superbossanova

I'm glad they did these numbers, so everybody can see clear as day the widespread use of on air, on sale. I swear someone was trying to claim in the iTunes thread last week that there were still only a "few" OA/OS releases which is quite clearly stupid and wrong. OA/OS doesn't literally mean the moment it goes online. There have been dozens, as the above shows. I agree with that. It seems very silly to me to have debut singles as on air, on sale. I'd say ALL debut singles should be given a typical held-back release with around 4 weeks of airplay, before the subsequent singles adapt based on the level of interest (for example, if someone has a #1 single straight up, then make their next single OA/OS as there's clearly a high amount of interest in them). But I don't know, it's something that still needs to be looked at, I guess, and I'm sure someone could come up with a better plan than me :lol: Yeah, and the same confusion wasn't there when songs that missed the top 10 outsells a front-loaded #1 single? Or when a #2 single that wasn't held back outsells every other #1 song in the entireity of 2010? :| What a dip$h!t. If anything, it will lead to a closer harmony between peak and sales, and a song like Love The Way You Lie would actually get to #1 because it wasn't kept off by something like Roll Deep who dropped into oblivion afterwards. Did it though? If we look at new entries in the top 40 by year, 2008 was actually SLOWER than 2007: http://www.polyhex.com/music/singles/newenttop40.php Although there was a small increase (by 11) of new entries in the top 10: http://www.polyhex.com/music/singles/newent10.php I don't think the charts will become faster, to be honest. If anything it will only get slower. In Australia, they do OA/OS with everything, and their chart is 100% based on sales (so no airplay or streaming like the US), and they only have a few new entries in their chart every week.

True, I don't think Radio 1 support is hugely significant as such. Although it seems to be more important for certain genres/acts than others. Most dance acts seem to completely fail without Radio 1 support, unless you're David Guetta and seem to have an absolutely huge fanbase by now. Same with indie acts, too - Radio 1 support is genuinely the only chance they have of doing well these days (although more often than not they obviously don't) because other major stations like Capital and Heart won't play those kind of songs until they do well in the charts. I guess the success of Noah and the Whale this era signifies the difference that R1 support could make to a band of that type (their second album wasn't supported by R1, I believe, and completely flopped, sadly). Internet is definitely significant if you have a huge fanbase, as the likes of Lady Gaga would never be able to get so high as soon as they release without the power of internet communication. But in terms of new acts? I really don't think it has much impact. For example, I keep seeing Oh Land every time I go on YouTube these days (is it just me?) yet I don't see any of her songs in the iTunes top 1000 (they are available). In that respect I definitely think Radio 1 is still important. You might have a point in some ways on the young persons thing. I know when I was young I didn't pay that much attention to stuff outside of the top 10 or so. I'd say when you're young it's much easier to be led by what is popular, and you haven't found your own personal music preference yet as such. Plus you're often just getting into music for the first time so everything sounds fantastic, fresh and exciting; before you get older and start complaining that everything in the top 10 sucks :lol: So yes, perhaps you do have a point there as such.

Umm, no, she does not. When people talk "indie" in this thread (and in any music discussion in general these days), they are referring to the genre that has emerged in the last couple of decades, not acts who are on an independent label and thus get included on the indie chart (which is a completely different thing nowadays, although they used to be quite similar at one point, hence the use of the term). It's basically used to describe pop music that is different in that it has heavy emphasis on guitars. I think it was claimed a few years ago that the average downloader was in their early 20s. I might have just pulled this out of my arse but I'm sure it was mentioned somewhere in some kind of statistics at the time. But since then downloads have become even more common place, therefore probably attracting more older people who aren't so up-to-date on the latest technology, plus coupled with the aging by a few years of the previous downloaders, then I would not be surprised if the average age of downloaders was tipping more and more to the 30s by now. Also, it's worth mentioning that Radio 1, who basically play entirely modern chart music, has an average listeners age in their 30s!!! Therefore, if Radio 1 have has big an impact on the charts as some people claim, then it's probably not wrong to speculate that the average age of downloaders might even be THAT high. I disagree that the charts will become more varied over the years though. The singles market is aimed at the young, and once they age they'll go on to buy albums. The only reason the charts used to have more adult buyers is because certain fanbase acts were so front-loaded and surely almost entirely bought by adults (see: Iron Maiden, Morrissey, for example), and now their chart positions have dropped with the decline of the physical. In terms of what was truly popular and hung around the charts rather than going 2-18-46-OUT, it was still stuff that was most probably bought by teens and people in their 20s. The problem with the charts (in terms of variety) is that hardcore rock and dance fans aren't really that interested in buying individual downloads, and the casual buyers that make up the chart aren't that interested in the genres as a whole either. That then brings us back to the same old thing - radio stations.

