How have I completely missed this obviously classy and amazing girl group?

 

Their "Unconditional Love" was included in my all-time top 100 girl group songs (96th place).

There's a couple I can think of which were probably lesser starred - bizarrely so given the acts in question and how big they were at the time.

 

Busted released "She Wants To Be Me" as the last single from their "A Present For Everyone" album in November 2004. It was only available on a 3" pocket CD (which was a new format Universal Music had been trying to push with other acts - McFly, Girls Aloud - that year to total resistance from the industry) so it was ineligible to chart. Had it been that would have been their last single before they split, although I can't find any indication anywhere of how much they sold.

 

Another one was Blue. They released their version of "Get Down On It" with Kool and the Gang in what was meant to be their last single before they split at the start of January 2005.

 

I think it was challenging for low top 10 when released but was then disqualified because one of the formats was over the maximum running time allowed under chart rules, so their label Innocent just pulled the single entirely. Bit of an overreaction but still!

Edited October 19, 20213 yr by ThePensmith

"Bam Thwok" by Pixies (which was originally recorded for Shrek 2 but didn't make it to the final cut) was number one on the UK download chart in 2004, but downloads did not count towards the chart at the time.

"Semi-Mental" by Biffy Clyro from 2006 was also deemed ineligible due to the rules regarding downloads.

 

 

Edit: I forgot about The Chemical Brothers' 2010 album Further. It was a Top 10 album in Australia and Switzerland, but it didn't chart in the UK due to physical formats containing a competition to win an iPad

Edited October 20, 20213 yr by DevilTurret32

Going back rather further to the pre-digital era, I recall 'Go' by Pearl Jam was ineligible for the singles chart on grounds that the label were giving away a free cassette of a live track with the 12" vinyl, insisting that that format only be sold with its CD and cassette counterparts, thereby deliberately ensuring disqualification from the official listing as stores couldn't get away with selling one of the other formats separately. Famously the release even carried a sticker saying something like "this single is ineligible for 'the only chart that counts'"! For some arcane reason they were very keen to ensure that this new song would never feature in British chart history, but given Pearl Jam's fanbase size and expanded cult popularity as co-progenitors, alongside Nirvana, of the still-viable 'grunge' sound since release of their first album, chances are sales of this single as the lead from the second LP 'Vs' would've been sufficient to gain a Top 20, if not Top 10 position in its first week out (it was issued 25 Oct '93). Sales figures for chart entries weren't generally reported back then, but when one considers the average sale during that year for a single to make Top 10 was 17,400 and Top 20 10,325, this seems supportable, and given that the band's lead single from their third album 'Spin The Black Circle' made No 10 first week one year later, it seems all the more likely.

 

I appreciate this thread is about songs that were completely ruled ineligible from the charts for whatever reasons, but of course there have been numerous singles down the decades which were awarded chart positions, but only based on a certain part of their reported sales - so releases where a format was ruled ineligible as it was not yet included in calculating the charts (all CD singles before 1987 for example), or because their dealer price was too low (the classic case there being Kylie's 'Hand On Your Heart' whose initial week of cassette sales were debarred from the chart on this basis and at around 10k are believed to have been enough to have placed the song at No 1 rather than 2), again ended up with an incomplete and unrepresentative showing in the charts.

Edited October 19, 20213 yr by Gambo

Propellerheads had an EP in 1998 with lead track Crash which was the theme music to the R1 chart show at the time. Ironically, it was ineligible to chart (although Wikipedia has a peak of #184 for it, so maybe cassettes counted or something - it also says it peaked at #8 in New Zealand and #1 in Hungary).

 

In 2004, a Chris Moyles-inspired song made #1 on downloads but never charted officially - I think it was called Dogs Don't Kill People Wabbits Do (yes, a Goldie Lookin' Chain pastiche).

 

In 2000, Ronan Keating's Life Is A Rollercoaster would have had a second week at #1 instead of dropping to #2 if one of its formats hadn't been ineligible - I think it had an interview track on the end.

Artists making a song deliberately ineligible to chart for nebulous reasons happened a couple of times in the digital era too, Lawson's 'Money' and Alesha Dixon's 'The Way We Are' come to mind, there may be others. Of course neither of those would have charted particularly highly which may or may not have something to do with why they were made ineligible :P

 

Also back in the download / held-back releases era there were a ton of those cheap covers of songs released before the original versions (Precision Tunes' 'Payphone' being the most successful) but for a while most of them never appeared in the chart, presumably they were just not registered to appear but then it's a little odd that they eventually did all start showing up like any other song, may have been a quiet rule change again. Again I don't think any of the ones that were excluded would have charted super highly but why not mention it while we are discussing various reasons for songs to be ineligible to chart :magic:

I think Alesha could have got a top 40 hit there though, which in 2015 would have been quite decent for her.

 

I found that bizarre when she's had singles with much lower positions in her discography, and she made out like this ultra generic song was some piece of art that she didn't want to be judged or defined by a chart position. :lol:

If it's not already been mentioned, an obvious and very deliberate case of 'download-only' syndrome was that live version of 'Flying Without Wings' by Westlife which was specifically released solely on the digital format on 23 Aug'04 in order to have an excellent chance of debuting at No 1 on the first-fully-published official downloads chart (W/E 4 Sep '04) - which needless to say it did - and of course could make no impact on the main chart at that stage. It fell rather flat after that, but it had by then served its purpose of getting into the history books. It's just great that most chart nerds consider the actual first download chart to be the 'test' tabulation for W/E 26 Jun '04 published in MW a week later where the aforementioned 'Bam Thwok' appeared as its first chart-topper (though I seem to recall even that had been released very much with getting into the much-vaunted new chart in mind, hence a lack of what was then a conventional presumed CD version).