https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63574453

 

Official Singles Chart turns 70: Seven historic controversies

 

By Mark Savage

BBC Music Correspondent

As a teenage music nerd, I would sit in my bedroom every Sunday afternoon, listening to Bruno Brookes count down the Top 40 and writing the results into a thick lever-arch file.

 

Somewhere in my parents' attic, those yellowing A4 sheets boast accolades from superstars like Madonna and Michael Jackson, alongside forgotten hits by Arnee And The Terminators or Twenty4Seven ft Captain Hollywood (I Can't Stand It, number seven on 6 October 1990).

 

Back then, the charts were entering their middle age. There had been a big fuss on Top Of The Pops when T'Pau scored the UK's 600th number one with China In Your Hand. And the chart's inherent ranking system ("my favourite band is officially better than yours") led to a lifelong obsession.

 

1) The Beatles' vanishing number one

 

The singles chart began in 1952, when Percy Dickins, one of the founders of the New Musical Express, decided to produce a ranked list of the UK's best-selling singles, by telephoning 20 record shops up and down the country every week and asking what they had sold.

 

The first ever Top 12 was published in the NME on 14 November, with Al Martino's schmaltzy ballad Here In My Heart at number one.

 

Pretty soon, rival publications wanted a piece of the action. Record Mirror started its top 10 in 1955, based on postal returns from record stores, Another magazine, Melody Maker, started its chart in 1956, and was the first to include sales from Northern Ireland.

 

Then, in 1960, the music industry trade paper Record Retailer (now called Music Week) launched what is now recognised as the "official" chart, based on reports from a panel of 30 shops. But for almost a decade, those charts were only available to industry insiders, which led to one of the biggest chart anomalies of all time.

 

In 1962, the Beatles cut their breakthrough single Please, Please Me at Abbey Road studios. When they finished the 18th, and final, take, producer George Martin said: "Gentlemen, you have just made your first number one record."

 

And he was right - but only if you read the NME, Melody Maker, or Record Mirror. In the "official" chart, Please, Please Me was denied the top spot by yodelling crooner Frank Ifield and his song Wayward Wind.

 

As the Record Retailer chart is now recognised as canon, The Beatles' historic run of 17 number one singles officially begins with From Me To You.

 

2) Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead - Maggie Thatcher gives Radio 1 a headache

 

In the wake of Margaret Thatcher's death in 2013, the song Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead, from the Wizard Of Oz soundtrack, was downloaded enough times to reach number two.

 

In doing so, it became engulfed in a storm of controversy, not least at the BBC. Rather than playing the song in full during the Official Chart show, Radio 1 played a report from Newsbeat explaining the song's significance.

 

"I don't believe it's a shoddy compromise but it is a compromise," then-Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper told BBC 5 Live when asked to defend the decision.

 

"You have got a record which is not a political record. It is actually a personal attack on someone. There is a grieving family here and they are yet to bury their loved one and... I need to take that into account.

 

"But I am very much aware that, on the other side of the issue, if I ban that record, then there are questions about freedom of speech and about censorship.

 

"So yes, I have compromised, but I believe it is the most logical compromise available to me."

 

3) The Joker's curse

 

Although the first singles chart was supposed to be a Top 12, it actually featured 15 songs, thanks to ties in 7th, 8th and 11th places.

 

But ties are pretty rare - and they have only caused a major controversy once in the chart's 70-year history.

 

In 1990, the two songs at the top of the charts achieved exactly the same number of sales. One was Steve Miller's 1972 rock smash The Joker, enjoying a revival thanks to its use in a Levi's commercial. The other was Deee-Lite's Groove Is In The Heart, a giddily playful wedding disco classic.

 

To much wringing of hands, the older song was given the number one spot - and John Pinder, chart manager for polling company Gallup, was wheeled out to explain why

 

"A ruling was established in 1973 by the British Phonographic Industry that there are no equal positions in the charts," he said. "The guidelines recommend that the preferred single is the one that has increased its sales most in the course of the week."

 

According to Pinder, The Joker's sales had gone up by 57%, and Deee-Lite's increase was only 37%.

 

But Deee-Lite's record label still were not happy - protesting that their brand new signing would benefit more from the publicity of scoring a number one single.