+15 Blondie - Atomic +12 The Jam - Going Underground/Dreams of Children +10 ABBA - Super Trouper +8 Odyssey - Use It Up and Wear It Out +6 The Jam - Start! +5 The Pretenders - Brass In Pocket +4 Blondie - Call Me +3 ABBA - The Winner Takes It All +2 Dexy's Midnight Runners - Geno +1 David Bowie - Ashes To Ashes -2 St. Winifred's School Choir - There's No One Quite Like Grandma Quite a hard year. I could have voted for about 14 and I had a tough time ordering my top 10 (especially the top 6 or so).

Yeah, the difference between Numb / Encore and Rescue Me is that Jay-Z and Linkin' Park were both hugely popular acts in their own right. It WOULD still work if it was done today, IMO. It could be a way to bring rock into the charts, and bring it to a different audience, but it'd have to be with bigger acts than You Me at Six and Chiddy Bang of all people. Would be interesting to see some major rock and rap acts collaborations in the charts though. Wasn't there also one of the Saturdays on a Kids in Glass Houses single? That still flopped, but it's another example of rock trying to appeal to more pop fans. Again, maybe if a more popular band tried something like that, it could work, I think.

I think you miss the point though. There IS a lack of variety in the charts these days, and it's not just because of the lack of rock/indie music - but because pop music essentially has turned into one whole trend-following cult. It's all very much in the same club-ready style. There are only a few exceptions. The fact that people can easily draw comparisons between modern songs just says it all, really. Too many pop acts work with the same producers, I guess, and thus you have loads of Dr. Luke, Max Martin, RedOne, etc. songs which all sound fairly similar to each other as each producer has their own personal fingerprint, so to speak. I hate to sound like a boring old "things were better before" kind of moron (I always promised myself I wouldn't ever be like this :lol:), but back in the 90s - and possibly before, I don't know much about the 70s, 80s, etc - there were loads of genres in the charts represented, and in ADDITION there was a lot of variety in pop music. I mean, if we go back to the late 90s only for argument's sake (just because I know this period very well). Back then you had the likes of Spice Girls, Steps and B*Witched - acts that a lot of older people openly criticised at the time for being "awful", but all were DIFFERENT - B*Witched had that whole Irish vibe to their music, Steps had a more dance-pop vibe, and Spice Girls were basically out-and-out pop who jumped between different kinds (like the Latin-influenced Viva Forever, the soul-influenced Stop, the classic ballads like Too Much, the in-your-face pop like Wannabe with a hint of rap(!), or the more R&B-influenced Say You'll Be There, I could go on). They were all pop music, and all were aimed at the same market, but you could never say their songs were that similar, and they often drew from different influences. Almost every Spice Girls single was distinct and easily recognisable, and I'm not just saying that because I'm a fan of theirs. Not so much the same with Steps and B*Witched, but they were still easily differentiated from the other pop acts of the time. Then you had Robbie Williams who was again very different to the other British pop acts at the time due to the hint of Britpop that he retained from his days where he was best mates with Liam Gallagher :lol: All Saints - again, completely different to the other British pop acts. The Beautiful South, The Corrs, Texas - more 'adult pop' acts, I guess - but again, all different to each other. I suppose the most similar at the time was probably Boyzone and 911 or something, but even they were very different to another British boyband like Five. And even in American pop at the time, you had the likes of Madonna, Cher, Mariah Carey, Ricky Martin, Céline Dion, Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Shania Twain etc, who were all popular at similar times and none of them sounded the same as each other, or even THAT similar, and they all had their own kind of style, plus they all had that recognisable kind of voice that made them different (one thing that autotune is guilty of is taking away that to an extent, although I'm not necessarily criticising it here). There are so many pop acts nowadays who stay in the same style with almost every song. Admittedly some do jump about quite a bit (Rihanna springs to mind), but they seem to be in the minority. But then you have a million Taio Cruz's, Ke$ha's and Lady Gaga's who never seem to do anything that different, always drawing from the same electropop/dance/R&B influences. Then you have the fact that a lot of R&B and hip hop acts are drawing from the same influences as the pop acts, which even further makes things sound so similar.

