orson - No Tomorrow

6 (28) Kooks - Naive

7 (7) Black Eyed Peas - Pump It

8 (-) Streets - When You Wasn't Famous

9 (6) Pussycat Dolls ft will.i.am - Beep

10 (4) Pink - Stupid Girls

11 (5) Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On

12 (-) Depeche Mode - Suffer Well

13 (11) Sean Paul - Temperature

14 (9) Kanye West ft Lupe Fiasco - Touch The Sky

15 (15) Feeling - Sewn

16 (10) Sugababes - Red Dress

17 (-) Michael Jackson - The Way You Make Me Feel

18 (8) Chico - It's Chico Time

19 (-) Mary J Blige & U2 - One

20 (14) Madonna - Sorry

21 (-) Editors - All Sparks

22 (-) Milburn - Send In The Boys

23 (17) Notorious BIG ft Diddy, Nelly, Jagged Edge & Avery Storm - Nasty Girl

24 (21) Beverley Knight - Piece Of My Heart

25 (12) Meck ft Leo Sayer - Thunder In My Heart Again

26 (20) Joey Negro - Make A Move On Me

27 (19) Ray J - One Wish

28 (-) Various Artists - A Tribute To Jinky

29 (-) Royal Ballet Sinfonia with Gavin Sutherland - Radio 4 UK Theme

30 (24) Nelly ft Paul Wall, Ali & Gipp - Grillz

31 (26) Source ft Candi Staton - You Got The Love

32 (-) Automatic - Raoul

33 (13) Girls Aloud - Whole Lotta History

34 (27) Kelly Clarkson - Walk Away

35 (-) Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me

36 (23) Massive Attack - Live With Me

37 (30) Jack Johnson - Better Together

38 (22) MVP - Bounce, Shake, Move, Stop!

39 (18) Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion

40 (34) Chris Brown ft Juelz Santana - Run It!

 

43 (-) Prince - Black Sweat

57 (-) Secret Machines - Lightning Blue Eyes

63 (-) Andy Abraham - Hang Up

71 (-) David Gray - Alibi

74 (re) Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc

75 (re) Sigur Ros - Hoppipolla

 

The only other track in the chart that had not yet been physically released was the Mary J Blige & U2 track (it jumped up to #2 the following week).

 

#17 was part of a series of Michael Jackson re-issues, with one track being re-issued per week for 19 weeks, all charting between #11 and #34 inclusive.

 

#21 was the first Editors track only to be released once - their previous releases (Bullets, Munich, and Blood) were all released, and all charted, twice.

 

#28 was a re-packaging of a single that reached #46 in 2004 - Dirty Old Town / The Road To Paradise (credited to Bhoys From Paradise). It was the second 'Various Artists' track to reach #28 in the space of a few months, following a version of Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn't've). It had a strange chart run - 3 weeks in the top 35, then it dropped straight out of the top 75.

 

#29 was a re-recording of a medley of UK folk tunes that used to be played daily on BBC Radio 4. It featured the second Gavin Sutherland to chart, following one half of 1970s duo The Sutherland Brothers.

 

#32 was re-issued in 2007, reaching #30.

 

#75 had charted at #35 17 weeks earlier - it spent the next few weeks outside the top 40 before a re-issue allowed it to re-peak at #24.

29 (-) Royal Ballet Sinfonia with Gavin Sutherland - Radio 4 UK Theme

 

Imagine this getting top 30 in 2016 :lol:

Wow - seems a lifetime ago.

There aren't as many tracks in the charts then as I thought I liked. I think the noughties was the period when I started to lose interest in mainstream chart music but still more songs than I like in todays chart.

Great to look at a chart when there was still variety and actually new entries!

It was so unfair how The OCC treated Crazy and other download hits... 9 weeks at #1 and only 18 on chart. It would've spent a year in without that stupid rule.

Edited April 3, 20169 yr by SKOB

ridiculous how it fell completely out of the chart from #5 I know. It could've had such a long and pretty chart run :cry:

 

thankfully the OCC didn't make similar silly rules in terms of streaming when that was introduced to the chart.

Exactly! Thankfully they learned from that mistake

That chart actually feels more fresh than any we've had in 2016. I miss 2006 so much.

I'm mentally reading that above countdown in the irritating voices of JK & Joel who hosted the chart at the time. My God they were annoying. Incidentally one of those new entries (The Pipettes) I've just written about in my girl group thread today!

It was so unfair how The OCC treated Crazy and other download hits... 9 weeks at #1 and only 18 on chart. It would've spent a year in without that stupid rule.

 

ridiculous how it fell completely out of the chart from #5 I know. It could've had such a long and pretty chart run :cry:

 

thankfully the OCC didn't make similar silly rules in terms of streaming when that was introduced to the chart.

It fell because the record company chose to delete the physical version. If they had continued to press new CDs, it could have stayed in the chart for longer. That's not meant as a defence of the rule; I'm just pointing out that it wasn't just the rules that ended its chart run.

Let's be honest, if it weren't for Crazy and Chasing Cars, downloading would never have even become a thing. Those two songs showed the impact downloads were having before the OCC changed their rules in January 2007.

That chart is bloody awful, sorry :( The pits of the middling mid-noughties with few standouts for me, maybe Orson and The Feeling but that's it. The Source would be included except that version of You Got The Love is a weird inferior watered-down version of the 1997 mix.

I agree, there are only nine songs I enjoy in this chart and many of those I don't return to now. Chart music got a whole lot better about 4 months later though, and was consistently good for much of the following 18 months.

I agree, there are only nine songs I enjoy in this chart

 

That's srill 7 more than me. :P

Agreed, though I did generally like 2006 for music overall, I didn't much care for some of the stuff in the first half of the year, especially during this time of the year looking back at this chart. Gnarls Barkley, Orson, Corinne Bailey Rae, Kelly Clarkson, Jack Johnson were the only songs out of that chart I still enjoy now (weirdly, despite liking a lot of the Feeling's later songs, I am unfamiliar with Sewn. Must give it a listen on YouTube. And of course Michael Jackson's The Way You Make Me Feel is a classic, but that's from the eighties).

 

I completely agree - for me, I also feel that chart music got much better from the summer of '06 onwards, around June time and the music stayed consistently good until about towards late '09 or thereabouts? Definitely the summer of '06 heralded about 3 years of really good chart music for me. It was my golden age of the noughties, if you will (along with 2000 and early 2001).

 

And finally just to mention, wow, 2006 and Gnarls Barkley were 10 years ago??!! Only feels like yesterday in some ways, but then a really long time ago in other ways.

Edited April 4, 20169 yr by donnahjaneymack

Same here only 9 songs I would consider classics - too many fanbase hits like Morrissey(in the top 3 🤔) Depeche Mode and the like which will never be heard of again.