Sheeran’s takeover of the Top Ten is a nonsense
The Official Chart Company has made the worst hash-up of the charts since its beginning in the Fifties. The charts have always been known from those early days as the bestselling singles and have never featured album tracks or albums which, in later years, had a chart of their own. It’s unbelievable that album tracks are now suddenly included in the singles chart, giving ed Sheeran nine songs in the Top Ten! My experience of compiling the best-selling singles charts was always based on sales, as are best book and DVD charts. Downloads are paid for individually, but people who pay a subscription for music streaming haven’t actually put their hands in their pockets and paid for an individual record. When record charts began in the Fifties, I was a 16-year-old working-class gopher for the New Musical express, where the charts started. My first job on a Monday morning was to phone a couple of dozen London record stores to be told their bestselling ten singles. Other shops sent in returns by post. I used to read the list to the managing director and he would calculate the charts from there. These singles charts were at first used only by Radio Luxembourg for its Sunday evening chart show, the first of its kind, before some newspapers picked them up in later years. I can speak with some authority on the charts as, in the Sixties, I was publicity agent for some major pop groups and a booking agent for rock bands before becoming a promoter in the Seventies and creating some of the country’s first rock concert tours for artists who are still major forces today. I’ve just heard a man in my local supermarket whistling an ed Sheeran song. Should this be included in the charts? Quick call the OCC!
PETER BOWYER, London E14.