The iTunes thread always goes off-topic. It's like a haven of random music and chart discussion, with occasional iTunes talk. It's not the premise of this thread that I find bizarre - it's perfectly understandable that someone would think popular music is poor right now, and they're allowed that opinion. I just find it completely ridiculous that it comes from someone who seemed to love the charts two months ago and now thinks they're at an ALL TIME LOW. It essentially reads to me as an "I don't like the songs in the charts right now as much as before" thread, headlined under a more attention-grabbing title, and with reasons that could apply for any chart from the last couple of years. Hence why I made my previous comment. For what it's worth though, I agree that popular music is at a low right now (although not an all-time one), although I'd say it's more because of the complete lack of variety that Brett-Butler mentioned. This was more of a gradual process though (I'd say from 2005 onwards), rather than a literal one month thing. I have no idea how someone can swing to that opinion so quickly in such a short time frame :lol:

What a bizarre thread :lol: So this "all-time low" has literally just started in the last month? How can it have plunged to those depths in such a short time period? Most of the artists in the charts are the same as the ones that were there a few months ago, and heck, even most of the songs are the same (or the same kind). I don't understand what's different, I'm afraid. Please explain to me Griffo, because your first post hasn't done a very good job (I could look at the chart from January or whatever and say exactly the same - the landscape of popular music doesn't completely change in a couple of months). Honestly, there was really no need to start this lame, attention-seeking thread just to claim you don't like the songs in the charts right now. Couldn't you have done that in the iTunes thread or something? :wacko:

07 You Make Me Wanna.... 10 Nice And Slow 07 Pop Ya Collar 09 U Remind Me 06 U Got It Bad 10 U Don't Have To Call 08 U-Turn 11 Yeah! ft Lil Jon & Ludacris 02 Burn 03 Confesssions Part II 06 My Boo ft Alicia Keys 05 Caught Up 01 Love In This Club ft Young Jeezy 05 Moving Mountains 05 Trading Places 06 Hey Daddy (Daddy's Home) ft Plies 05 OMG ft Will.I.Am 03 DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love ft Pitbull -1 More 08 There Goes My Baby Featured in: 08 I Need A Girl (Part One) with P Diddy and Loon 06 Lovers And Friends with Lil' Jon & The East Side Boyz and Ludacris 02 Spotlight with Gucci Mane 08 Somebody To Love (RE-MIX) with Justin Bieber You missed out the songs from his first album as well, but it doesn't really matter as it's not like anyone else would even know (or like them) except me :lol:

Exactly - it hasn't died out, acts are just moving on to other areas of dance music, exploring further. There's a lot of music with heavy house influences in the charts at the moment, especially coming from the American acts - probably because of the huge success of songs like I Gotta Feeling and Bad Romance, and producers like David Guetta. Making straight up electropop/synthpop/whatever is old hat now, even Lady Gaga has moved away from that, and the likes of Britney and Rihanna are experimenting with other areas of dance. But the charts are still very much in the dance mould and I don't see any signs of that changing. And like someone else said, a big old-fashioned love ballad can ALWAYS sell in any climate. It's not like I Will Always Love You defined the sound of 1992, or Love Is All Around the sound of 1994. There's always a market to tap into for that kind of ballad (probably mainly consisting of females, without meaning to sound stereotypical :lol:) - it's just whether the song is strong enough to connect with that kind of music listener, I guess.