 

Their protest deflated, however, when it transpired The Joker had actually sold eight more copies than Groove Is In The Heart - 44,118 to 44,110 (a rounding error initially obscured the discrepancy).

 

In 1991, the rules were changed to allow ties again - such as when The Prodigy's Out Of Space shared 19th place with Lisa Stansfield's Some Day I'm Coming Back in January 1993 - but they are still uncommon.

 

4) Hyping the charts

 

As you would imagine, getting songs into the chart is pretty important to record labels; and sometimes the general public cannot be trusted to have good taste. So, at various points over the years, people have invested in alternative methods of cracking the Top 40.

 

In 1978, the Mirror newspaper uncovered evidence that a network of housewives was being paid to go into record shops and buy multiple copies of songs like Sweet Sweet Smile by The Carpenters, or Right Time Of The Night by Jennifer Warne.

 

"It is very important that you appear to be a normal customer making a genuine purchase," the record buyers were told. "Please do not quote the [catalogue] number of the record when asking for it."

 

Cunningly, the idea was to help songs into the lower reaches of the chart, after which, the Mirror reported: "Natural, genuine sales will take over as the record gets the exposure on radio and television that follows automatically once it is established in the top 50."

 

The paper's expose ended that particular scheme - but two years later, labels were at it again.

 

Two separate documentaries, one by BBC Two's Newsnight and the other by ITV's World In Action, claimed record stores were being sent free gifts to encourage them to falsify chart reports for acts like Fleetwood Mac, Gary Numan, Queen and The Pretenders.

 

One owner told World In Action they received items, including T-shirts and alcohol, worth as much as £237 in a single week (£911 in 2022 terms).

 

Sometimes, record companies would even send over free copies of songs they wanted to chart. It was claimed that this resulted in a band called Shy earning a Top 75 single, despite retailers only ordering 82 copies of the song.

 

The programmes led to a six-week investigation by the British record industry which found "a very thin dividing line between what is known as aggressive marketing and what is known as hyping".

 

It said that, while the practice was not widespread, some shops had received a "supply of promotional records" and "other unrelated material" in an effort to persuade owners to cook the books; and recommended that record label staff were no longer paid bonuses based on chart positions.

 

5) A historic low

 

Piracy plagued the music industry in the 2000s, as sites like Napster and Kazaa made millions of songs available for free, albeit illegally.

 

In the space of a decade, global recorded music revenues plummeted from $23.4bn (£20bn) in 2001 to $15.6bn (£13bn) in 2010.

 

The singles market was particularly badly hit, reaching a low point in March 2006, when US band Orson managed to top the charts with just 17,694 sales of their pop-rock radio hit No Tomorrow.

 

Analysts speculated that it signalled the death of the single as a consumer format.

 

Orson never reached the top 10 again, and split up in 2007. But band members George Astasio and Jason Pebworth have subsequently scored huge hits as writers for Girls Aloud (The Show), Iggy Azalea (Fancy) and Bebe Rexha (No Broken Hearts).

 

Elton John holds the record for the UK's best-selling number one single. His Princess Diana tribute Candle In The Wind 1997 sold 1.5 million copies in its first week of release, and went on to triple that figure.

 

6) Ed Sheeran breaks the chart (and finds a loophole)

 

The advent of streaming changed the charts forever. No longer did the Top 40 reflect the songs people were buying. Instead, it told you what they were listening to.

 

In many ways, this was a blessing. It certainly broke the X Factor's stranglehold on the number one spot, because people generally bought the winners' singles as a souvenir, rarely listening to the musical monstrosities they contained (there is a reason why Little Mix airbrushed Cannonball from their official discography).

 

But the popularity of streaming also broke the charts in new, unique ways.

 

For one week in March 2017, Ed Sheeran had 16 singles in the Top 20, including nine in the Top 10. The reason? He had just released a new album, ÷, and fans were streaming it in their millions.

 

The Official Chart Company responded by rewriting its rules. Since June 2017, artists have only been allowed three songs in the Top 100 at any one time.

 

The changes are meant to "ensure the chart continues to be a showcase for the new hits and talent which are the lifeblood of UK music".

 

"This is not a chart for album tracks; we want to remain the Official Singles Chart, for singles," chief executive Martin Talbot told NME.

