In association with MusicWeek
The 1960s
It was the decade in which Hendrix, Dylan and The Beatles changed the world - and the singles chart went through its own revolution in the 1960s. Most noteworthy of all was the
introduction of the first ever ‘Official’ chart in name, created when Record Retailer and the BBC commissioned the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) to create a definitive weekly list. This chart, launched in
February 1969, was compiled using postal returns of sales logs from 250 record shops across Britain, chosen from a pool of approximately 6,000 outlets. The Official Top 50 Singles
Chart was made up of sales to the end of each Saturday - a weekly timeframe that still exists to this day - and first announced on Johnnie Walker’s Tuesday afternoon show on Radio 1. Before it became ‘Official’, the singles chart in the earlier part of the decade was defined by a continued battle between publications to ‘own’ it.
The Beatles scored a whopping 17 No.1 hits in the 1960s, including Paperback Writer (1966) and Hey Jude (1968)
Best-selling record of the decade: The Beatles, She Loves You (1963)
In retrospect, today’s industry
tends to acknowledge the NME as the ‘official’ chart pre-1960, and Record Retailer’s offering in the decade that followed. To glance over the 1960s’
In March 1960, Record
Retailer launched its own Top 50 singles chart plus an album chart - a direct move to take on the NME and Record Mirror. Although the magazine could
do little to harm NME’s status, by March 1962 - a month in which both The Shadows’ Wonderful Land and Elvis’s Can’t Help Falling In Love reached No.1 - Record Mirror had stopped publishing its own chart.
The 1980s
Throughout the 1980s, the Official Singles Chart took on the electronic quirks of the decade. But, while the poppy synths of Boy George, The Pet Shop Boys, Soft Cell and The Human League had notable residencies in the No.1 spot, a very different electronic evolution was happening behind the scenes. In January 1983, a
BPI/Music Week/BBC-financed Singles Chart saw the US Gallup Organization take on compilation duties. As well as adding a ‘Next 25’ to the Top 75 to make a clean Top 100, Gallup brought the charts into the modern era with the introduction of an automating data-collection process using computerised
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compilers. Barcode scanners were introduced to the High Street sample size, which was stretched to around 500 stores in 1987. As well as a more streamlined process compared to the postal system that had preceded it, the new automated process saw the weekly chart announcement move from its traditional Tuesday slot to a Top 40 reveal each Sunday. New innovations in
technology were, of course, an iconic characteristic of the wider music industry in the 1980s as the cassette single was introduced alongside 7 and 12- inch vinyl and a standard CD single format was agreed upon
by the major labels in 1987. It was a year that saw Rick Astley and T’Pau tied in the battle for the single that spent most weeks at No.1 – the pair claimed five apiece thanks to Never Gonna
Give You Up and China In Your Hands respectively. Five weeks was all it took for the best-selling single of the decade to reach its milestone, with seminal charity
Around this time, the record
industry began to become mindful of ‘hyping’ - when promotions teams would target retailers in order to get special attention lavished on their singles. Competition amongst the NME, Melody Maker and Record Mirror charts was fierce, and the situation was lent further confusion when the BBC used an amalgamation of charts for its Pick Of The Pops list.
No.1 records is to witness the changing nature of Britain, with a noticeable growth in the risqué and the avant-garde: from Cliff Richard & The Shadows’ Please Don’t Tease Me (July/August 1960) through The Beatles’ first No.1, From Me To You (May 1963), Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ (February 1966), Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade Of Pale (June 1967) and The Crazy World Of Arthur Brown’s Fire (August 1968).
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