Every single one a success: Charts mark 70 years of top-selling music
IT has gauged the nation’s musical tastes for generations and, today, it celebrates its 70th birthday.
The UK singles chart was first published on November 14, 1952, with an eclectic mix of artists, including The Beatles, Queen and Beyonce, going on to enjoy the thrill of landing a No 1 hit in the decades that have followed.
Before the compilation of sales of records, the industry measured a song’s popularity by sales of sheet music.
The idea of compiling a chart based on sales originated in America, where the music trade paper Billboard compiled the first chart incorporating sales figures on July 20, 1940.
It would be 12 years before the UK followed suit.
Italian-american crooner Al Martino claimed his place in music history as his song Here In My Heart was named the first official UK
No 1 single.
Currently overseen by the Official Charts Company on behalf of the UK record industry, the chart is a huge operation and encompasses data from streaming services as well as paid-for downloads and what are quaintly termed physical sales.
Things were a lot simpler back in 1952, however, when it was established by fledgling music paper the New Musical Express (NME) and, in particular, co-founder Percy Dickins.
A former Melody Maker journalist, his duties on the NME included layout and advertising and it was with this second hat in place that he cooked up a way of deciding who had the country’s best selling single.
It wasn’t as scientific or exact a process as it would become – Dickins telephoned a couple of dozen record shops and asked them what was selling well – but it was definitive enough to hand the crown to Martino.
And so was born a British pop culture institution.
Martino managed to stay in the top spot for nine weeks, beating stiff competition from singles by music legends Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and Vera Lynn, as well as something called Cowpuncher’s Cantata, by
Max Bygraves.
By mid-january 1953, Jo Stafford had pinched top spot with the aptly-named
You Belong To Me, so let’s not forget her place in the story as the first woman to have a UK No 1 single.
Since then, the coveted No 1spot has changed hands more than 1,400 times and become a cultural lodestone.
The chart became a successful feature of the NME and expanded into a Top 20 format on October 1, 1954.
Rival publications soon took note and began compiling their own charts the following year.
Record Mirror compiled its Top 10 chart for January 22, 1955, based on postal returns from record stores.
Both the NME and Record Mirror charts soon expanded in size, with the latter’s becoming a Top 20 in October 1955 and NME’S becoming a Top 30 in April 1956.
Melody Maker also began compiling its own chart – telephoning 19 stores to produce a Top 20 for April 7, 1956.
In 1969, the BBC stepped in by commissioning the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) to compile charts.
From 1983 to 1990, the chart was financed by a combination of the
British Phonograp hic Industry, Music Week and the BBC.
The 1980s also saw the introduction of the cassette single, alongside the 7-inch and 12-inch record formats.
And, in 1987, major record labels developed a common format for the compact disc single, which was allowed to count as a chart format from December that year.
The internet era would soon begin to have a massive influence on how people listened to music.
In January 2007, the integration of downloaded music into the charts became complete when all downloads – with or without a physical equivalent – became eligible.
It was announced in June 2014 that audio streams from services such as Spotify, Deezer, Napster, O2 Tracks, Xbox Music and Sony Unlimited would be counted towards the Official Singles Chart, to reflect changing music consumption.
The chart itself has become a week-by-week measure of the musical tastes of Britons.
Almost all of us have grown up listening to it, or felt its influence on the music which has soundtracked our lives.
So, to mark the anniversary, below left are “the climbers” – our selection of the most notable singles from each decade.
The chart has become a week-by-week measure of the musical tastes of Britons