 

"It's tougher than ever for new music and developing artists to break through, and this is us doing our bit," he added.

 

However, sneaky old Ed Sheeran has found a loophole. This August, the star had seven entries in the Top 100 - three as a solo act, and four as a guest vocalist on songs by Camila Cabello, Burna Boy, Fireboy DML and Russ.

 

There's no stopping him, is there?

 

7) Ellie Goulding's suspicious number one

 

 

The other way that streaming affects the singles chart is the avalanche of Christmas songs which appear every December, as everyone plays Now That's What I Call Christmas on a loop.

 

Last year, 29 of the top 40 singles on Christmas week were festive favourites like Last Christmas, Santa Baby and Let It Snow,

 

But 2020 threw up a strange anomaly: Ellie Goulding's cover of Joni Mitchell's River soared to the top of the charts, beating all of those perennial favourites.

 

On the face of it, the feat seemed impossible. The song was exclusive to Amazon - meaning the only way to it was to stream or download it on their Music app, or to play it on Ellie's YouTube channel. River was not available on Spotify or Apple Music, and you could not buy it in the shops.

 

Even so, it clocked up 78,000 sales. But, as many people pointed out, she had an unfair advantage.

 

Amazon gave River a prominent place on its Christmas-themed playlists. So every time someone said, "Alexa, play me Christmas music" while they boiled their sprouts, they inevitably heard Ellie's song. And each of those plays counted towards the chart.

 

What is more, the charts are weighted in favour of new songs - meaning River earned one "sale" when it was streamed 100 times on Amazon's subscription service; while Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You needed 200 streams before a "sale" was counted.

 

So while Ellie's number one was not a fix, it certainly felt suspicious - and the debate over whether active streams (where the listener selects a song and presses play) and passive streams (where the song plays automatically) should be counted differently still rages today.

 

Some other chart statistics

 

Most number ones: Elvis Presley, with 21

 

First foreign-language number one: Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus (1969)

 

Longest song title: Rod Stewart's You Can Make Me Dance Sing Or Anything (Even Take The Dog For A Walk, Mend A Fuse, Fold Away The Ironing Board, Or Any Other Domestic Shortcomings)

 

Shortest song duration: Jonny Trunk and Wisbey's The Ladies Bras, at 36 secs

 

Longest song duration: The Orb's Blue Room, at 39 mins 57 secs

 

The Abba anomaly: Abba's SOS is the only palindromic hit by a palindromic artist.

Edited November 13, 20222 yr by Mark.

In 1962, the Beatles cut their breakthrough single Please, Please Me at Abbey Road studios. When they finished the 18th, and final, take, producer George Martin said: "Gentlemen, you have just made your first number one record."

 

And he was right - but only if you read the NME, Melody Maker, or Record Mirror. In the "official" chart, Please, Please Me was denied the top spot by yodelling crooner Frank Ifield and his song Wayward Wind.

 

It's a good article. However, the author musn't be aware that by the time 'Please, Please Me' had been released, Record Mirror had stopped compiling its own chart and was publishing the Record Retailer chart which means that the single also peaked at number 2 in Record Mirror.

 

 

Great article, thanks for sharing

nice read, a very down-to-earth article, it's like if it were written by one of us, especially the part of Ellie Goulding :)

 

was Ellie's River available on YT? cos I remember not being able to check the song for ages, I would have if it were available on YT I'd say

was Ellie's River available on YT? cos I remember not being able to check the song for ages, I would have if it were available on YT I'd say

Yep! There's been a music video on there for it since 4 Dec 2019.

Also I like to add we passed the 1400th #1 landmark this year and that 1400th #1 goes to Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal currently we are on 1404th for Taylor Swift, since the singles chart began.

Edited November 13, 20222 yr by Mart!n

wikipedia says Anti-Hero is the 1404th?

Also I like to add we passed the 1400th #1 landmark this year and that 1400th #1 goes to Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal currently we are on 1403th for Taylor Swift, since the singles chart began.

There have been four number ones since BOTA so Anti-Hero is the 1404th, which it does also mention in the full version of the article!

 

However, if you don't count re-issues as separate number ones, we're on the 1398th.

There have been four number ones since BOTA so Anti-Hero is the 1404th, which it does also mention in the full version of the article!

 

However, if you don't count re-issues as separate number ones, we're on the 1398th.

