GreyAsh

The amount that Human Nature must have closed in on Beat It since Monday, I wouldn’t be surprised if it ends up at 4, or at least 5. It’s only 443 behind Beat It and only 92 behind Olivia Rodrigo despite being starred out at the bottom of the top 10 on Monday. Also very close for number 2 between Billie Jean and Dracula (just 73 sales). Edit: Human Nature wasn’t even top 13 on Sunday and wasn’t top 10 on Monday so it really is flying now. It’s notably ahead of both Olivia Rodrigo and Beat It on Apple and Spotify.

Yesss! For Human Nature - and so high compared with where it would have been on Monday. Another hit for Thriller.

Yes, probably EVERYONE thought you were being serious, no one got the joke - so there was no point in saying it.

Like it or not, this is part of the reason why songs like ‘Ordinary’, ‘Rein Me In’ - and even artists like Sabrina Carpenter are so successful these days: their music is accessible across the generations. Dance music and rap music have had their periods of dominating the charts, but they are only limited in their appeal. I have mixed feelings about this – generally I feel quite positive about it, but it does sometimes mean that the biggest hits are quite bland.

Interesting that DSTYGE was still so far ahead of Human Nature

On Spotify. But it seems considerably ahead on Apple and iTunes

I was pretty sure that Apple is behind in the same way that Spotify is. I thought that it was only Amazon that were on time.

Human Nature up to 5 on Apple - with Beat It at 10 and Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough at 11. I wonder how many songs have been that high on Apple, yet not charted during that week - particularly when not the week of an album drop. With the gap with ‘Don’t Stop…’ widening and being ahead on most platforms including iTunes, I feel it will be surprising if Human Nature doesn’t chart. It is seemingly ahead on Amazon too - but that could be because the other tracks have several versions in the chart there.

Yes - top 10 will be Go and 9 of the songs from last week’s top 10 , I’d assume.

I had hoped Human Nature would overtake for the First Look Chart as it is doing well on downloads and is significantly ahead on Apple. But I don’t know how it’s doing on Amazon.

I’m really loving the Ella Langley track.

So pleased to see ‘Little Lies’ going triple platinum. Is that the 5th Fleetwood Mac song to do so? And ‘Listen To Your Heart’ is one of my all time favourites. It deserves its platinum status.

This is fascinating. I wasn’t following the charts closely enough at the time, but I would love to look into this further if I had time to see if we could come up with any explanation between us. I just assumed that either red and blue both charted or 1 charted, but as you say, this wasn’t always the case.

I’m pretty sure the medley would not count towards the individual tracks, but I can’t think of any examples from the streaming era.

Possibly part of it is that I haven’t seen new rules that they have published in over 3 years, so they may have changed them in the meantime. I think things were a bit messy over Christmas, but can you think of any songs that haven’t been reset despite having a 25% increase in streams meaning they would go into the top 40 that week? From what I recall, Diana Ross was delayed but eventually got a reset.

I wonder if the lack of video charting on YouTube will cause it to fail to chart above the other 2 songs it has similar streaming numbers to.

Yes, I spotted that and commented on the sales thread. His suggestion worked in this scenario (last week) - but doesn’t work in many others. It’s frustrating that the rules are so opaque that even Alan (whose work I’ve been following since the 80s) doesn’t fully understand it. There are several compilations in the chart that are not currently the best selling compilations for those artists (Michael Jackson and probably Fleetwood Mac and George Michael to name a few).

Allegedly… but generally Number Ones sells more than The Essential (still remains to be seen this week) - for example it’s had 15 weeks in the sales chart this year compared with 1 for The Essential yet The Essential is usually the one that charts higher. So either: The record company is allowed to nominate one album at a time (and for one week nominated Michael - Soundtrack and earlier in the year nominated Number Ones for 1 week.) Or: The priority is given to the album that would chart highest if allocated the streams for its top 16 tracks. From what I can see, everyone in this group disagrees with me on that, but I’m adamant that one of these scenarios must be the case.

True. But ironically that was literally the era when songs debuted at number 1 then started their decline! Every single Melanie C song peaked in its debut position. I know we are talking about albums though and it was a mixed bag: lots of the biggest albums did grow over time, whereas other albums peaked in their debut position. As well as Melanie C: Christina Aguilera and Gabrielle also released albums that week that peaked much higher than they debuted (Gabrielle debuted at 25 and eventually reached to Number 1. And the Number 1 that week was one of the biggest selling albums of all time – by Shania Twain – that debuted at 15, then fell out of the chart completely (like Gabrielle) before eventually climbing to Number 1. I guess the Singles Chart and Albums Chart have swapped over!

Likewise frustrating that ‘Human Nature’ is unlikely to chart. I’m assuming that as it is more than 3 years old, even if it is reset, it will go back on to ACR at the same time as Michael Jackson’s other tracks - and even though it is far ahead of his 5th track - and doing really well on Apple - it looks like it will remain far behind his top 3 tracks on Spotify.

please delete

Red and Blue - do these albums still sell on vinyl?

Love this song!

I assume the spike in interest for MJ increased sales of Number Ones. Plus when streams of songs from the soundtrack like Billie Jean are removed from both compilations , the streaming advantage of having lots of tracks was not enough for The Essential to overcome the sales advantage of Number Ones. It’s a delicate balance!

It is likely to get reset this week like the Justin Bieber songs were and therefore might climb into Michael Jackson’s top 3 next week.