DanChartFan

For more info about the million sellers, including a detailed comparison of the 2002 and 2012 figures, go to the million sellers thread in the chart vault.

Commonsense the X Factor single was released a week early last year, and got to number one, but not the xmas number one, which was the Military Wives charity single. The same will likely happen this year, with x factor winners single at number one the week before the xmas chart and the hillsborough charity single at no 1 for xmas. Of course with such poor ratings and lower sales for last years single the x factor could miss out on no1 altogether this year.

That's pretty much the formula for xmas charts now BillyH, although you are forgetting that a certain warbling diva's xmas hit usually sits one place above Fairytale each year. And of course the original version of whatever X Factor happen to be covering is likely to be in the Top 10 too.

I paid £9.06 on amazon, but I did preorder months ago.

"Actually you can buy it on two albums on iTunes- '100 Hits of the '70s' and 'The Best Year of My Life: 1972'. Artists is credited to The Pipes and Drums of the Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards." The former is likely to be a rerecording as that series of compilations does use rerecordings, though the OCC may possibly still add the sales to the original I guess, the latter one I'm not sure about as I don't know if that series uses original recordings throughout or not? I'm a bit of a purist and I'm trying to get original recordings of every number one since the chart started, Amazing Grace is one I'm finding thorny since the Guards have issued many albums over the years obviously with different lineups and recordings, another is Bright Eyes as I have two Art Garfunkel albums but both turned out on closer inspection to be a live recording, unless the original was a live recording maybe.

Cool, glad to hear the reunion will happen eventually then. Will it be televised or is it just something you have to be there to see? Back to the list I'm guessing Elton and Kiki also benefited from BBC4s TOTP reruns last year, just not enough to pass the million. And I think the least likely to make it on that list is the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards as to the best of my knowledge an original recording of that track is simply not available to download anywhere.

I think Misissippii may have benefited from several weeks of appearing on BBC4s Top Of The Pops reruns from 1977 earlier this year, and I can't help thinking that the planned reunion of Kylie and Jason this summer (cancelled due to rain) was meant (or at least hoped) to be a chance to announce it as a million seller and perhaps give them something commemorative onstage, shame it never happened.

I recieved my copy this morning :-) I don't want to spoiler the whole book, and we have the list of 123 million sellers elsewhere anyway, but I thought one of the most interesting sections was the 'almost a million' section which details 13 more singles that were within 50k of 1 million as of May 2012. 990k Elton John and Kiki Dee - Don't Go Breaking My Heart 990k Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan - Especially For You 990k Cheryl Cole - Fight For This Love 980k Tornadoes - Telstar 980k Royal Scots Dragoon Guards - Amazing Grace 980k Atomic Kitten - Whole Again 980k Peter Andre - Mysterious Girl 980k Cliff Richard and The Shadows - The Next Time/Bachelor Boy 975k Lady Gaga - Bad Romance 960k UB40 - Red Red Wine 960k Pussycat - Mississippi 950k Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5 950k The Beatles - Help! The same section also mentions three 2012 songs as being close to the million, Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe, fun ft Janelle Mottae - We Are Young and David Guetta ft Sia - Titanium.

If Rihanna's collaborations didn't count towards her total, then how did Olivia Newton-John make the top 10? The vast majority of Olivia's singles sales will be the two singles with John Travolta and the later number one with ELO, so all collaborations, so should she even be there (not that I actually want to see Olivia relegated just seemed like on rule for one and another for another).

The publication date of 15th October is literally the day they start coming off the press though I presume? So it takes a few days to get through to shops I'd've thought, especially as a lot of retailers only get new stuff in on one day a week, where I work books/CDs/DVDs come in on a Wednesday. It's also a possibility that they could have delayed publication due to a sudden flood of additional million sellers to the original list, they do seem to come fairly regularly these days, but then they'd be waiting forever if they are.

As of 2002/3 Janet Jackson was the only non-charttopper in the Top 60 best-selling singles artists at number 57 witth total career sales to that point of 4,359,645 singles. However the 51-60 portion of this chart wasn't published anywhere at the time (it being a top 50 for the 50th anniversary of the chart) and I just happened to stumble on it on ukmix without being able to be certain of where they got it from. Also it's hard to say if anyone was close at the time as 60th place Erasure were on 4,077,372 so the next contender for this title could have been 'just' 282,274 singles sales (or one rather modest hit) away anyway. Of course a lot has happened in 10 years too so there could be an entirely different set of contenders now anyway. Thinking about I reckon The Saturdays could be contenders as they have had a fair few hits now without a number one. I would be interested to know if anyone has a longer listing of the biggest-selling singles artist in the UK, say a top 100 or top 150 as that'd most likely settle the question.

And while I think of it Sash has the record for most number twos without a number one (5!!) so he/they must be a contender for this too.

Sam and Mark got to number one though CianS. I believe Nat'King'Cole is somewhere in the running for this title. And I think the Darts had three or four number twos at a time when singles sold massively in the late 70s.

Wouldn't the Beatles have been in the charts continuously from 1962 to at least 65?

