jimwatts

Best of Week 24 poll results 8 Heaven 17 - Temptation 8 The Police - Every Breath You Take 7 The Human League - (Keep Feeling) Fascination 6 Robert Wyatt - Shipbuilding 5 Eurythmics - Love Is A Stranger 5 Tears For Fears - Pale Shelter 4 Bob Marley And The Wailers - Buffalo Soldier 4 Yazoo - Nobody's Diary 3 Blancmange - Blind Vision 3 Flash And The Pan - Waiting For A Train 3 Fun Boy Three - Our Lips Are Sealed 2 Spandau Ballet - True 1 Bauhaus - She's In Parties 1 Big Country - In A Big Country 1 Forrest - Feel The Need In Me 1 Galaxy Featuring Phil Fearon - Dancing Tight 1 Mtume - Juicy Fruit 1 New Edition - Candy Girl 1 Pink Floyd - Not Now John 1 Sweet Dreams - I'm Never Giving Up 1 The Beat - Can't Get Used To Losing You 1 Thin Lizzy - Thunder And Lightning 1 Toto - Rosanna 1 Wham! - Bad Boys Wall of fame Week 1: John Foxx - Underpass Week 2: Blondie - Atomic Week 3: The Cure - A Forest Week 4: Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart Week 5: David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes Week 6: Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark - Enola Gay Week 7: Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry Week 8: Visage - Fade To Grey Week 9: The Teardrop Explodes - Reward Week 10: Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes Week 11: The Specials - Ghost Town Week 12: Soft Cell - Tainted Love Week 13: Laurie Anderson - O Superman Week 14: Ultravox - The Voice Week 15: The Stranglers - Golden Brown Week 16: Associates - Party Fears Two Week 17: Yazoo - Only You Week 18: Steve Miller Band - Abracadabra Week 19: Duran Duran - Save A Prayer Week 20: Tears For Fears - Mad World Week 21: A Flock Of Seagulls - Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You) Week 22: Eurythmics - Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) Week 23: New Order - Blue Monday Week 24: tbc The Human League were leading for a while and are the closest they have been to topping one of these, but it's another two songs to split in the tiebreak coming later!

Continuing up at 4pm, we have 46 new songs from another 7 weeks of 1983! May include a few songs prominently sampled in hits of the 2000s. https://sync-tube.de/room/2gHBerpI

Will again. How has 'Leave Me Alone (I'm Lonely)' made it through so many rounds without a single vote though?

A couple of additions, both for 20 weeks: 'Do They Know It’s Christmas?' and 'Three Lions' (the latter's original combined with the '98 version, as they have been for chart purposes throughout the digital era).

I think the ACR rules were designed to give the "benefit of the doubt" to the effect of market changes, so we get the double lock whereby a decrease by less than a market counts as an increase, but an increase by any amount (whether more or less than the market) also counts as an increase. The first of these makes sense if you consider that some weeks are going to have lower overall streams - in the case of the week just gone, the bank holiday was perhaps the main reason - and it wouldn't make sense to penalise everything for decreasing. The second is the more contentious one for me - especially in weeks like the one we're coming into which has five working days compared to four in the previous bank holiday week, so I would expect the market to be up and a lot of songs which had been in decline to increase slightly. I can see why they applied this part of the rule back in 2017, as they didn't want songs that were taking off in November / December to be disadvantaged by Christmas songs swelling the market ahead of them. However as there are now the January resets to take care of that, I don't think there's any reason to keep this part of the rule in place. I think an increase by less than the market should count as a decrease, or at least an increase that is less than a fair percentage (e.g. 2.5%) where this is also less than the market. Another thing to bear in mind is that the ACR rules were drawn up in an environment when sales were still significant and the #1 single would typically sell over 15k in downloads. Sales would generally rise to a peak and fall away more quickly, and were part of the ACR equation until 2019. Even at that point when the calculation switched to streams only, playlists such as Hot Hits had more sway on streaming habits than they do now, so there would be more of a finite period where songs were getting a tangible push before easing off. Whereas now, changes in the streams of a song from one week to the next are less likely to be affected by this kind of cooling-off effect than they are by changes in the weather. This time of year in particular, with the weather generally improving as well as the effects of the bank holidays, has been an issue for the ACR rules for several years now, with many prominent cases of songs continuing to dodge ACR until well into the summer. I think the rules are no longer fit for purpose and changes are overdue, perhaps more radical than the one I suggested above, although I do think that alone would significantly reduce the number of songs outstaying their welcome.

Ken Lee... That's the other one which would be bottom two for me, she has the voice for it but completely oversings it. Fortunately, a much better Mariah hit of that year would also reach #1, even if it would take 26 years to get there.

+5 Michael Jackson - Billie Jean +4 Zara Larsson - Lush Life +3 Tame Impala - Dracula +2 Zara Larsson - Midnight Sun +1 Michael Jackson - Beat It -1 Olivia Rodrigo - Drop Dead -2 Sombr - Homewrecker -3 Sam Fender & Olivia Dean - Rein Me In -4 Justin Bieber feat. Nicki Minaj - Beauty And A Beat -5 Alex Warren - FEVER DREAM

No arguments about those last three either. We've been very generous in our amount of coverage for Joe McElderry's #1, agree that the better X Factor winner's single that year is still to come. R.E.M.'s 'Everybody Hurts' is one my favourite songs of all time, but as with 'Heroes' these charity ensemble covers are so far removed from their originals that I don't associate them or give much thought that a Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe composition finally made #1 - as for this version, it's not great, but that feels a moot point, as with Grenfell in 2017, since the effects of those causes continue. 'Love You More' was the Children In Need official single which may explain a few of the sales which helped it to #1, but some sloppy lyrics aside "Day 3 was the same as day 2", it's not terrible, but well below 'The Flood'.

This is one of those that would be bottom two for me as well, a complete non-event of a song that disappeared down the chart very quickly by 1994 standards. The other one is still to come.

This week's new peaks on the Audio Streaming chart for songs either on ACR or starred out - new entries are in red: 25 Michael Jackson - Human Nature 29 Michael Jackson - Dirty Diana 37 Michael Jackson - Smooth Criminal 44 Michael Jackson - Man In The Mirror 50 Michael Jackson - The Way You Make Me Feel 51 Michael Jackson - Bad 56 Michael Jackson - Rock With You 67 Michael Jackson - You Rock My World 74 Michael Jackson - They Don't Care About Us 78 Michael Jackson - PYT (Pretty Young Thing) 87 Michael Jackson - Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' 93 Michael Jackson - Chicago For comparison: 5 Michael Jackson - Billie Jean 17 Michael Jackson - Beat It 23 Michael Jackson - Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough 61 Jackson 5 - I Want You Back 66 Michael Jackson - Thriller [not a new peak]

Currently a three-way tie! Can we get a 13th voter again maybe to split it for us, @danG perhaps?

Aside from Christmas songs and the similarly recurrent 'Three Lions', this is only the 5th song to have gone Top 10 in 3 different decades: Frankie Goes To Hollywood - The Power Of Love (1984, 1993, 2000) Hot Chocolate - You Sexy Thing (1975, 1987, 1997) John Lennon - Imagine (1975, 1980, 1999) Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) (1985, 2012, 2022) Michael Jackson - Billie Jean (1983, 2009, 2026)

'Beat It' Top 10 as well!

Has 'Go' been used in the Netflix film Apex by any chance?

True