Oooh I frickin' love this chart!! You can always rely on a late 90s Billboard chart for some great R&B tunes :D 1 1 No Scrubs TLC Amazing. I was SO obsessed with this at the time. 2 5 Kiss Me SIXPENCE NONE THE RICHER Ridiculously inoffensive but very catchy. Good song. Definitely takes me back. 3 2 Believe CHER 4 3 Every Morning SUGAR RAY 5 4 What's It Gonna Be?! BUSTA RHYMES featuring JANET 6 6 Heartbreak Hotel WHITNEY HOUSTON featuring FAITH EVANS & KELLY PRICE Good tune. Agreed with SKOB, I really liked this era from Whitney - obviously trying to dip into the current trends but she pulled it off well. 7 8 Angel Of Mine MONICA 9 10 Slide GOO GOO DOLLS Definitely prefer this to Iris - sick to the back teeth of THAT one. But this one has a decent enough riff. 11 7 I Still Believe MARIAH CAREY OK but not even remotely one of my faves from her and it totally passed me by at the time (I loved and bought Heartbreaker though, and then the Rainbow album). 12 18 Sweet Lady TYRESE 17 27 Anywhere 112 featuring LIL' ZANE Great beat on this one. 19 19 Angel SARAH McLACHLAN 20 9 C'est la Vie B*WITCHED 21 20 ... Baby One More Time BRITNEY SPEARS 30 31 Ex-Factor LAURYN HILL :wub: Absolutely incredible song. Just perfection and the best here hands down. 31 38 Save Tonight EAGLE-EYE CHERRY Inescapable on the radio in Summer '98. Another one that takes me back. 33 24 These Are The Times DRU HILL 34 72 I Want It That Way BACKSTREET BOYS 35 47 That Don't Impress Me Much SHANIA TWAIN 37 44 Can I Get A ... JAY-Z feat AMIL (OF MAJOR COINZ) 40 39 Have You Ever? BRANDY 42 28 My First Night With You MYA Nice ballad. Why did she not release this in the UK? 48 50 Praise You FATBOY SLIM Like it, but preferred RH,RN and Rockafeller Skank from this album. 50 54 What's So Different GINUWINE I ADORE this (and Ginuwine in general, so underrated). Random that this was a top 10 hit (at #10) in the UK :lol: But seriously, amazing Timbaland production, one of his best.

There definitely wasn't. I remember it being reported at the time that he was the first since Elton John... Spice Girls only had one US #1, in 1997 - that was earlier that year, before Elton John. I think the closest in that period (that I remember, anyway) was Dido's Thank You - got to #3 in 2001.

Wow, you really seem to hate your own country's music! :heehee: Is it that bad? Clearly this must be why 1 in a million actually make it outside of Russia... :D I just never really liked MTV to be honest, but I don't really know if the Europe version was better than the UK and Ireland one. But here there were so many better alternatives that showed music videos pretty much all day, rather than going on to Cribs or whatever rubbish. I just wanted to see music! Although admittedly some of the spin-off channels like MTV Base and MTV2 are alright (or were, I have no idea what they're like nowadays, I don't watch them anymore). The Box was definitely the best here, though - I always genuinely looked forward to First Play Friday (or whatever it used to be called, they always changed it) to see the new videos they added :wub: The pop music channels have always been biased against rock/indie music. Back when it actually had a presence in the charts (so not like nowadays), the likes of The Box only really played the big acts like Coldplay, U2, you know those kind of acts - the ones who would get a hit anyway. They certainly never supported new rock/indie acts, but made huge efforts to try to break crappy pop acts with stupid promo slots during the adverts breaks :nocheer: To be fair, though, it's not like rock/indie fans would be watching The Box, so they were probably just aware of their audience - which was very much pop and dance fans, you would only need to have watched their Boxtops chart (of their most requested videos) to know that. That's all I seem to see when I flick through the music channels these days - endless countdowns :arrr: They're way safer than they used to be, sadly. It's a shame.

MTV was rubbish anyway, at least here :P I only watched The Box, and occasionally some of the other pop music channels like The Hits or Chart Show TV (there was also one called Flaunt around this time that I quite liked I recall, and another one called B4 that used to show songs pre-release and had the slogan "B4 - it's a hit!"). I'm pretty sure the latter two don't exist anymore though, and The Box has gone on to complete $h!t nowadays. I never really discovered music from the internet back then, even though I did have an internet connection - probably because I was busy stuck in my pop bubble, and probably also because I wouldn't have known where to start anyway. Although I was starting to branch out to some of the more alternative music channels around this time. I thought he was 13 until he corrected me the other day... :D I only knew he was ridiculously young.

I like Frankee. At least it actually had humour, Eamon's was just "shut the f*** up and get over it, whiny tit" :D But yes, both will do rubbish here. I just hope Frankee can win the battle of them :cry: For some reason? It had babies parachuting on to a woman's breast. I think it's pretty obvious why it disturbed you :lol:

You're probably thinking of the song it shamelessly ripped off - Goldfrapp's Strict Machine :D

BABYCAKES. If this doesn't go out first there is no justice. A total crap song and kept The Libertines off #1 :( Excellent list once you go past the first 10 or so :D There are 4 in particular that I really want (one of them) to win though.

