This is where the hit parade is compiled, at the BMRMB headquarters in Ealing.
When the chart is compiled on a Tuesday morning, it's phoned through to the BBC.
Good morning.
Are you all ready? Right 19,
title, Winner Takes It All.
Artist, Abba.
For 60 years, the singles chart
has been the ultimate expression of what makes pop music.
Since 1952, we have bathed in chart bliss.
Loathed and secretly adored, chart Babylon.
But scratch below the surface
and what the charts reveal is surprising,
a story that's neither about hit records, nor famous musicians,
but about us, and the ever-changing ways in which we have loved
and consumed the Top 10.
# The winner takes it all... #
The charts are a complete democracy.
They don't account for musical taste.
It is the soundtrack in a cheesy way
to your life, especially when you're a teenager.
The charts were a way for kids to connect with each other.
Basically, we didn't have a lot of shared experiences,
we went home, we had dinner, we went to bed and did our homework.
You would sit in your bedroom
and you would literally just have that time to yourself,
rebelling against everything else that was going on downstairs.
The charts were where we measured out our lives
to a wonderful churn of pop music. Driven by our enthusiasms
in a clandestine world of music biz hustle.
Welcome to the story of the Top 10.
NEWSREEL: The King dies, but England lives on
and a new hand takes the wheel of state.
The Queen of England passes by and her subjects salute.
Britain lives on safe in her young and gracious keeping.
In 1952, we entered the Elizabethan era.
And it wasn't just the Palace where the guard was changing.
In the first half of the 20th Century Britain's love affair
with popular music had been based around sheet music.
# When you are in love
# It's the loveliest night of the year... #
And from 1935, charts reflecting sales had appeared occasionally
on the BBC and in the press.
However, by 1952, technology had moved on.
Introduced by RCA,
the seven-inch 45 rpm single had entered production
and it was time for a new era in pop to begin.
My father was Percy Charles Dickins and he was a musician, a music lover.
He had a friend called Maurice Kinn, who was an entrepreneur.
Maurice was offered the Accordion Times And Music Express.
They bought the paper
and they didn't want to call it the Accordion Times And Musical Express
so they called it the New Musical Express.
The charts that they printed, as was normal for the day,
were sheet music charts.
Percy, who is in charge of advertising,
and getting advertising for the brand-new paper,
though that if they had a British chart, like an American chart,
then this burgeoning record industry would be able to take adverts
because they would have number one records,
they would actually have some activity.
It was with that in mind he thought, "let's do a chart of the British records".
And he rang up several record stores, I think around about 50,
and then he asked them to phone in Top 10 best selling records.
Now, especially for BBC Four, the first ever chart,
let's travel back 60 years to 14 November 1952.
Here they come.
I've got a copy of the first Top 10 ever.
There's a Top 10 with 13 records in there. If you understand that.
At number 12, Johnnie Ray, Walkin' My Baby Back Home.
At 11, Mario Lanza, Because You're Mine.
Equal 11, Cowpuncher's Cantata by Max Bygraves.
Who can sing that?
Here come the Top 10, Vera Lynn straight in at number Ten, Auf Wiedersehen.
# Auf wiedersehen... #
She was at number nine.
Ray Martin, Blue Tango at number eight. We've got another number eight coming up in a moment.
And it's a good one from Doris Day and Frankie Laine,
Sugarrush, at eight.
# The sugarbush, I love you so... #
Frankie Laine, on his own at number seven in High Noon.
Also at number seven, Forget Me Not by Vera Lynn.
At six, Half As Much, Rosemary Clooney.
What you know, here come the very first ever Top Five in a moment.
At number five, Guy Mitchell, Feet Up.
Isle Of Innisfree, Bing Crosby at number four.
Here's the terrific three.
Nat King Cole, Somewhere Along The Way at number three.
# I used to walk with you, along the avenue
# My heart was carefree and gay... #
At number two, You Belong To Me, Jo Stafford
and here it is, the first ever number one Here In My heart,
that's from Al Martino and that's the first ever chart,
the 14 November 1952.
# Here in my heart
# I'm alone... #
Here in my heart, I'm alone and so lonely.
Enough to get me crying, I can't believe it.
# Here in my heart
# I just yearn... #
And at number one, Here In My Heart
Al Martino on Capitol Records in the very first British chart,
put together by my dad.
Maybe I am an old-fashioned bubbler,
but I just spoke about nearly every song from the Top 10 in 1952
and every song I know, that's when the charts was a chart.
# I believe for every drop
# Of rain that falls
# A flower grows... #
The imperial Top 12 was up and running,
but there wouldn't be a rush to market just yet.
The chart was characterised by American records
of a sweetly sentimental nature
and the BBC didn't see fit to broadcast it at first.
# For everyone who goes astray... #
Instead, pioneering commercial station, Radio Luxembourg,
gave British listeners their first regular taste of the charts
with a show that dated back to 1948.
# I believe, I believe... #
It was always on a Sunday night at 11 o'clock.
Between 11 and 12 we did the whole Top 20.
It turned out to be the most popular night radio programme
on any radio station in the world.
MUSIC PLAYS
Well, of course, it was mostly middle of the road.
You had people like Frankie Laine, Guy Mitchell, Johnnie Ray...
# You sweetheart... # ..and all that rubbish.
But in 1954, everything came to an extraordinary change.
This is Radio Luxembourg, your station of the stars broadcasting on 208 metres...
When we were at Radio Luxembourg, we got people coming over,
all plugging their wares.
This guy suddenly turned up, he was the epitome
of an American, with a large cigar, talking very like that.
He said, "I've got the new music here."
I said, "Oh, really?"
He said, "This is something like you never heard in your life".
He said, "This is going to be the biggest thing in the whole, wide world".
He put the record on the turntable.
It certainly was different.
# One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock
# Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock rock
# Nine, 10, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock rock
# We're gonna rock around the clock tonight
# Put your glad rags on... #
Rock Around The Clock was the single that thrust the charts
firmly into the hands of a new pocket money-empowered youth market.
The first million-selling single, it hit number one in late '55,
a year that saw single sales pass 50 million for the first time.
It wasn't until the rock 'n' roll era begins,
the 45 rpm record is popular,
the teen market lives for the day
and there's an urgency to the charts.
So things start to move quicker in the late '50s.
You have the first primitive attempts at chart construction on the radio.
The Light programme, which gives
scant exposure to recorded popular music,
nonetheless introduces a programme called Pick Of The Pops.
'Let us just find out here that we over here have produced our own
'indigenous rock 'n' roll with instinctive humour, indeed.
'May we bring to your attention, if you've not already heard it,'
this record by Gale Warning & The Weathermen of Met Rock.
# Shannon, Cromarty, Dover
# Dogger, Humber, Sole
Rockall, Tyne, Forth... #
This is the earliest known audio of Pick Of The Pops,
dating back to '56.
