Robbie

'Race With The Devil' by Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps is a great song. Vincent's unsual stance while performing was partly down to the fact that he had to wear a leg brace following a serious crash in 1955 which left his left leg shattered. He wore the brace for the rest of his life.

Skybet have Robbie Williams as favourite, presumably with 'Time For Change'. I've not heard it but I wouldn't have thought he stood a chance. The betting: https://m.skybet.com/tv-music-and-film/uk-c.../event/24812487 ^ presumably the above is constantly updated so checking back in a few days or even hours may show something different. Currently: Robbie Williams - 4/1 Lewis Capaldi - 5/1 James Blunt - 6/1 WHAM - 6/1 Chris Kamara - 7/1 Celebrity X Factor 2019 Winner - 10/1 Ed Sheeran - 10/1 Mariah Carey - 10/1 Stormzy - 10/1 Adele - 12/1 Arizona Zervas - 12/1 Little Mix - 14/1

21-25 (top 40), 41-50 (top 100).

Not that it would make a difference to revenue but by being relegated to the Compilation Albums chart it will have lost any streaming sales. Not that it probably had many anyway?

I'm team Emma here. 'What I Am' is such a great song and still sounds good today.

I'm afraid the X-Factor and then streaming killed off the Christmas number 1 being a big event. Though it's 10 years ago this Christmas since the big anti X-Factor campaign that saw Rage Against The Machine take the Christmas number 1. That may have been the last big Christmas number 1 event.

Even in the days of downloads 'Driving Home For Christmas' was just a low top 40 hit each year. That track has suddenly started doing well since streaming was factored into the charts. I've never liked the song though. It was first released in 1986 as a B side then promoted to the A side in 1987 before becoming the lead track of a 4 track EP in December 1988. It's always been a massive radio hit though but as soon as I hear the intro I have to turn off the radio...

'Underneath The Tree' and 'One More Sleep' are both modern day Christmas classics. The efforts by Coldplay, The Killers, Ariana Grande, Sia and Katy Perry are all a bit dull. It's good that we do get Christmas songs coming out these days. For a long while acts had given up on releasing Christmas tracks or like the Spice Girls put a woeful cover of a classic Christmas song ('Crhristmas Wrapping which they butchered) on the B side of their big Christmas release ('Goodbye'). Going off on a tangent here I've just found out that the lyrics to the Christmas classic 'I Believe In Father Christmas' by Greg Lake (number 2 at Christmas 1975 behind 'Bohemian Rhapsody') weren't written by Greg Lake. They were in fact written by Pete Sinfield, the former King Crimson member who wrote a few songs for Bucks Fizz as well as many other acts including the brilliant 'The Land Of Make Believe' which was a number 1 in January 1982. Greg Lake wrote the music although some of the melody is based on a classical musical piece (Lieutenant Kijé by Sergei Prokofiev),

I didn't know that either. Looking up the songwriter (James Kennedy) on wikipedia he wrote quite a few successful songs including childrens favourite 'Teddy Bears Picnic" as well as World War II favourite 'We're Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line', a version of the 'Hokey Cokey' and The Platters massive hit 'My Prayer'. Quite a versatile songwriter; he was born in Omagh and lived much of his life in Somerset. This is what I like about these threads about old charts, I find out something new each time.

If anyone is interested in reading the 14 November 1952 issue of the New Musical Express which contains the first ever UK singles sales chart then click on https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archiv...11-14-S-OCR.pdf which is downloadable as a PDF. The chart is on page 8. The newspaper cost 6d at the time which is the equivalent of 2½ pence. Allowing for inflation that is the equivelent of 71 pence today.

I can't imagine there would be any problems with me posting the link as the two boards complement each other rather than being rivals for the same types of threads. https://www.ukmix.org/showthread.php?20740 The September 1992 to January 1994 76-100 positions start on page 9. There's also a top 200 for 12 February 1994 (the first chart compiled by Millward Brown) on the same page.

'Genie In A Bottle' almost managed a third week at number 1: 1: Flying Without Wings - 92k 2: Genie In A Bottle - 87k 4: 2 Times - 76k 5: Larger Than Life - 56k 8: I Try - 42.1k Album Top 5: 1. Come On Over - Shania Twain - 58.5k 2. Us And Us Only - Charlatans - 40k 3. The Man Who - Travis 4. Peace - Eurythmics - 29k 5. Awake And Breathe - B*Witched 27k 6. On How Life Is - Macy Gray - 25.3k 12. A Love Like Ours - Barbra Streisand 12.5k Compilations 1. Now Dance 2000 - 44k

A very interesting idea for a thread! Sounds good to me. To answer a question in your first post: the 76 to 100 part of the Top 100 Singles charts on the OCC website are the "compressed" version (that is, exclusion rules as per 1983-91 applied) from 12 February 1994 to 16 April 2005. From 23 April 2005 downloads were incorporated into the chart and the old exclusion rules were dropped though of course new exclusion rules did get introduced. What isn't in the OCC archive are positions 76-100 from April 1991 to January 1994. While it looks like the full top 100 charts from April 1991 to August 1992 are now unobtainable (unless someone can get access to the BPI library as they do have them) I do have positions 76-100 (again with exclusion rules being applied) from September 1992 to January 1994. If you haven't got them and want them then let me know and I can direct you to a thread at ukmix where I posted them...