 

 

Its my fault I didn't add David Guetta & Bebe Rexha to my database, I knew something was afoot somewhere.

A chart controversy that isn't mentioned in the article is 'God Save The Queen' v 'I Don't Want To Talk About It' for the Silver Jublilee number 1 in June 1977. I think that one may have been done to death though. Plus the sales figures were never disclosed for that unlike for the Deee-Lite / Steve Miller Band controversy in 1990. In addition, despite what is written in the article, tied positions no longer exist as they vanished when Millward Brown took over from Gallup in compiling the chart back in 1994.

Who is Jennifer Warne?

 

I've heard of Jennifer Warnes!

yep I don’t recognise Eliza Rose as the 1400th number one

 

I just hope the Real 1400th number one isn’t LadBaby, which seems to be a real possibility now with Taylor refusing to budge from number one for the time being, and as far as I can tell he hasn’t given any indication that he won’t be doing a song this year.

 

I presume the Christmas remix of Three Lions will be combined with the original in which case I won’t count it as a new number one if that ends up as number one.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/nov/...or-it-to-retire

 

The UK singles chart is 70. Is it time for it to retire?

 

Once the top 40 was the undisputed soundtrack of a nation. But in an era when you can have a platinum record that gets to No 81, does it even make sense any more?

 

Some enterprising soul has uploaded The Chart Busters to YouTube, a 1980 World in Action investigation into “hyping” singles that caused quite a commotion at the time. A saga of labels colluding with retailers to falsify sales figures, featuring palms greased with scotch and wine, it suggested three of the top five singles had, initially at least, been hyped into the charts: not to No 1, but just high enough to qualify for radio play and Top of the Pops. “The charts are in no way a guide to what’s accurately selling,” said one former label employee. “They’re a joke.”

 

The evidence was damning and there was fallout: shortly after the show was broadcast, the managing director of one major label resigned, supposedly “coincidentally”. But the really weird thing was the impact The Chart Busters had on the popularity of the chart. It had none. Audiences didn’t turn off Radio 1’s Sunday evening countdown in disgust. There was no dip in TOTP viewing figures. Kids continued to sneak radios into school, to hear the new No 1 revealed at Tuesday lunchtimes. It was as if the Top 40 was just an impregnable fact of British musical life, too important and longstanding to be shaken even by accusations that it was, at least partially, fixed.

 

The singles chart the BBC used established itself as market leader, triumphing over those compiled by the NME, Melody Maker and Record Retailer. (Actually, the BBC chart was initially just an aggregate of all the others, but from 1969 it was a separate entity – compiled, as Radio 1 DJs loftily reminded us, “by the British Market Research Bureau”.) From that moment on, the Top 40 more or less defined pop in Britain: “the single most important piece of promotion any record can get,” as one interviewee said.

 

It was omnipresent. Walk into a record shop and there it was – pages pinned to the wall, singles racked out on shelves. Even if you professed to hate it and all it stood for, the chart still seemed totemic: the Top 40 was the thing “serious” rock bands – most famously Led Zeppelin – defined themselves against by declining to release singles. You could mock it, ignore it or dismiss it as a corruption-filled joke, but nothing could affect its position: The Only Chart That Counts, in the words of the bullish Radio 1 jingle.

 

It’s like a piece of software that used to work but has now had too many updates, patches and bug fixes

Until something – or some things – did affect it. This year, the UK Singles Chart is celebrating its 70th birthday in a noticeably different climate, one in which its grip on public imagination – and indeed the music industry – seems to have slackened completely. It no longer feels omnipresent. When was the last time you walked into a bricks-and-mortar record store and saw the Top 40, or read a news piece about a hotly contested “battle” for No 1? When was the last time you overheard music-mad teenagers talking about where a song was in the charts?

 

Even the Christmas No 1, once the most prestigious placing of all, barely musters any attention. Perhaps it lost its lustre in the era of The X Factor, cannily positioned in the TV schedules so that the winner’s debut single was released a week before Christmas, almost guaranteeing it topped the festive chart. This fabulously cynical piece of marketing resulted in some of the least memorable Christmas No 1s of all time. Say what you like about Bob the Builder or Mr Blobby, but they were at least striking in a way that Ben Haenow’s cover of OneRepublic’s Something I Need wasn’t. For the last four years, the Christmas No 1 has been a charity single by a YouTube vlogger about sausage rolls, which seems to have provoked little more than a collective shrug. The sense that no one cares is hard to avoid.