# Dogger, Dover, Fair Isles, Finisterre... #
The BBC, though a guardian of the nation's morals,
could no longer afford to ignore the chart
and entrusted one charmingly, avuncular,
32-year-old to present this brash upstart to the nation.
It's 11 o'clock and time for Pick Of The Pops, presented by David Jacobs.
PRESENTER: 'Hello, there. Once again, it's welcome to music, the Pick Of The Pops.
'We welcome, in the first half of the programme,
'several new discs to the hit parade.'
As a professional broadcaster,
presenting a lot of programmes around records and music,
it seemed a natural progression
for me to take over Pick Of The Pops.
It was very exciting each week to see which way the records
were going and what the public was liking,
and also perhaps helping them choose what they didn't think
they necessarily would like.
# Doo-doo, doo, doo, doo, doo... #
PRESENTER: I love the singing bit every week, you know.
Frankie Vaughan and the Kaye Sisters have gained just a little ground during the past seven days
but so far they've not caught up with these.
# I speak softly, darling
# Hear what I say... #
He had a very, you could say it was a very cool style.
There was an authority about him which he's always had, David.
There's a warmth, too. I used to love watching him on Juke Box Jury.
Juke Box Jury was BBC television's first concession
to the singles chart in 1959.
Patrician-like in tone, it sought to render the latest 45s
acceptable to all the family.
Well, we look forward to seeing that one in the charts. What about this?
'There is no doubt that we had a very broad audience.'
Mum and Dad would like to listen to the music
and discuss it with their teenage children, or even smaller.
Juke Box Jury was a real family programme.
So I'd go to the Television Centre in the afternoon
and Juke Box Jury went on the air, which I would present...
..with people like Pete Murray on the team.
Finish the programme, have a quick bite to eat
and rush up to Broadcasting House to present Pick Of The Pops.
Without doubt, the pick of the 1960 Pops has been this next one.
On Guy Fawkes night, it really came into the record world with a bang
and it rocketed straight up to the top position,
and it's been there ever since.
# It's now or never... #
I remember the first single that really was absolutely massive,
that just slammed in at number one and you were, "Whoa!"
It was Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley.
Then he did it again with It's Now Or Never.
# Tomorrow, will be too late... #
I mean, we're talking about the absolute mega, huge singles
that just steam-rollered absolutely everything in front of them.
Elvis Presley's It's Now Or Never.
Well, Cliff Richard has rounded off the year well
with his fifth hit in 12 months.
As far as his fans are concerned, he has good reason to sing...
# The young ones
# Darling, we're the young ones... #
Then we got the Young Ones by Cliff Richard.
It was so big that record with the film and everything else.
# To live and love... #
Cliff's early successes helped ensure that by 1961,
more home-grown acts had topped the British chart
than Americans for the first time.
As the new decade dawned, it was clear that the charts
at now taken off and the BBC's moderating approach
was not in keeping. It was time for a new voice.
Within the world of entertainment,
when you think of how many great actors there have been,
singers and dancers, you think, "Where can it possibly go?"
And sure enough, somebody comes along that just smacks of something else
and takes it on further.
And certainly Alan Freeman did that with radio.
Before we do spin those top three discs of the day, let's meet the man
who'll be in charge of Pick Of The Pops as of next week, Alan Freeman.
All right, Fluffy? HE LAUGHS
Hi, David. We look forward to listening to you
and I'd like to wish you every possible success with what, to me,
has been a jolly fun programme to do.
Thank you very much, David.
And may I say, congratulations on five years of magnificent
Pick Of The Pops programmes. In conclusion... Can I say one thing?
You may. What about all this rock then?
Dun-dun-dun-ga-ga-ga!
PICK OF THE POPS TUNE PLAYS
We've got a twist here and there.
Also, some of the Song For Europe melodies.
All included in unit one, the newcomers to the Top 20.
Unit two, the new releases.
Unit three, the Pick Of The Pops LP spot,
while unit four highlights the names
of Billy Fury, The Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker
and Cliff Richard because they're your choice in this week's Top 10.
Fluff and his theme tune At The Sign Of The Swinging Cymbal
would take full ownership of the charts from 1961,
and Pick Of The Pops would move to its abiding home of
Sunday afternoons, in an era when the singles chart went into overdrive.
Greetings, pop pickers, it's Pick Of The Pops.
In the 1960s, Alan Freeman becomes a must listen for the nation.
Peaking with about a quarter of the population.
It's hard to believe now there was a time
when a quarter of the population was doing the same thing.
It was the social network of its era.
The line-upincludes
Norma Tanega, The Righteous Brothers, Stevie Wonder and Gene Lata.
There were four of us in my little club
and we used to listen to the chart show.
It was the only time you'd get to hear the records you'd heard about.
The Beach Boys, Christie and St Peters...
The radio had one little earphone.
Now they have two, but they only had one.
And we had a system whereby the radio was rotated every two minutes.
MIMICS FREEMAN Uppers, the downers, the just hanging arounders, the non-movers.
All right. Right.
Stay bright.
MUSIC: "House Of The Rising Sun" by The Animals
Whilst the '60s was a decade of singles heaven,
it would also be a time of chart contention.
In the '50s and '60s, there were various charts around
after the NME started them.
Then other music papers and decided to do their own charts.
There was Disc, Melody Maker and various other newspapers.
Papers had their own top 20s or top 40s which they compiled.
And they varied.
Now, for instance, about a month ago, the record by The Animals
called The House Of The Rising Sun was first published.
Immediately, it shot into the charts.
But into the chart compiled by the New Musical Express,
it came in at number ten.
The Melody Maker showed it at number 19
and the Record Retailer at number 31.
All of these mark you on the same day,
and all of these are national charts. Now, who is correct?
I don't know.
But two and possibly all three of these charts
must be hopelessly inaccurate.
The BBC would actually take all the charts from the music papers
and take an average and make up their own Top 20.
One of the biggest anomalies The Beatles' Please Please Me
was number one on the BBC chart and wasn't number one
on the national...the actual national chart that's recognised now.
MUSIC: "The Wayward Wind" by Frank Ifield
Frank Ifield deprived The Beatles
of their first official number one in 1963.
If you asked anybody who was alive and a fan of music back in 1963,
they will tell you they loved seeing that at number one.
It was The Beatles' first ever number one.
Open up a chart history book and look at the entry for The Beatles,
you will see that Please Please Me is listed as a number two single.
It wasn't their first number one at all,
simply because the chart that was compiled by
the industry magazine Record Retailer,
and what the chart bibles all use, didn't list that at number one.
It's the great anomaly I don't think's ever actually
going to be corrected.
'This is BBC One.
TOP OF THE POPS INTRO
'Yes, it's number one. It's Top Of The Pops.'