And I gave it the other 4 points! :lol: I suppose it was lucky to get to the final at all, having to go through the wildcard round, but it seems like even a lot of the more 'dancier' voters don't like the song that much as I seem to recall being surprised that a lot of them gave it very low points (or not even voting it at all) in both the yearly round and the wildcard round. It's probably my favourite eurodance song, too :( Not that there's much competition for that, mind - I'd happily delete every eurodance song (although there are a few more I like) from existence except this one! Lost Urban Cookie Collective (2 points) from my votes, too - that's it so far, I think!

No, Push The Button got into the final because it's an excellent pop song :) It was one of their biggest hits for a reason - because it's just a GOOD song, and has an absolutely superb pop hook. It's a shame you can't see that, but nevermind. Are you implying the hundreds of thousands of people who went out and bought it, made it number one for three weeks, and one of the biggest hits of 2005 - did it purely because it was sung by females? Wow. I wonder why most of their other singles couldn't do the same. Really weird that, isn't it? Clearly there are lots of people who just LIKE the song a lot. Heaven forbid.

Oh god, who cares about the gender of the finalists? Some people need to GET A GRIP. They are all (mostly) good songs (I only dislike Hips Don't Lie and Poker Face) and all are/were perfectly worthy of being in the final (even PF and HDL I can admit were genuinely popular songs, as shown by their huge success, so were also worthy of their final spots). It's not like the final is Get Right vs Pon De Replay or something - now that would be cause for complaint. I really don't see the big deal here, honestly. Anyway, voted for Madonna. Push The Button has been my favourite since the Arctic Monkeys went out and I've always found Hung Up to be rather average. Shame it will win, but that was obvious from the start, let's be frank :lol: Looking forward to 2004, and watching Toxic get crowned the winner!!! :w00t:

Surprised that 80s number ones won :o I didn't mind either way, but I did vote for it (sorry!)... could be interesting with some intriguing results as it was before a lot of people here (me included) was even born. I don't even know every 80s number one, though, unlike the 90s games where I knew everything :lol: However, I'll be listening to the ones I don't know on YT/Spotify with each round. As for the winner of this, I still say Common People - although I can't imagine it would have "stormed ahead" so maybe not...

It doesn't seem to be available as a legal download anywhere, unfortunately... Have you tried looking for a used CD copy of it somewhere? Do they not have any selling on eBay, Amazon?

I'm guessing you mean this: EFL29atiHUA Released at Christmas 2002 but totally flopped.

Group A 01 Wretch 32 featuring Example - Unorthodox 02 Beyoncé - Run The World (Girls) 03 Tinie Tempah - Simply Unstoppable 04 Arctic Monkeys - Don't Sit Down 'Cause I Moved Your Chair 05 Starboy Nathan - Diamonds 06 Chipmunk featuring Keri Hilson - In The Air 07 Nicki Minaj - Girls Fall Like Dominoes 08 T-Pain featuring Chris Brown - Best Love Song 09 Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer - Give Me Everything Group B 01 Katy B - Broken Record 02 Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar 03 Tracy Chapman - Fast Car 04 Chris Brown featuring Benny Benassi - Beautiful People 05 Dionne Bromfield - Yeah Right 06 Jennifer Lopez featuring Pitbull - On The Floor 07 Bruno Mars - The Lazy Song 08 Lady Gaga - Judas 09 Ke$ha - Blow It's been released as a digital-only single, though...

Justified and Ancient is POP PERFECTION. I actually don't understand how anyone couldn't love it, honestly. It's just so bursting with infectious energy it's literally impossible not to start tapping your feet/dancing/chanting along/whatever :lol: I think it could win though - it has more reach than a lot of other songs here and could appeal to almost any kind of voter (dance fans, alternative fans, pop fans, etc). Maybe I'm just getting carried away though that the song I gave +15 too could actually win after the #1s rate went totally against my votes :P That said, I'd still put money on Common People, which will scoop up loads of +15s, probably - it already has quite a few - and actually has enough appeal to pick up a stack of lower points as well.