 

Part of the problem is that the traditional media outlets for the Top 40 have waned or vanished. TOTP was put out of its misery 16 years ago. Listener figures for Radio 1’s flagship Sunday countdown went into decline in the early 00s. In 2002, its audience had fallen by 300,000 to 2.6 million; by 2020, with the show relocated to the Friday evening drivetime slot, it was attracting only 1.4 million. By contrast, Radio 2’s Pick of the Pops – on which Paul Gambaccini runs down Top 20s from the 60s to the 00s – gets 2.5 million. A few years back, the Daily Mail reported this as evidence that “the old songs are the best”. It’s more likely that the only people listening to charts are those old enough to remember when they mattered.

 

In fairness, the Official Charts company, which took over compilation in 1990, has done its best to maintain interest in a changed landscape: it has a snazzy website that runs news features, lists new releases and has a searchable database. It also makes a point of handing out a physical award to any act that makes No 1, which makes for a useful photo opportunity. But it feels like it’s fighting a losing battle to attract the attention of the charts’ traditional audience of tweens and twentysomethings, whose listening habits have changed completely as a result of streaming.

 

The years since Spotify’s UK launch have given rise to an odd phenomenon, with artists being awarded gold and platinum sales certificates for singles that made hardly any impact on the charts. Alt-rockers Catfish and the Bottlemen have released three platinum-selling singles, the highest-charting reaching No 81; rapper Tyler, the Creator’s See You Again and singer-songwriter Rex Orange County’s Best Friend and Loving Is Easy managed to go gold without making the singles chart at all. It happens because these songs have been streamed an enormous amount over a long period of time. Nevertheless, the existence of Big Singles Artists who barely appear in the singles chart can’t help but make the singles chart look irrelevant.

 

Chart compilers have tried to keep up, endeavouring to pull off an impossible balancing act in which streaming is reflected – 100 paid-for streams or 600 ad-funded streams count as one sale – while also attempting to keep the appearance of the singles chart the same as ever: largely dominated by recent releases, featuring a wide range of artists and a high turnover of songs in weekly motion. After what we might as well call the Ed Sheeran Incident – when the release of his 2017 album ÷ led to nine slots in the Top 10 being occupied by its tracks – the number of songs allowed in the chart by a single artist was restricted to three.

 

That same year saw the introduction of Accelerated Chart Ratios, designed to ensure that certain songs don’t hang around for ever. After three weeks in the chart, the number of streams required to count as one sale doubles to 200 paid-for streams, or 1,200 ad-funded. It caused controversy earlier this year, when Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill only reached No 2, despite selling and streaming substantially more than the No 1, Harry Styles’s As It Was. It transpired that the ACR rule applied to all songs over three years old. Faced with the prospect of denying a beloved British musical institution the No 1 she’d clearly earned, the rule was waived the following week.

 

Overheated madness … the front cover of the NME in August 1995.

 

You can understand why these rules were instituted, but the result is an increasingly Byzantine system that clearly doesn’t offer an accurate picture of what’s popular: there’s a sense the singles chart resembles a piece of software that used to work but has been subject to so many updates, patches and bug fixes over the years that it’s now barely fit for purpose. Perhaps understandably, labels are far less interested in the charts than they were in the days when the Top 40 was deemed so important they were bribing shop owners to fiddle the figures.

 

Clearly, no label is going to turn its nose up at a No 1 single but, increasingly, the chart is less important as a metric of popularity than other measures of success, from analysing data about “rich engagement” (how streaming figures are spread across an artist’s entire catalogue) to the size and activity of fan communities on such websites as Discord. And then there is Spotify’s Global chart, which collates daily streaming figures from across the world.

 

It’s a situation that would once have seemed unimaginable, even to the World in Action interviewee who deemed the charts “a joke”. At 70, the singles chart finds itself largely unloved, ignored and dismissed as irrelevant: to paraphrase the gloomy first world war song, it seems to still be here because it’s always been here. Without wishing to spoil the birthday celebrations, it’s hard not to wonder if it will be around to celebrate its 80th.