This is the earliest surviving Top Of The Pops opening sequence from 1964.
Unfortunately, little remains.
# Baby, baby, I'd get down on my knees for you
# If you would only love me like you used to do, yeah
I've dug that young lady ever since I first saw her
in good old Glasgow town about four years ago, wasn't it, Lulu?
Four years ago. Marvellous.
When we first started,
it was done in a church hall in Dickinson Road in Manchester.
Everything was mimed.
# Baby Baby
# Baby Baby... #
Some people think Top Of The Pops influenced the charts.
Top Of The Pops was not innovative,
it did not ever go out on a limb and say, "That's going to be a hit."
It took the hits from the hit parade.
But if an artist had gone in at 28,
if their record company could get them a Top Of The Pops the week
that single went in, then you knew that single was going to
climb the charts because of the exposure.
# And I can't go on
# Oh-oh-oh. #
The BBC's chart as featured on Top and Pick Of The Pops
wasn't the only chart to be broadcast.
In the mid-60s the really cool kids shunned the BBC
in favour of pirate radio.
MUSIC: "I'm A Boy" by The Who
Based offshore to get round the UK ban on commercial radio,
pirate stations could essentially do what they liked
and their charts were ahead of the game.
# I'm a boy, I'm a boy
# My ma won't admit it
# I'm a boy, I'm a boy
# But if I say I am, I get it... #
I think it was Sunday morning that Radio London did that chart.
But the thing was, you know,
Radio London weren't going by any sales figures, particularly.
They were getting serviced by the record companies,
probably even before the BBC, certainly, they were more reactive.
So, you know, if the new Who single came out,
they'd slam it straight on air, even two or three weeks before
it was officially released they'd be playing it.
# I'm a boy, I'm a boy
# But my ma won't admit it
# I'm a boy, I'm a boy... #
In the corresponding chart that they compiled for that weekend,
The Who would be in there.
So it would be in their chart a good two or three weeks before
it began to climb up the national charts.
There was a sense of fantastic excitement about that
because you just knew that you were hearing all these
brand-new records completely fresh.
And that was a very exciting feeling.
# I wanna play cricket on the green
# Ride my bike across the street
# Cut myself and see my blood
# I wanna come home all covered in mud... #
By the late '60s, the chart in its many guises had journeyed
from humble beginnings to become a cornerstone
of the nation's cultural life.
It now offered us a revelatory picture of who we were as consumers.
1967 was one such year.
# I'm a boy... #
MUSIC: "Last Waltz" by Engelbert Humperdinck
# I wondered should I go or should I stay... #
I think 1967 is an interesting year
because most of the number ones are not how people think of 1967.
It wasn't Jimi Hendrix or Jefferson Airplane.
It was Engelbert Humperdinck.
He had of the biggest selling singles of the year.
# I had the last waltz with you
All that tells you about the country is that a lot of people
were really not in favour of the way pop was progressing,
and were looking to pre-rock 'n' roll.
# Oh, I fell in love with you... #
The battle lines between young and old were now etched into the Top 10.
Who do you think buys the Top 20 records?
Little kids about 16 or 17. Mums and dads. Dads and things like that.
Do you prefer records of the Top 20 or those which aren't in?
Oh, I don't mind, you know.
If something good comes in the Top 20, you know, I like it.
But I don't necessarily the Top 20 because it's the Top 20.
You know, most of it's a load of rubbish anyway. Yeah.
Well, it is, isn't it?
MUSIC: "Release Me" by Engelbert Humperdinck
1967 would witness the chart's first famous battle for top spot.
Engelbert vs The Beatles.
# I don't love you any more... #
The Beatles, the best band in the world, you know.
And then along came this little lad from Leicester with a song
called Release Me and stopped them having their 13th number one.
# Release me and let me love again... #
It was very lucky of me to do that. Very lucky.
The double A-side Strawberry Fields/ Penny Lane
was one of The Beatles finest moments.
But in February 1967, it couldn't beat Release Me.
That was a travesty on an international scale.
Me and my friends, my three older sisters, were heartbroken.
We couldn't believe it. It seemed that life could be genuinely unfair.
The charts were like exam results.
They weren't something you could apparently argue about.
That was... They were set in stone.
Cruel perhaps, but the chart as the ultimate record offers us
a populist account of music history.
One that is often at odd with the receiveds.
If you open up any issue of NME in the mid to late '60s,
you'll see a story being played out
that is not often reflected in the history books.
OK, there's a lot of Beatles and later on The Monkees,
and psychedeliang.
But the one band you see in the charts every week,
week in and week out, a seemingly just inalienable, unstoppable run,
a chart machine, were Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
# You'll hear my voice
# On the wind 'cross the sand
# If you should return... #
While history remembers the '60s as being The Beatles' decade,
between 1965 and 1969 these West Country pop sensations
actually spent more weeks on the chart.
Wh-wh-wh...
Where do you start?
Where do you start? Yeah, I mean, those days, you know,
they were just churning out the records one after the other.
So quickly, you know, that even The Beatles couldn't keep up with it.
I think we had 14 hits in the Top 20.
Hold Tight, Hideaway, Bend It, Save Me, Legend Of Xanadu,
Touch Me Touch Me,
The Wreck Of The Antoinette... did I say that one?
Is that it? I can't...
Loads more.
HE LAUGHS
# In Xanadu... #
Between '66, early '66 when Hold Tight came out,
right till the last one which was '69 for Snake In The Grass, was it?
'69, yeah.
It didn't do much that one. No.
It stayed in the grass, I'm afraid.
HE LAUGHS
MUSIC: "Je T'aime" By Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin
# Je t'aime
# Je t'aime... #
1969 would be the year the singles chart finally got its house in order.
# Oh, mon amour... #
It would also be notable for a rather erotic chart topper
by Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin -
the first to make the BBC blush.
# Je vais, je vais et je viens... #
The BBC always maintained they didn't ban records,
they just put them on a restriction list or didn't play them.
And I think they thought Je T'aime wasn't suitable and I believe
they played an instrumental version by Sounds Nice in its place.
MUSIC: Je T'aime (Instrumental) by Sounds Nice
Saucy chart toppers notwithstanding,
the BBC, in conjunction with Record Retailer magazine,
commissioned the British Market Research Bureau
to compile an official Top 50.
Weekly figures ran to the close of business on Saturday
and the new chart was published on Tuesdays.
From 15th February 1969 the charts became an official science.
Basically we have a panel of...
This is a fixed panel of about 300 retailers who will send into us,
every week, a diary which they fill in.
And into this diary they put every sale
that they make over the counter to a customer.
And on Monday night, the computer will analyse the information
that it gets from the punchcards,
which in turn have been got from the diaries,
and it will prepare for us a list
which will give us, in order, the records that are selling that week.
