Col1967

Yes indeed, I addressed that point in my edit :) It enables tracks to pile up sales of course but it does clog up the charts with old hits and must surely allow fewer singles to enter the charts which can't be good for new acts wanitng that all important first chart hit. I don't think anything can or indeed *should* be done about it though. The charts should reflect what the public are buying, no more no less.

I was around in those days and although that chart rise quoted is a bit extreme, 39-11-3-2-1 might have been more typical there were more climbers than today though OAOS is increasing them to a more healthy number. There were certainly very few new entries at no.1 and even new entries in the top 10 were fairly rare in the early 80s. What you didn't get in those days was massive hits making their way painfully down the charts like 'Someone Like You' is doing at the moment. Even million sellers that had spent weeks at no.1 usually disappeared fairly quickly. 'Come on Eileen' by Dexy's Midnight runners in 1982 went 2-3-9-14-20-36-52-66 after it fell from no.1. Just 8 weeks in the top 75. By comparison SLY was still as high as no.17 8 weeks after dropping from no.1 and surely has many weeks left in the top 40, let alone the top 75.

If we are allowed tracks that spent zero weeks at number one and reached number 2 then "I swear' by All for One would have reached number one were it not for 'Love is all Around' by Wet Wet wet. Seven weeks which I'm pretty sure is the record for consectutive weeks at no.2. We also have 'I'm too Sexy' by Right said Fred spending 6 weeks behind 'Everything I do I do it for you' by Bryan Adams.

You may well be right in that you had to 'be there' at the time. I was :) In 1984, Frankie were a phenomenon. The banning of 'Relax' and the banning of the 'Two Tribes' video as well. And the 'Frankie Say' T-shirts fuelled the general hype & excitement. By 1986 and the release of the 'Liverpool' album the Frankie bubble had well and truely burst.

Fair enough for the US but unless the album shifts ridiculous quantities in the UK like 4-500k in the first week then I suspect that any 'selling out' claims are merely a marketing ploy. I will reserve judgement when I know the first week sales figures.

Call me cynical but is all this 'selling out' stuff just another marketing ploy to create even more hype & frenzy around the album? Why don't record stores order enough copies to see them through a few weeks? they know they're going to sell them. But I imagine most of them do. There will be some at which shortages will be, ahem, 'arranged' so that they can claim that they are 'sold out' which feeds into the marketing frenzy.

That's only funny cos it's true :) No doubt Buzzjack 1971 would be lamenting the split of The Beatles and moaning about acts like The Osmonds & David Cassidy that teenage girls would scream at but had no real talent......

Don't forget that Cliff in the late 50s was far removed from the middle of the road entity we know today. He was portrayed as a proper rock 'n' roll figure, and seen by many as the British Elvis.

I suspect the poll was aimed at people who post on Buzzjack who would be unlikely to be very familar with 60s music, and certainly not very likey to be familiar enough to vote the decade their favourite. What happened during the 60s essentially created the 'pop culture' we know today, but what about the 50s? The birth of the rock 'n' roll era by 1955 and artists like Elvis and Cliff Richard surely laid the groundwork for the full-blooded sixties revolution.

To be fair the Radio One chart show isn't aimed at people our age. Yes, I find it annoying, sometimes I just think GET ON WITH IT! Bring back Tony Blackburn, that's what I say. You didn't get this kind of nonsense with him at the helm......

I think it's probably due to the fact that back then releases didn't tend to coincide with the start of a new chart week, so you'd get a 'part week' for the new entry position, then rising to no.1 for the first full week of sales. Of course prior to 1969 there were several competing charts, they may well have had different 'chart weeks' anyway.

Yes. 4 tracks came straight in at no.1 in 1973, 3 by Slade and one by Gary Glitter. I have heard it said that 1973 was something of an anomaly in chart terms in that it made entering at no.1 rather easier that it was before. 'Get Back' by The Beatles in 1969 was the previous one, and before that Cliff Richard with 'The Young Ones' in 1962.