Thanks for starting these threads over the years gooddelta. It's been quite a while since I last posted in one simply because it's been quite a while since I bought either a download or an album and I stream so much that it would, as you posted, become an overwhelming task to list everything.

At the time I thought that 'Pump Up The Jam' had something of a retro feel to it. In places the music sounds modern (as in back in 1989) but there are also times where it does sound like it could have been from 1984 or 1985. I bought both singles so love both songs but I'll go for Black Box. Only the Loleatta Holloway sampled version though. The Heather Small version (which probably sold more copies back in 1989) is dreadful. As Alan Jones described her re-recording at the time it was like something you would find on those cheap 'Top Of The Pops' type albums that Hallmark Records used to release which often featured "gross cover versions". Alan (like the rest of us at the time) didn't know who the singer was on the re-recording and M-People were a couple of years away from making the charts so he just described her as an "inferior singer".

^ I've sent you a PM.

A great single by The Sugababes. It's my favourite by them. The number 1 album was 'Piece By Piece' by Katie Melua, on sales of 120,549. Sales information from Music Week was a bit thinner on the ground back then... SINGLES 78282 Sugababes 39612 Pussycat Dolls 24176 Sean Paul 20775 Kanye West 20374 Liberty X 13340 Tatu (8) 12267 Charlotte Church (10) 10652 Jo O’Meara (13) 9617 Paul Weller (15) 1250 Johnny Panic (78) ALBUMS 120549 Katie Melua 49356 David Gray 45951 James Blunt 38290 Jamie Cullum 23592 Corrs (14) 10514 Mariah Carey (33) COMPILATIONS 25980 Acoustic Love

The changed nature of the singles market these days means that any track released after the middle of the year doesn't really stand a chance of ending up as the top track of the year. And it would also struggle to get inside the end of year top 10 as all of the tracks in the above YTD list have passed 900,000 sales this year.

The author of the books, Graham Betts, posted the following at ukmix:

Yup. The heritage acts that attract the most streams are usually the same acts that have a greatest hits album in the top 40. Unless the chart rules change on how streams are allocated to an album (or unless a form of ACR is introduced for album streams) then those same albums are likely to be hanging around the charts for years to come.

If the track is on both a parent album and a best of / Greatest Hits album then the stream counts towards both albums. If the track features on more than one Greatest Hits / Best Of type album the stream will count towards the sale of either the album with the highest sale (I read that as meaning paid for sales) for that week or a hits album nominated in advance by the label.

It's a perfect example of how streaming benefits "sales" of best of albums, especially heritage acts. Streaming is the main reason why the album chart is full of Best Of or Greatest Hits albums.

Back then singles were usually sold at a much lower price in the week of release before going to full the price the next. It meant many people would buy the single the week it was released. Add in the fact that back then singles would normally be played on radio 4 to 6 weeks before the single was released and the release date would be publicised well in advance it meant that demand would be at its peak the week the single was released. Once the price increased the week after release sales would drop. The other thing back then was that it was common for singles to be deleted within 3 months of release (and often a lot sooner) so it restricted what a single could sell in the long run.

There were plenty of imports charting around that time. The exchange rate meant that it cost little more to buy them as import singles than it would cost to buy them once the records had a UK release. Apparently Lou Bega did very well on import because his UK record label had already informed record dealers that the single wouldn't be sold at a discount and that dealers would be charged full price for each copy they bought. Apparently the import version of 'Mambo No.5' was only 20p more than the UK release. re: DJ Jean - there were a handful of instances where more than one import version of a record was in the charts. Under chart rules if the import versions were from different distributors then sales weren't combined and each version charted separately. ATB's '9pm (Till I Come)' was at numbers 55 and 63 on separate imports on the chart dated 19 June 1999. Chart rules that prevented a record from occupying more than one chart place only applied when a record had been released in the UK. 'Don't Stop' - I can't think of any other import that had a longer run. What's impressive is that it racked up so many weeks in the period when there were exclusion rules applied to numbers 76-100 (which was to do with falling sales) and yet seems to have only fallen foul of the rule once, on 4 September 1999.

It's a nice track but owes a lot, at least in spirit, to Madonna's 'La Isla Bonita'. When the single was first released the CD2 version of 'Mi Chico Latino' was briefly withdrawn from shops due to a printing error (the artwork from CD1 was accidentally also printed on CD2). CD2 contained remixes of 'Mi Chico Latino'.