Number one will be selling
anything from 50 to 150,000 in the country in the given week.
Very high up here. Number two will be considerably less.
That's number two down there.
And then as you take the curve down,
down the Top 50, in fact, you find that...
there's a tremendous flattening out. And down here...
RADIO STATIC
THEME FROM PICK OF THE POPS PLAYS
And that was...
Pick Of The Pops.
Tar-aa!
Oh, I forgot.
DRAMATIC STING
THEME FROM PICK OF THE POPS PLAYS
Next Sunday at four, that's Tom Browne, and Solid Gold Sixty.
The last edition of Pick Of The Pops.
BBC Radio Two, good evening. The seven o'clock news summary,
which will be followed by Sing Something Simple.
As Fluff signed off after 11 years of picking the pops,
the new decade would herald an era
when the charts found a new teenybop audience.
# She's my woman of gold, and she's not very old, ah-ha... #
Top Of The Pops was still the only place
you could regularly see the hits in the new era of colour television.
What we have recently discovered about the show in the early '70s
is deeply shocking.
Perhaps the programme's most powerful DJ, Jimmy Savile,
is the subject of ongoing criminal and BBC investigations
following allegations of abuse.
Yet at a time when the sale of albums had begun to outstrip singles
by almost two to one,
glam and Top Of The Pops would help the singles chart fight back.
TV was the important thing.
I've always said, give me one Top Of The Pops...
I'd rather have one Top Of The Pops than 300 radio plays.
# ..On my pushbike, honey, when I noticed you... #
First I'd been aware of the charts when watching Top Of The Pops
and seeing the countdown at the beginning, from 30 to 1,
which I'm old enough to remember it being
a series of graphics.
# Grandad, Grandad You're lovely... #
Yeah, my whole family used to watch it.
Course, my mum and dad used to hate everything.
Me and my little sister Laura thought everything was great.
So it was like...!
I remember Slade coming on for the first time, that was amazing.
And then Bowie, Starman, that was mind-blowing.
So there's always been great moments.
No record on Top Of The Pops as a new release
failed to make the charts.
Once the record was in the charts and it made Top Of The Pops,
it jumped, jumped, jumped jumped up that chart.
That's a fact. That's why it was so important. Great plug.
Top Of The Pops, Radio One play, made for life.
MUSIC: "Popcorn" by Gershon Kingsley
Whilst Top Of The Pops could make a hit,
there was one other media outlet
that actually set the chart's agenda in the '70s.
And it also belonged to the BBC.
Created in 1957, Radio One was, at the time,
the only national pop station.
And what it played was what people went and bought.
Radio One is just like pop, it's fun. It's entertainment.
It's a bright, brash, upstart of a channel, aimed at youth.
Yet its most celebrated son is a 48-year-old vintage pop star,
who peddles unfashionably corny cheerfulness and sugary sentiments.
You tell them, Raymondo. 'What's the recipe today, Jim?'
Thought you'd never ask. Apricot mincemeat pie.
Mindful of its taste-making powers,
Radio One sought to ratify its approach to new singles in 1972.
Who chooses the music? Doreen Davies, who's executive producer on the show.
'There were about something like 120 singles being issued every week,
'by record companies.'
And I remember having to say to producers,
come into my office every Tuesday morning.
We will go through the records that you fancy.
I will tell you what I fancy,
and we'll come to some sort of agreement. Which they did.
'The playlist is a selection of 40 records
'judged suitable for maximum exposure on the air.
'The decision at the end of the day is a crucial one for the artists
'and the record companies.'
Bilbo, 100% on that, everybody? No! No, I think that...
'What we didn't know was that it had leaked out'
that we were doing something
about records on the network,
and so the promotion people came in their droves.
They were... All the small streets around Broadcasting House
were covered with promotion men,
wanting to know if these records were on the playlist.
'There are people called record pluggers, like this girl,
'snooping round the BBC.
'There's at least 10 to every disc jockey in Broadcasting House.
'Everywhere a DJ goes, there's a plugger close behind him, treading on his tail.'
This is Jenny, the most beautiful plugger...
No, you wouldn't! I would.
As it was the only national pop network,
the record industry gave Radio One the hard sell.
No way!
You know, Jenny, you can ask me for anything in the world except a record.
Come on! I tell you what, I'll raffle it.
No! I don't want you to raffle it, I want you to listen to it.
The decade's biggest number one owed its very chart existence
to Doreen and one determined plugger.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
MUSIC FADES IN: Bohemian Rhapsody
I was going to say, if you put that one down,
put Star Guard in its place, you're in the clear. It's the same tempo.
What others do you fancy of the new ones to go on?
I'll check them. Jacksons, do you all agree on that?
# Open your eyes
# Look up to the skies and see... #
So we go into her office, put the record on, she's like me,
she listens to it.
She's like, "I love it, love it, love it."
Then she goes, "Is it finishing soon, Eric?
"I've got to go to lunch!
"I've booked my holiday in August! Is it going to finish?"
Anyway, it did finish.
"All right, we'll give you a few plays."
But I don't seem to be able to get it in the playlist.
As I get back to my office,
my secretary Louise, "Doreen Davies is on the phone for you."
Doreen, what's up? "Eric," she said, "Noel Edmonds has just been in."
Really? I'm hoping, hoping what she's going to say. And she said it.
Morning.
'My name's Noel Edmonds. My day starts generally at about 5:30,
'according to whether or not I'm going to wash my hair.'
"Played him the record, he loved it, it's his record of the week."
I thought, we cracked it.
# Nothing really matters
# Anyone can see
# Nothing really matters
# Nothing really matters to me. #
Bohemian Rhapsody spent nine weeks on top in 1975,
thanks to Noel's Breakfast show.
I think if you studied an audience, north of Watford,
it really used to be a fact that there were lots of factories.
Mechanics, in garages.
Everybody was doing something as well as listening to the radio.
It's quite important.
And what we didn't do on Radio One on daytime, we tried not to offend.
Because if young people were listening to Radio One
at the crack of dawn while they're getting ready to go to school,
and the parents are downstairs doing the breakfast or whatever,
you don't want heavy metal at the crack of dawn.
You don't want that.
You don't particularly want punk rock,
because someone will say to someone else, "Turn that rubbish off."
# Mull of Kintyre
# Oh, mist rolling in from the sea
# My desire
# Is always to be here
# Oh, Mull of Kintyre... #
The combination of Radio One and Top Of The Pops
ensured that the charts remained by and large a high street affair.
Just as the summer of love was also about Engelbert,
the spirit of '77 was not only punk, but Wings,
who equalled Bohemian Rhapsody's nine weeks on top.
The other reason there weren't that many punk records in the chart in '77
is just because there weren't very many punk records.
Which is easily forgotten now.
People would literally buy every single one that came out.