I first started following the charts properly in 1980 and still remember The Jam coming straight in at no.1 with 'Going Underground'. Little did I know at the time how unusual that was, the first time for 7 years. Throughout the 80s it only happened once every couple of years or so. Even coming straight in to the top 10 was pretty unusual. So yes, it's climbers for me, if only for nostalgia purposes to be like the charts I was 'brought up' with. The nightmare period for me was 1995-2005 when singles tended to crash in at their highest position then usually rapidly disappear. A true chart climber became as rare as rocking horse $h!t. Whilst it is true in the mid-late 90s I was losing interest in chart music generally anyway, the way the chart behaved certainly didn't help hold my interest. Once a single had debuted, it was only ever going to fall, so beyond the one week excitement of where it would enter there was little interest. I have high hopes that the 'On air, on sale' policy will return the charts roughly to where they were in the 1980s in terms of climbers/new entries. However in the 1980s once singles had peaked they tended to fall rapidly out of the chart compared to today. Now singles can take months or even years to finally dissapear.

There is actually one (possibly two) others. Oasis with 'Wonderwall'. Bing Crosby's White Christmas may well have sold a million. Apart from as a re-release in 1977 when it made no.5 and as minor entries in the download era it's sales were well before the time the charts existed. We will never know for sure of course but I'd like to think it did, not bad for the 1940s :)

There have only been a tiny handful of million sellers that didn't reach no.1. 'Torn' by Natalie Imbruglia is the only other one I can readily think of. Last Christmas sold 1.5m but only got to no.2 due to the exceptional circumstances of Band Aid being no.1. Blue Monday accmulated it's sales over a 12 year period. Thinking about it, even 'Torn' only reached a million in the download era. In the future of course there will be quite a few no.2s (and lower) peaking singles that will stagger over the finishing line to a million sales, perhaps several years (or longer) after intial release. 'Love the way You Lie' for example should make it by the end of this year.

Not surprisingly, that's what I went for too. There was some good music around in the early/mid 90s, especially the Britpop stuff but by the late 90s my interest had waned considerably. From then until 2007 when downloads were fully incorporated which re-ignited my interest in chart music, I recall from the time only a tiny handful of tracks. Even the vast majority of no.1s simply passed me by.

I don't think anybody is claiming that it is an indication of the longer term sucess of the track. You can't extrapolate that from a day and a half worth of sales on iTunes. It is merely interesting to see when and indeed *if* she makes no.1. And I see this morning that she is still no.2.

There was indeed a delay until the Wednesday if there had been Monday Bank Holiday. In addition there wasn't a chart at all between Christmas and New Year. On the Sunday of this non-chart week, Radio One took the opportunity to broadcast the 40 best sellers of the year.

And this week 446,025. If these are representative sales figues for a Korean no.1, that's like approaching an X-Factor winner's first week sales every single week and with a population of 49m compared to the UK's 60m! In their chart singles in the mid 30s sell like an average no.1 here. Also, the ratio of sales of the no.1 track compared to those in the 30s seems to be a lot less there. Clearly a very different business model to selling singles. I wonder if it will ever happen here?

What's cheesy about the Safety Dance? I find it just a little bit 'creepy' if anything with all that Medieval prancing about and animal heads and stuff, but I guess I've watched 'The Wicker Man' (The original of course) too many times :)

I bought it because I really like it, not to keep something I don't like off no.1

They didn't quite ignore the song on TOTP, they just mentioned that Frankie Goes to Hollywood was no.1 with 'Relax' and then the programme ended. But is still made them look like completer numpties, TOTP traditionally ended with the no.1 song, not to show that was a huge sense of anti-climax, to say the least.

Fair enough, I know how precious the data is to the OCC. Of course you *can* calculate sales from the previous week from subtracting the last two figures but not for the *current* week.

Why not add the sales figure the track has obtain for that particular week, so people can get a broad view of which tracks are likely to overtake others in the following few weeks?