Tag: Charts
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Stop The World: It’s #NewMusicFriday
Today, Friday, July 10 marks the start of a major “paradigm shift” in the global release schedule for new albums. Probably. That’s right, the music world has been rocked on its axis by the Earth-shattering news that records, CDs and downloads will now be released on a Friday instead of a Monday in the UK.…
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A New Way To Read The Best Music Book of 2013: “Yeah Yeah Yeah” by Bob Stanley
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best music book of 2013 was Bob Stanley’s “Yeah Yeah Yeah” – A History of Modern Pop Music. (I haven’t yet read the main contender to that title, Mark Lewisohn’s Beatles epic, but then part two isn’t due for another six years, so there’s plenty of time). Bob Stanley knows a thing or…
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Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top Ten – Part 2
One of the questions I was asked in Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top Ten was why so many people used to tape songs off the radio? Was there more romance surrounding the charts back then? Part of the answer was for practical reasons. We didn’t have much money back then. I wouldn’t…
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Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top Ten
2012 marks the 60th Anniversary of the day the NME produced the first list of best-selling songs in the UK. Topping the charts that day – effectively the first number one hit in the UK – was Al Martino. Prior to this chart of record sales, there was a music chart – but one which…
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Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years Of The Top Ten – A Preview
The good people of the BBC have posted a clip on their website of Friday’s Pop Charts Britannia documentary which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Charts. In the clip, you can see me make an idiot of myself trying to tape the charts from 1983 on an unfeasibly large boom-box. There’s a bit more…
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Pop Charts Britannia: 60 Years of the Top 10: How Blogging Has Landed Me A Part On A BBC Music Documentary
The Diamond Jubilee of 2012: Celebrating an ageing, old fashioned but much loved institution that for the most part unites Britain in dewy-eyed nostalgia, even though we know the idea of it itself is somewhat outdated and is hardly in keeping with Modern Britain. No, not the Queen or the Royal Family, I’m talking about…
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Home Taping is Killing Music – Part 1
Home Taping / Taping music off the radio was rife in the seventies and eighties. On the inner sleeve of almost every record sold in the 80s was a skull-and-crossbones and the legend “Home Taping is Killing Music”. In the early 80s the charts were as packed with musical nourishment as a trombone pie. Status Quo’s…
Every record tells a story 