Good morning, Top Of The Pops.
'Nine o'clock, Tuesday morning.
'The new charts are phoned through to Television Centre
'by the British Market Research Bureau.
'They are compiled weekly from the returns of 450 record shops.'
I think it's amazing how many punk records did get in the chart.
The Ramones had hits, The Tubes had a hit. Quite odd acts.
They just weren't the biggest selling acts.
The biggest selling acts were obviously David Soul in '77,
and Boney M in '77-'78.
Could one of you just check the record of Boney M, please?
The length of time?
# By the Rivers of Babylon
# There we sat down
# Yeah, we wept
# When we remembered Zion... #
'Was Boney M and Mull of Kintyre what was going on in 1977 and '78?'
For me, they were, yes.
I definitely knew those songs, I was seven years old.
Unless it was on Top Of The Pops or on Swap Shop,
I didn't know anything about it.
So it was indisputably about Boney M and Mull of Kintyre.
But does that mean that they were more important than the Sex Pistols?
No, it doesn't.
Good evening, sir, how are you? All right.
All right, he said. Laughing. How's business?
1979 would be a boom year for the Top 10.
With over 89 million singles sold,
a record for physical sales to this day,
a chart position was potentially more lucrative than ever.
As well as influencing what people heard and bought,
the record companies also sought to get a toehold in the charts,
via the dark arts of record hyping.
# We're lost in music
# Caught in a trap... #
Please don't tell anyone about this.
My very first job for the record company was,
a very small company based in W1, I won't name them.
They were a small independent company.
I went in, had the interview and got the job, great.
Errand boy, coffeemaker, all that, fantastic. In the business.
After the second week, the guy comes up to me
with a bunch of five pound notes and said,
"Here's a list of record shops." I said, "Yeah?"
He said, "Could you go to all these record shops today
"and buy three copies of this single?"
I said, "Yeah, but it's our own single. Why would we be doing that?"
He said, "We're running short of stock, and we're going to buy them up and recycle them."
And I just thought, OK, this seems fair, and off I trotted.
# We're lost in music... #
I won't mention the guy's name,
I think he's still alive, we still might do a bit of business.
You would give him a few grand,
he would go to certain record shops all over the place,
and he'd buy up five records here, three here, one there.
I remember in Virgin Manchester, when it became a megastore,
you'd see housewives coming in with...
"Have you got a copy of..." whatever record?
You'd think, why are they buying that?
Of course, they were just buying it. They didn't care what it was.
The other trick, cos I worked for record companies for years.
They had a record they really, really thought was interesting
and should be a hit,
they'd send out boxes of them to chart return shops for free.
So the chart return shop would sell their box of 25
then order another 50 or 75.
There were all sorts of ways the charts were manipulated.
'Nearly every single stocked at this shop in Birmingham was given to it free.
'The simple reason is that until August,
'it was one of 750 shops which sent in sales information for the charts.'
Often, the reps from record companies would get out of their cars, and just
stuff a load of records that had stickers already put on them.
They'd just stuff them in the racks, and the record shop didn't mind
because they just got records for free.
They're making 100% profit on each record they sold. It suited everyone.
And that's often how you got records in the charts.
Some of these came in during last week. That one I don't know about.
George Clinton, I don't think I've heard of him either.
Ben Taylor, no, don't know that one.
Illusion Orchestra, that's a new one on me, as well.
No doubt somebody hopes it will catch on.
Gazebo, no, I don't know that one.
This is a confidential dealer's diary,
used for compiling the British Market Research Bureau's chart.
Incredible as it seems,
the record company hustle even went as far as cooking the books.
So, in those days there was a book that you used to have to write down
the catalogue numbers of every album and every single that you sold,
which was, of course, a bit laborious,
particularly on the Saturday when you were really busy.
But the benefits of being a chart return store,
of all the free stock and the attention and the T-shirts
and everything that went with it, were worth that.
Yes, it was certainly legal to give you gifts.
There is a fine line, of course, between, um...
entering real sales and entering imaginary sales,
which, of course, is what some of the sales reps wanted you to do.
# Don't bring me down
# Grus... #
Did they ever persuade you to tick the diary?
A couple of times, I do it just to get rid of them,
just to get them off my back.
'This chart return shop owner won't be identified
'because publicity would cost him his place in the BMRB panel.'
What do the company salesmen offer you in return for false ticks?
Normally it's free records, sometimes it may be sweatshirts,
T-shirts, badges, and occasionally it has been bottles of drink.
"CBS, pushing Charlie Daniels and the Nolan sisters singles..."
In truth, I don't think that many records became massive hits
because of manipulation.
I do believe that, if the public didn't like a record,
they wouldn't buy it, no matter what you did.
But what it did do is a record going in the charts at number 39
and the radio stations will suddenly take a bit more interest in it,
and therefore might begin to play it,
whereas they hadn't put it on their play list.
In what became an epic game of cat and mouse,
the boffins at the BMRB devoted themselves
to weeding out the wrong 'uns and ensuring that
in the new decade the chart remained legit.
# I tell you once more
# Before I get off the floor
# Don't bring me down. #
Meanwhile, as the '80s dawned, a new era of British pop,
catalysed by the more creative elements of punk, was upon us.
And the BBC, as ever, had a little catching up to do.
We have a new entry at... Number 26.
..from Durren Durren.
I think it must have been their first record,
I didn't know how they pronounced the name,
it looked to me "Durren Durren".
Anyhow, I said it's up seven places, "Durren Durren".
# This is planet Earth...
# Ba, ba-ba, ba-ba, ba, ba-ba
# Calling planet Earth... #
Straight in, the Radio One top 40, position number 26,
that's a new entry, Durren Durren and a number called Planet Earth.
I've never lived that one down.
I think Durren Durren's a better name than Duran Duran, anyway.
JINGLE: Radio One, Britain's favourite.
Thank you very much for a couple of people who rang up,
and I didn't realise I'd said it,
but I mispronounced a name, I said Durren Durren and Planet Earth
at number 26, when of course it should be, as everybody knows, Duran Duran.
When you're doing a tight-schedule play list,
sometimes you mispronounce things, I do apologise.
None of us are too big to apologise.
Sorry about that, Duran Duran, of course.
Thank you very much for taking the trouble.
Meanwhile, back to the top 40.
At the age of 11, at the very apex of my childhood obsession,
I decided to start my own music magazine, Pop Scene,
which I wrote myself using paper from my parents' fish and chip shop.
At number 54 we've got One In Ten by UB40, which I call,
"The most depressing group on vinyl, typical of UB40."
"Seriously, if you're thinking of committing suicide,
"this is the disc to do it, too."
Now we're inside the Top 40,
and we've got Siouxsie And The Banshees here
with Arabian Knights.
"Usual crap."