 

The five greatest singles battles

The Beatles – Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane v Engelbert Humperdinck – Release Me (1967)

 

A chart battle that tells you a lot about the pace at which pop music moved in the mid-60s and the fault lines that opened up as a result. Every new Beatles single since 1963 had gone to No 1: their most experimental and arguably greatest didn’t, bested by a ballad designed to appeal to those left behind by pop’s relentless, chemically accelerated progress: a victory for the forces of reaction.

 

Sex Pistols – God Save the Queen v Rod Stewart – I Don’t Want to Talk About It (1977)

 

The outrage caused by the Sex Pistols’ second single now looks oddly quaint and hilariously counter-productive: the impact of radio, television and most major retailers banning a single is bound to be nullified by it receiving daily publicity in every tabloid. Skullduggery was alleged – but never proven – in Rod Stewart’s eventual triumph.

 

 

John Lennon – (Just Like) Starting Over v St Winifred’s School Choir – There’s No One Quite Like Grandma (1980)

 

There was a theory that the Christmas No 1 was the most accurate reflection of Britain’s music taste: people who didn’t ordinarily buy singles felt compelled to do so. Perhaps that accounts for how a Stockport primary school temporarily overwhelmed the mourning for a recently murdered Beatle: normal service was resumed the minute the tinsel came down.

 

Blur – Country House v Oasis – Roll With It (1996)

 

There is perhaps no greater example of the overheated madness of the 90s than the Blur v Oasis war: contemporary coverage had it wrecking marriages (at least if you believed the Sun) and reflecting everything from Britain’s obsession with class to the north-south divide. That neither single was particularly good appeared beside the point.

 

True Steppers feat Victoria Beckham and Dane Bowers – Out of Your Mind v Spiller feat Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love) (2000)

 

The point at which it became apparent the Spice Girls’ solo careers might not work out as expected: Posh’s diversion into UK garage upstaged by a disco-house track with a vocal by a then-minor indie artist. Beckham’s frantic attempts to ensure her single reached No 1 – including dragging husband David along to a signing in Woolworths in Oldham – were made more piquant by Ellis-Bextor’s apparent indifference (“I feel like saying if you want it, just have it”).

Interesting to see Ellie being mentioned here as a 'controversy' as I don't recall that really getting mainstream attention in the same way as other things on this list (or even, say, the Kate Bush ACR controversy). Almost as if the source for this article writer is just seeing people running the Alexa joke into the ground on BuzzJack :kink: Great article anyway, also surprised at Sex Pistols not being mentioned as that's probably the first thing I'd think of when it comes to chart controversies!

I was expecting stuff like Ne-Yo 'So Sick' getting the #1 because many downloads for Embrace 'Nature's Law' in 2006 got lost in the chart compiling system (and could've been #1?). Though, that probably wasn't "historic", but I consider that a bit "controversial".

 

'Ding Dong' at #2 was not "controversial" to me. It's R1 not playing that is the controversial part.

Edited November 14, 20222 yr by All★bySmashMouth

Is that Ellie theory actually true though? I remember people were really pushing it at the time but I tested it myself and Alexa just played Mariah Carey...

Ellie's song was definitely very generously promoted by Amazon's Christmas playlists, yes. I remember people at the time saying that it would sometimes play the Ellie song multiple times in a session while not repeating other songs but that's anecdotal at best (though something like that has to have been true for it to get the numbers it did, short of Amazon literally entirely making up numbers).

yes I tried many times and Alexa was doing:

River-Mariah-Wham-Slade-River-Shakin'Stevens-Ariana-Kelly-River-Jingle Bells-Bubble-Pogues-River-etc etc

When Steve Miller Band and Deee-Lite both tied for #1, the #1 that week should’ve been given to Deee-Lite as it was a brand new song. If they had the rules so that if a song tied for #1, it was given to the newer song, then both Deee-Lite and Steve Miller Band would’ve had turns at #1 instead of the latter getting multiple weeks at #1 and the former getting no weeks at #1. I think Deee-Lite were robbed of #1 due to stupid rules

Edited November 15, 20222 yr by Hadji

Did you read the full article? The Joker actually sold eight more copies when they investigated it further so it was the rightful victor of the chart regardless of anyones personal opinion on which song is newer or better.