Chartfridays

#4 Auf Wiedersehen Sweetheart - Vera Lynn Debut - 14 November 1952 Peak: #10 WoC: 1 8WsuLH4sulA The first of 3 entries for Vera Lynn in the first week's countdown and the first of 12 UK Top 75s for the nation’s wartime sweetheart. Although those statistics are mainly due to the time that the chart began being at the end of it’s run of popularity, with it having done well on the sheet music charts earlier in the year. It’s significance is most notable however across the pond, where it became the first song by a foreign artist to top the Billboard charts - spending 9 weeks at the #1 of the ‘Best Sellers in Store’ charts and 4 at the #1 of the jukebox play chart. The next would be 6 years later with Laurie London ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.’ Whilst Vera’s relevance in terms of the popular singles chart would wane by the end of the 50s, although she’d experience some success in 2010 as a result of both Covid and her death at the age of 103, she would remain dear to generations who remember her wartime contributions to media and her singing, both on the home front and out to see the troops. She would also have some successes on the album charts from the 1980s onwards including a No 1 in 2009.

Unfortunately despite it's children's radio popularity it doesn't crop up in the fifties sales charts as far as I can see, I don't think it crops up in any of the others either but don't have them in hand to check. But there will be plenty more to come from him of course.

Might as well get your target audience to write the songs

3 Track Ruled Top 20 #1 Girls Want Girls - Drake #2 Champagne Poetry - Drake #3 Fair Trade W(With Travis Scott) - Drake #4 Stay - Justin Bieber with Kid Laroi #5 Bad Habits - Ed Sheeran #6 Good 4 U - Olivia Rodrigo #7 Hurricane - Kanye West #8 Industry Baby - Lil Nas X, Jack Harlow #9 Remember - Becky Hill, David Guetta #10 Black Magic - Jonasu #11 Heat Waves - Glass Animals #12 OUT OUT - Joel Corry, Charli XCX, Saweetie, Jax Jones #13 Clash - Stormzy ft Dave #14 Need To Know - Doja Cat #15 Woman - Doja Cat #16 Happier Than Ever - Billie Eilish #17 Don't Shut Me Down - ABBA #18 Wasted - ArrDee ft Digga D #19 I Still Have Faith in You - ABBA #20 Off The Grid - Kanye West

With album averages I can't see how he can from streaming, his averages will be awful, you just have to look at the 900k gap between Track 1 and Track 21 on Drake's album, people aren't finishing it and there dropping it track by track so it's hard to see them coming back to it this week. For the tracks that matter it's 600k.

No Maiden tracks in the top 200, which honestly i find a bit surprising but we know their sales would be 'real sales' mainly. Meanwhile #35 Don't Shut Me Down #37 I Still Have Faith in You #95 Dancing Queen #119 Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight) #177 Mamma Mia #183 Chiquita

This a classic 2+2 = 5 but found it interesting seen as the top 200 hasn't updated yet for me. If you take the 6 hour streams from Thursday and add them to the 24 hour ones (assuming, a big if, if it was released at midnight it would still have been checked out by everybody who's listened) they'd be sat between Hurricane and Industry Baby. Once you cap drake to 3 tracks that's #7 and #8. These will deffo be in the first look top 10 and could well make it to the Top 20 by the end of the week.

A million streams in a single day for the Top 3 tracks. Insanity.

ABBA at 35 and 37. Which once you cut the Drake tracks to 3 is actually #17 and #19. (Spotify)

#3 Cowpuncher's Cantata - Max Bygraves Debut: 14 November 1953 Peak: #7 Runs: 11 (B) 8 (B) 6-9-7-8-12 (B) 10 1Xd3gJ-9-T0 Throughout the years of the chart that follow on our slow-ride through the charts we’ll encounter no shortage of medley’s, megamixes, quirky songs and the much fabled and much adored by the British record buying public novelty song. Although some of those looking askance at the current Top 40s might question if you could tell the difference between quirky songs and popular music anyway. It takes us just three songs of this run-down to encounter our first, a parody melody from comedian and singer Max Bygraves who traded a post-war career in construction for touring variety shows and later for television, going on to host Royal Variety Performances and Family Fortunes, as well as his own TV shows. The track is a medley of American songs such as Mule Train / Cry of the Wild Goose / Ghost’s Riders of the Sky arranged for comedic effect. It would have a surprising durability at the time, re-entering 3 times in the first quarter of 1953 for a total of 8 weeks on the chart, with a longest consecutive run of 5 weeks.

That's sad, that he didn't have the confidence to go for it even when he was entered, although at least you got to hear his singing voice.

That was the awful one they tried to add dreadful comedy too wasn't it. It was also during a shit period for music. It had quite a lot against it. Also on a Friday night when many people are out. A Thursday night show trailing new releases for the following week before they're out could do a lot better.

The gaping whole of TOTP staring right at us in the BBC schedule. It really needs reviving or an updated version of it. Especially as with covid people would probably be more open to the performances being stripped down with no audience, or I'm front of an audience in another country. With the increasing homogenisation of music you'd think NBC, BBC and EBC would get together on this sort of project.

Yup. This looks like a disaster for them so far.

Trashy bangers are the absolute mainstay of pop music and the fact that pop has spent the last few years missing a clear master at them cos she was experimenting is a tragedy.

To get that high in just 6 hours for ABBA is pretty insane then. Imagine where they'd be if they'd actually dropped at midnight like everyone else on the planet.

Spotify? Does this just cover release til midnight or does it take into account today, if the former wow? #65 ABBA - I Still Have Faith in You #79 ABBA - Don't Shut Me Down

Adele

Hasn't Spotify normally updated by now or is it different on Fridays?

You're likely going to have a top 10 which is Ed Sheeran, 3 songs from kanye, 3 songs from Drake - so that only leaves 3 open spaces for 2 ABBA tracks to hone in.

It came out overnight didn't it so longer than 6 hours.

You do have to wonder why labels still persist with him?

Internationally, it's Thriller isn't it?

Meanwhile at the top of the albums #1 Iron Maiden - Senjutsu #2 Drake - Certified Lover Boy #3 Imagine Dragons - Mercury Act 1

#2 - Because You’re Mine - Mario Lanza Debut: 14 November 1952 Peak: 3 / WoC: 24 / Woc T40: 24 Run: - 11 - 8 - 4 - 3 - 5 - 10 - 10 - 7 - 8 - 3 - 4 - 4 - 4 - 4 - 3 - 5 - 4 - 5 - 5 - 7 - 8 - 10 - 10 - 11 O6PZvj49IuM Film and music have been intrinsically linked, even in the era of silent films musical accompaniments by live bands would sometimes be played in the theatres to add atmosphere to the films. As time moved on, the films began to be released with their own soundtracks and music becoming a tool of promotion for the film itself. By the 1950s this precedent was firmly established, as we see with the release of Because You’re Mine by Mario Lanza. The film was a musical comedy about a singer drafted into the army who tricks his sergeant to allow him to go and appraise the sergeant’s sister's singing voice but in reality is using it as a ploy to go to do a performance which has consequences. It spent 24 weeks on the chart from 14 November 1952 to 24 April 1953 as the film played in theatres, it would be the first of four/five Top 40 hits for Lanza depending on whether you class Serenade’s two versions separately. It would peak at No 3 on three different weeks.