Then one up, Memory, by Elaine Paige,
which I think is brilliant.
"It's good to have a bit of this in the charts," I say.
Can't argue with that. What have we got here?
Bill Wyman was launching an abortive solo career at the time,
with (Si, Si) Je Suis Un Rock Star, which did rather well,
and I've written, "I can see what he's trying to get at.
"It's terrible, though. I don't know how it got in the Top 75."
# Je suis un rock star
# Je avais un residence
# Je habiter la A la... #
Then going on to the Top 10,
I'm devoting more space here as we get nearer to the top spot.
We've got Bad Manners, The Specials...
Getting to the number one spot, and Stevie Wonder's at number two.
"This song is brilliant.
"In honour of Martin Luther King - happy birthday, of course -
"he should grab the number one spot in the next two weeks."
But he never did. Not with that one, anyway.
And then at number one at the top spot we have Shakin' Stevens, with Green Door.
"I like it, it's good, but it's just not right
"how he can pick one old song, sing it and sell it.
"How about some new stuff, Mr Stevens?"
# Midnight
# One more night without sleepin'... #
I think it was so exhausting doing one, I don't think I did another.
# Till that morning comes creepin'
# Green door
# What's that secret you're keepin'?
# There's an old piano And they play it hot
# Behind the green door... #
In the true age of consumerism,
the Top 10 remained, for everybody, a family-friendly affair.
But it had begun to develop a split personality,
as, in the wake of punk,
pop with a useful edge and purpose had crept back in.
This was epitomised by perhaps the greatest battle for top spot
since Engelbert and the Beatles.
# A voice reaching out In a piercing cry
# It stays with you until... #
Waged along similar battle lines,
Grandma's favourite, Joe Dolce, took on Ultravox in 1982.
# The feeling has gone only you and I
# It means nothing to me
# This means nothing to me
# Oh, Vienna... #
Now, with hindsight, you know, Vienna by Ultravox
is one of the greatest singles ever written,
and still to me it is a karaoke classic.
I mean, it's a bit like teargas if you try to sing it yourself!
But it is a wonderful song and so beautiful and dramatic,
and the fact that it was prevented from having a number one
by Joe Dolce is absolutely ridiculous.
# This means nothing to me
# This means nothing to me... #
I love Vienna but, you know,
by its own admission, it means nothing.
It just...
It's lovely, it has this kind of romantic, kind of Hapsburg Empire,
sort of dry ice, sort of romance about it,
but you know, I don't think it was any great injustice, really,
that Vienna was kept off the top spot by Joe Dolce.
Uno, due, tre, quattro!
# When I was a boy
# Just-a about eighth-a grade
# Mamma used to say
# Don't-a stay out late
# With the bad-a boys
# Shoot-a pool, Giuseppe Going to flunk-a school... #
But you know, at the time, when I was a child,
Joe Dolce, Shaddap You Face, was one of the funniest things I'd ever heard.
You know, these kind of novelty singles
coming along that your entire family could all sing and shout
and get into together - it seemed perfectly just.
# What's-a matta you, hey!
# Gotta no respect
# Whatta you think you do
# Why you look-a so sad?
# It's-a not so bad
# It's-a nice-a place
# Ah, shaddap you face... #
That's my mamma...
I like both songs.
but I think Shaddap You Face, if you want to talk about meaning,
that's a song, essentially, about the contrast
between first generation immigrant values and second-generation values.
There's something still funny about Shaddap You Face by Joe Dolce,
because it's so brainless.
# Ah, shaddap you face... #
We need these lovely, brainless moments in the charts
that are just completely naff.
It draws us all together.
# Why you look-a so sad?
# It's-a not so bad... #
The pattern of chart consumption had been well-established.
You heard a single on the radio, saw it on the telly, and you bought it.
I don't know, I just see it advertised and I think,
"I've got to get that," so I have to get it.
If I see a good record on the television
or hear it on the radio, I save up and buy it.
My favourite group's Genesis, I just hear them on the radio.
I haven't bought any of their records.
But as technology advanced,
that pattern of consumption would be modified.
# It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it... #
Home taping.
An estimated 4 million of us did it to the Chart Show in the '80s.
It was the illegal downloading of its day.
Our own secret life of the Top 10.
So, this is...
something I used to do every week, taping off the radio.
I'll show you what I did.
MUSIC
Make sure it's the right way round.
I'm teeing it up with my finger to make sure...
Oh, hang on, we're starting.
DJ: 'Up 10 places, it's the band from Boston Massachusetts, The Cars at number five...'
I missed the cue there, so that's ruined.
Luckily, I'm not a massive Cars fan,
but if I was, that was it for a week.
Here we go, that's fading out, I'm going to pause it there...
DJ SPEAKS
Oh, perfect!
'They're off to America for a five-week tour...'
The song hasn't just started, has it?
No, that's the jingle.
Oh, yeah, I remember this one.
Ray Parker Jr is number four... Oh, Ghostbusters.
Right, time it.
MUSIC STARTS
Perfect.
When I was a child, I definitely loved the singles charts so much,
because it was a weekly slice of the world outside where I was.
You know, I grew up in Carlisle, it wasn't very glamorous...
# Ghostbusters! #
..so that part of the week on a Sunday when the charts were playing,
that was kind of so much like new vibes and influence
coming into my world, and I personally think
that without the charts playing on Radio One on a Sunday,
I don't know whether I would have left Carlisle,
because it was that idea that there's a big world out there.
# Who you gonna call?
# Ghostbusters! #
OK....
# If you're all alone... #
Got another chorus.
# Then call
# Ghostbusters! #
You know, you would support a band almost like a football team.
You know, these were like my football teams,
and you would want them to go straight in at number one
or in at number two, or they would go in at one and stick,
or they would go at number one and then they'd get knocked off.
Ray Parker Jr... Oh, no! Missed it!
He does that every time!
I'm going to have to rewind that.
MUSIC STARTS
Oh!
Actually, it's Wham!, doesn't matter.
That wonderful idea that, you know, you were either into Duran Duran
or you were into Spandau Ballet, and if you were into Duran
you were just kind of absolutely in fear that Spandau or Wham!
would come along and knock them off the top of the charts.
And Stevie Wonder is still at the top.
Britain's number one!
Superstition?
No.
No. I Just Called To Say I Love You.
Brilliant.
# No New Year's Day
# To celebrate
# No chocolate-covered Candy hearts to give away... #
This might possibly be, as a chart fan, my secret shame.
Everybody recorded the Top 40 show
off the radio to listen to in that particular week.
I was no different, I just never got around to throwing any of them away.
So, this is just a small part of the collection,
dating late '80s, early '90s, when I was about 15, 16.
# I just called
# To say
# I love you... #
It wasn't just Stevie who thought phones were cool in the '80s.