Bit of both depending on the age of the record and the confidence (or otherwise) in it's sales figures I should think Zero. I would like to see the split between physical sales and downloads for each million seller, plus maybe a download only top sellers list.

I voted for Pixie as I didn't know it was an old poll. But yeah Cheryl could end up doing it though I would prefer Pixie to. Can't see Leona or Alexandra ever having another number one myself (unless they happen to get themselves briefly featured on a track that would've been big anyway, so I guess Jessie J is the only other serious contender but then she is only on 2 at the moment.

I seem to recall there were 'fake' versions of Cha Cha Slide and Crazy Frog available (Pondlife?). Was also gonna mention Macarena and Who the #### is Alice but I see they've been said.

I'm guessing the lack of consistency is probably due to the fact that the writer's each must have written a complete article of 60 songs and then the editor probably chose the best write-up for each year from those he/she was given by the writers. Give them marks for having their own take on things though, the only list of best number ones to not feature Imagine or Bo Rhap in it!

Actually superbossanova having looked at the chart of 24/05/1997 again to provide more info it turns out I made a mistake that week and should've listed Olive's second week at number one, instead of dropping to no3 for Katrina. :banghead: Sorry, seems I need that extra time to double check everything for errors.... :blush:

OK Gezza7T6 I'll wait till a later time to do my thread, and enjoy your excellent thread in the mean time. That gives me time to recompile everything as it's years since I did it originally and I need to dig out my notes and update.

Wow this is an interesting thread Gezza7T6. I actually did a similar project once, but not having sales data to hand I simply disqualified the new entry week for every single in order to filter out new entries at the top that weren't then sustained in later weeks in preference to more consistent singles who hung around at the top end for longer. It came up with similar results though and had the benefit of being calculateable for the entire history of the chart (apart of course from the very first week which no longer exists under my system). It's also possible in real time as it has no need for future weeks sales and can be worked out direct from the same weeks real chart, and of course that also ensures that singles are not charting before their actual release. Without wishing to steal Gezza7T6's thunder here's how my system would've panned out in 1997 18/01/1997 Tori Amos (2wks) 01/02/1997 White Town (1wk) 08/02/1997 No Mercy (3wks) * 01/03/1997 No Doubt (3wks) 22/03/1997 Spice Girls (3wks) 12/04/1997 R Kelly (4wks) 10/05/1997 Cardigans (2wks) * 24/05/1997 Katrina and the Waves (1wk) * 31/05/1997 Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli (1wk) * 07/06/1997 Eternal ft Bebe Winans (1wk) 14/06/1997 Hanson (3wks) 05/07/1997 Puff Daddy and Faith Evans ft 112 (7wks) 23/08/1997 Will Smith (4wks) 20/09/1997 The Verve (1wk) 27/09/1997 Elton John (5wks) 01/11/1997 Aqua (5wks) 06/12/1997 Various Artists for Children In Need (2wks) 20/12/1997 The Teletubbies (2wks) *=New Number One under my system. What do you guys think? Would anyone be interested in me doing a thread based on this (with mods permission having been sought obviously), perhaps I could start at the beginning of the chart era to avoid a clash with this thread, though granted variations are gonna be thin on the ground in the early years.

Wow 20 years, and it still sounds as unique and intriguing a single today as back then. Back in 1992 vinyl was being phased out by the industry in favour of CDs, but owing to the recession the public hadn't bought CD players as quickly as the industry had originally hoped meaning that only a reduced % of the music buying public was able to buy and play new music for a while. Cassettes did bridge the gap but didn't necessarily win over some vinyl lovers with thier frequent tangling and rewinding, and often limited track listing compared to the vinyl. Brit pop turned things back round in the next few years. Another thing I love about Stay is that it spawned a parody in the Mr Blobby video the next year, not many songs can say that lol.

sceneofSIXcrimes with George Michael it would depend on the time of year, were he to pass away between November and January then Last Christmas would easily outperform all those, and probably make top 3. And as for Kylie I don't think I Believe In You would do all that well as it's fairly indistingiushable from several other slower tracks she's done in recent years, personally I'd plump for one of her older tracks to do well, probably Especially For You or Tears On My Pillow ore if the publice are feeling a bit ironic maybe Never Too Late. But then that may just be becuase I've been following Kylie (not literally you understand since the court order lol) for 25 years and still have greater fondness for the older stuff. In any case I hope both every we've predicting for has many years left yet. Just thought how long ago was the great Kirsty MacColl's tragic death and does Fairytale's reentries count?

Three b-sides (to my knowledge) have ended up topping the charts. The Four Pennies - Juliet (although the sides were numbered 1 and 2 so this was a 2-side, phillips records had to be different..) and Odyssey - Use it up and wear it out and of course the most famous b-side of all time by far.. Rod Stewart - Maggie May, which was the b-side to reason to believe. One other example of a well-known (ish) b-side was Waltzing Matilda by Frank Ifield, which was the b-side to his chart topper Confessin' and probably just as weel known if not more so.

Sorry one more question. If a single has sold say 205k, does it count in both the 100k and 200k columns since it has passed both landmarks, or do all singles only count in the column for the highest landmark reached?