The UK song chart

Song chart UK

The UK charts started with the one published in "New Musical Express" (1952 - 1960), then the "Record Retailer" chart (1960 - 1969) and completed with the "The Official Charts Company" (since 1969). This slightly convoluted set was originally defined in "Guinness Book of British Hit Singles" and is different from that used, for example by the BBC, before 1969, as a result some songs that were announced as number ones (for example on the TV show "Top of the Pops") are listed differently here.

This chart was found at //www.chartstats.com/ which used to be a good site for examining the UK charts (until the official chart company shut them down). Some entries have had to be corrected to bring them in line with Guiness. There are a number of other sites that provide UK chart information, however most are either restricted in access (such as //www.theofficialcharts.com/) and/or contain too many errors (such as //www.everyhit.com/).

Attributes

The attributes we use from this data are:

artist: The artist
name: The name of each song
position: The peak position the song reached in the weekly chart
date: The month in which the song first entered the chart
weeks: The number of weeks the song was in the chart

artist

There are a wide range of ways to assign scores to artists in order to work out which artists are most significant. Here is one listing, of the top five artists of each decade within the UK chart. This has been calculated using a score that combines the position and the number of weeks in the charts.

Decade	Number 1 Artist	Number 2 Artist	Number 3 Artist	Number 4 Artist	Number 5 Artist
2000s	Westlife	The Sugababes	Girls Aloud	Britney Spears	McFly
1990s	Boyzone	Madonna	Spice Girls	Oasis	Take That
1980s	Madonna	Shakin' Stevens	Michael Jackson	Madness	Wham!
1970s	ABBA	Rod Stewart	Slade	Elvis Presley	T Rex
1960s	The Beatles	Cliff Richard	Elvis Presley	The Shadows	The Rolling Stones
1950s	Elvis Presley	Frankie Laine	Lonnie Donegan	Guy Mitchell	Pat Boone

If we want to compare artists across the years we need to remove the systematic bias that comes from the different chart sizes for different eras. We can do that by first ording all the songs by success within a given year and then using this order to define a score (for example assigning 1.0 to the number 1 song, 0.5 to the number 2 and so on).

#	Artist	Entries	Biggest Hit	Year	Year Position
1	Elvis Presley	153	Wooden Heart	1961	2
2	The Beatles	43	She Loves You	1963	1
3	Cliff Richard	125	Living Doll	1959	2
4	Madonna	66	Music	2000	2
5	Kylie Minogue	40	I Should Be So Lucky	1988	1
6	Roy Orbison	34	Only The Lonely (Know The Way I Feel)	1960	1
7	Frankie Laine	24	I Believe	1953	1
8	Rod Stewart	59	Sailing	1975	1
9	Oasis	27	Some Might Say	1995	1
10	Frank Sinatra	35	My Way	1969	1
11	ABBA	28	Mamma Mia	1975	2
12	Michael Jackson	50	Earth Song	1995	3
13	Steps	22	Heartbeat	1998	1
14	Take That	20	Shine	2007	2
15	Boney M	22	Rivers Of Babylon	1978	1
16	Engelbert Humperdinck	18	Release Me (And Let Me Love Again)	1967	1
17	The Everly Brothers	34	All I Have To Do Is Dream	1958	2
18	Connie Francis	26	Who's Sorry Now?	1958	1
19	Whitney Houston	26	I Will Always Love You	1992	1
20	Wings	23	Mull Of Kintyre	1977	1

name

A number of song titles have been hits for more than one artist. Here are the twenty titles that have spent the most weeks in the UK charts. Twenty four artists have had hits with songs called "Crazy"!

#	Song Title	Total Weeks	Num Versions
1	My Way	175	6
2	Crazy	126	24
3	I Believe	124	17
4	Heartbeat	123	16
5	Why?	119	16
6	Chasing Cars	117	1
7	Stay	113	19
7	Unchained Melody	113	8
9	Shine	109	12
10	The Power Of Love	105	8
11	Angel	101	18
12	Amazing Grace	94	2
13	My Love	90	11
14	Girlfriend	82	8
14	Mama	82	8
16	Valerie	78	3
16	Rehab	78	2
18	Light My Fire	77	6
19	Relax	76	4
19	Umbrella	76	2

position

The peak position that songs reached in the UK charts shows the expected smooth curve from number one to 100, in contrast to that displayed by the Billboard data. This suggests that the data has not been subjected to the same level of "fiddling" that the Billboard charts are.

date

The month in which a song first entered the UK chart.

weeks

The number of weeks that the average song spends in the UK chart has changed quite dramatically over the years, from well above 10 weeks in the late 1960s to less than 4 in the mid 1990s. Again this is in contrast to the Billboard charts (where the average duration was increasing during the same period). We have no good idea why this should be.

Back to song chart page

Previous Comments (newest first)

4 May 2021

Fast moving UK / slow US charts 90s

Hello,

You state on the UK Song Chart page that you have no idea why the time that songs spent the least time (1990s) in the UK chart was in contrast to a USA's increasing length on the chart. I have a suggestion.

One reason this would be is the start of the UK 1st-week discount (£1.99 for one week only as opposed to £3.99 thereafter) to aid high new entries. This skewed the sales to the start of the chart run, so they dropped pretty quickly making room for more cheap 1st-week entries. UK Charts are also exclusively sales, where US Charts take into account direct radio play, and records stay on playlists longer than they sell for! Also being commercial stations, the popular ones really stick around. The UK had no national commercial stations at the time, only the non-commercial BBC 1 and 2. Being driven by directors' decisions on playlisting rather than ratings to earn ad revenue, they could afford to change them quickly (or slowly) in line with station policy and not worry about change in income or ratings. In the 90's, BBC Radio 1 was keen to be seen as a front-line station for new music. Music doesn't stay new for long, so although they have for years before and ever since had their weekly playlist meeting, the records on it changed faster then. I think R1 programers are a bit more risk averse these days. Streaming and other platforms in general have caused the chart to slow back down again! Algorithms directing you to the same old/similar stuff, people playing them and counting towards charts for longer periods (the 90's would only count the day of first purchase) etc. Hope this is of use Regards -- David Carbines

Reply;

Sounds like a good suggestion, thanks