Telecommunications technology had started to inveigle its way
into every aspect of life, including the singles chart.
By 1987, the chart was now in the hands of Gallup,
an organisation that hoped to use computer wizardry
to ensure chart legitimacy.
So, here's the machine which Gallup say will make the charts unriggable.
How does it work?
Well, it goes beside the cash register
at 250 record shops around the country.
As each record is sold,
the sales assistant will key in its retail index number -
ABC 456.
Every week, the computer here at Gallup
will phone round the record shops and automatically draw off
the information that's stored on the machine.
Well, in a very small way I'm just about to influence
next week's record charts.
I know that because this shop is one of the 700 that's used by Gallup
when they prepare the Hit Parade each week.
Gallup started introducing electronic point-of-sale machines.
You'd go, "Oh! Oh, I swiped that twice. Oh, what a mistake,"
because no-one would check.
There wasn't a correlation with your till,
so that's how that was...adjusted.
# We gonna rock down to Electric Avenue
# And then we'll take it higher... #
Gallup's automated data collection
would revolutionise the Sunday Chart Show on Radio One.
One! Good afternoon, it's exactly 5 o'clock
and this is Bruno Brookes here in London with the brand-new Top 40.
Our link with Gallup headquarters
tells us the news as it comes in minute by minute.
'The new Top 40 format is the fastest and most accurate of its kind
'anywhere in the world...'
Pre that, there was something called the midweek charts,
and generally speaking,
most of the counting of record sales around the country
was done sort of midweek
and that was pretty much the way it would end up on the Sunday chart,
but it was a bit silly, cos of course, most singles were sold
on a Saturday. That's when the record shops did most business.
Europe's most listened-to radio show shares its technology with you
and here's the first new entry.
'So on Sunday morning, there was a count from Gallup
'and we were literally getting the news on Sunday morning
'and compiling the show ready for broadcast in the afternoon.'
Off to a good start.
While it had become much more difficult
to curry favour with chart return stores,
record companies fought back by targeting the actual consumer.
Now released with videos,
the '80s was the heyday for the single as a colourful commodity
and record companies got extra creative
in their attempts to persuade us to part with our cash again and again.
Anything to make your package look more attractive,
to give more value, added to it,
so we had, first of all, we had 12-inch singles, great,
and then we had gatefold 12-inch singles
and then we had picture discs. Oh, all sorts of stuff.
My loft is full of it.
You would have double packs of records,
so when you bought one record,
you got another one free. Who wouldn't want twice The Bangles?
You think, "Do I like Midnight Of The Lost And Found? I'm not sure,"
but it's OK, you see, because it's got Bat Out Of Hell on the B-side
and everyone loves Bat Out Of Hell
so you'll buy it anyway, and then Meat Loaf has a hit.
One reason why Happy Birthday did so well,
apart from being the great song it was,
was that some copies of it
came with an iron-on transfer with the sleeve image on,
and then you'd have silly things like this -
an Aztec Camera single
which was supposed to be, the joke is that it's an Aztec camera,
an archaeological find,
but I'm not sure that Aztecs used flashes on their cameras.
Now there's all sorts of different formats of singles you can get.
If you're a true Wet Wet Wet fan now,
if you wanted to collect all those singles,
and I have a sneaking suspicion
that's why they produce so many formats... Yeah.
It could cost you about 20 quid.
This week's number two is last week's number one,
the Time Lords with Doctorin' The Tardis,
which means that Britain has a brand-new...
Number one! It's Bros!
MUSIC: "I Owe You Nothing" by Bros
It really did get out of hand.
Famously, I think it was in 1988,
Bros put out a single
and they had 27 different versions.
Record companies had got so good
at marketing and manipulating the charts,
it was almost as if it didn't matter what the public liked.
But 1989 would prove that the charts are always a democracy.
# I'll have my revenge
# Ooh, ooh, yeah
# Cos I owe you nothing, nothing at all... #
September the 3rd, 1989. My 16th birthday
and if you want to hear what was in the Top 10 on that particular day,
very simple.
Just press play.
'There's a brand-new number one for Black Box, Right On Time.
'UK's number one!'
# Gotta get up, gotta get up, gotta get up... #
Bypassing radio and gaining exposure through nightclubs,
Black Box's six weeks at number one
cemented the arrival of dance culture in the charts.
# Cos you're right on time... #
It was the biggest hit of the year
but '89 itself would belong to a different sort of dance music.
It's really interesting
that at a time when there was this enormous counterculture brewing
of MDMA and people going to raves
and listening to this bizarre music and...
..kind of stretching their brains
and fighting with the police for the right to party. At that exact time,
what was actually big in the charts was Jive Bunny.
# Come on, everybody C-c-come on, everybody... #
MUSIC: "Swing the Mood" by Jive Bunny
The only way I can understand Jive Bunny's appeal
is a sort of pan-generational thing, where it's records from the past,
maybe kids haven't ever heard them before - you know, small kids.
I mean, I think Jive Bunny himself
is a fairly terrifying-looking cartoon rabbit.
# One-one-one, two, three o'clock, four o'clock rock... #
Not one, not two,
not three, but four of Jive Bunny's singles,
Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers there.
Jive Bunny, of course, got a lot of the credit
but the Mastermixers did most of the work.
In order, it was Swing The Mood,
followed by That's What I Like,
then at Christmas, they brought out Let's Party and Auld Lang Syne
then finally, That Sounds Good To Me.
I sort of fell off. There was a fifth, and maybe even sixth single
but I fell off after the fourth one
and I think that was true of the rest of the population.
With three number ones spending a grand total of nine weeks on top,
Jive Bunny would see the '80s out in appropriate style.
In the new decade, we would fall out of love with the charts.
MUSIC STOPS
STATIC
# I'm too sexy for my love
# Too sexy for my love, love's going to leave me... #
MUSIC: "I'm Too Sexy" by Right Said Fred
The '90s would begin auspiciously enough, with a new record
for most consecutive weeks on top, set in 1991.
I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred,
in any other year, would have been, you know,
one of the biggest number one singles of its era,
but it had the poor fortune
to be stuck behind Everything I Do, I Do It For You, by Bryan Adams.
# You know, it's true
# Everything I do
# I do it for you... #
Bryan Adams' 16 weeks atop shattered a record that had lasted since 1955.
When it got to the ninth week,
you thought, "He's never going to make ten weeks.
"No-one's done it in my lifetime."
And of course, it did get to number one for ten weeks
and then after that, it just became the sort of surreal situation
where you thought, "It's never, ever going to be knocked off the top."
And so it's congratulations to Bryan Adams.
For a staggering 12th week, he is... The UK's number one!
I think there is some kind of strange musicological reason
for the fact that it was so successful.
Because it had a killer key change in it.
# There's no love... # '# There's no love
'# Like your love.... #'
And there'd be 30 of us sitting in the TV room at school,
singing along, "And no other!"
It was incredible.
I think, when you're sort of, 14,
Bryan Adams epitomised, and also the Kevin Costner sort of manliness,
you know, it's linked to Robin Hood, which was a hugely successful film.
I think we all thought, "Wow, this is what love should be like.
"This is what a guy who really is in love with someone would sing."
The lyrics are actually quite a lovely message
and it's the perfect thing to buy for somebody that you love.
This was in an age when people were just popping into WH Smith's
or Woolworths or Our Price.
It was a gift, it was something that you could buy for someone.
There we go. I was part of the problem, back in the '90s.
This is in pretty good condition.
I think, probably, the reason this is in such good condition
is that I bought it and I think I played it once
and then turned on Radio One and they played it 15 times
and I went, "I'll probably just pop it back on the shelf."
# I do it for you. #
Back at Radio One, changes were afoot in the early '90s
that would have a big effect on the chart. Oh, yeah!
In an effort to combat the rising threat of commercial radio
and to target a youth audience,
a new broom had been tasked with cleaning out Radio One.
I want to make Radio One
an exciting, interesting and original radio station,
which the BBC can be proud of.
Matthew Bannister effectively reversed
Doreen Davies' pan-generational approach to the playlist.
It was out with the oldies
like Quo and Cliff. Just because a record got into the chart
didn't mean we needed to playlist it on Radio One.
Radio One was trying to do something different from commercial radio,
trying to support new music and new artists
and trying to develop its musical credibility,
so just the fact that, you know, Max Bygraves was in the chart or
Cliff Richard was in the chart didn't mean we had any duty to play it,
except on The Chart Show, of course.
If my record is number one in the country,
the songs that you're playing are not as big as mine,
so why wouldn't you want to play a really big-selling record
to your public, cos some of THEM might like it?
Second week on top, Boom! Shake The Room.
MUSIC: "Boom! Shake The Room" by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
Having distanced itself from what the nation had actually been buying,
Radio One would find itself with a chart battle
of a very different variety on its hands in '93.
Since the mid-50s, the British public had turned en masse
to BBC radio for their chart picks.
But all that was about to change.
One of three songs that sticks in this week's Network Top Ten,
Faces, Faces Everywhere from 2 Unlimited.
Commercial radio's Network Chat Show
had been a lesser-known alternative to Radio One since '84.
When the show was reinvented around a new presenter in '93,
the battle of the chart shows would commence.
MUSIC: "Doctor Doctor" by Robert Palmer
I think at that time, the Radio One chart
had five times as many listeners as the commercial radio chart
and our big battle was to find a way of giving us some credibility.
Seven new entries today and this booms in at hit song seven -
Radiohead and Creep. They're a five-piece band from Oxford,
originally released this single last summer,
but it fell short of the Top 75,
but it's been a big hit on the American Top 40
and so they've re-released it here. Radiohead, Creep. Well done, guys.
From the outset, the BBC had one massive advantage.
It was the only organisation
contracted to broadcast the official Top 40,
but they hadn't reckoned with crafty commercial radio executives.
"OK, if we can't have the Top 40, can we have the Top 10?"
And I think they looked at their contracts...
and going, "Err... It doesn't say anywhere you can't have the Top 10
"but you can't have the Top 40."
So they went, "We'll have the Top 10, then."
# I don't belong here... #
Bet Radiohead are going to have a few drinks tonight.
That was problematic for Radio One
because Radio One's authority
of being the only place to have the official chart was bit by bit eroded,
and the Top 10 is the biggest bit
and it's where people want to see where the latest records are.
The Top 10 has a non-mover at number ten. It's Erasure...
The way they did a chart was, "At 40, at 39, at 38,"
all the way down to, "And at number one, it is blah."
And what we decided was, "If that's the way they're going to do it,
"we need to do it in a different way."
Right, stand in the air, wave your hands around like just don't care.
The highest climber is up 33 at this week's number three!
DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince - Boom, Boom!
Ours was all about hard DJ-ing,
you know, cranking it to the max and really getting in there.
SOUNDS GETS LOUDER: I think I'm going to get completely naked
during this song. Let's get radical!
Neil and I had a definite professional rivalry.
I was very belligerent about the Radio One chart being best.
He, I think, was much more relaxed about it.
When it came to our public voice,
of course, I wanted to nail Goodier. We wanted to kill him.
The Top 10 goes like this.
No change at ten - Mariah Carey, Dream Lover.
I remember being quietly furious
that anybody else thought they could broadcast the charts but Radio One,
especially Foxy.
Five - SWV, Right Here. Four - Bitty McLean, It Keeps Rainin'...
You know, moving the charts from Radio One
is like going to the Tower of London
and, you know, getting a catapult at the ravens. You can't do that!
Culture Beat are the number one!
It worked. Within, I think, about 18 months,
we had managed to bring the audience levels up.
By about two-and-a-half years, we were ahead, and we stayed ahead
for the next ten years. In fact, I think we're still ahead now.
Although Radio One's position
as official custodians of the chart had slipped,
by '95, the effects of the youth policy at the nation's favourite
were beginning to be felt in a more positive way.
We were making radical changes to Radio One,
trying to bring down the average age of the audience,
trying to emphasise its credentials
as a station that championed new bands and new music,
and I think we were alone in the radio marketplace
in first starting to support Britpop, for example, and a lot of the bands
that we started supporting uniquely in the music marketplace
ended up in the charts.
Matthew Bannister was a genius.
I probably owe him a good dinner, you know?
He put all my bands on the radio for about five years, you know,
so he gave everybody a good time in the '90s, Matthew Bannister.
Radio One reconnected the chart to youth
like it was the '60s over again.
In the most hyped battle of the decade,
there would be no grandma's favourite,
just two young bands slugging it out.
It's been called the biggest battle in pop music for nearly 30 years.
Two of Britain's leading bands, Blur and Oasis,
released singles on the same day.
# You got to take your time
# You got to say what you say, don't let anybody get in your way... #
On the 14th of August, 1985, Oasis released Roll With It.
On the very same day,
Blur broke the gentleman's agreement and released Country House.
The battle of Britpop commenced.
# I think I've got a feeling I've lost inside
# I think I'm gonna take me away... #
It wasn't really about what it purported to be about.
It was about two different sensibilities,
the slightly art school, bohemian sensibility of Blur
and what that represented,
versus the kind of unreconstructed
real kind of good, honest, meat-and-potatoes values
that Oasis represented and, you know,
that you were either the kind of kid at school that did the bullying
or you were the kind of kid at school that was being bullied,
and those two factions are very clearly sort of marked!
Damon Albarn had an altercation,
as in a slagging match, with Liam,
who started it, believe it or not,
outside a, some might say, number one record party I'd arranged
and I think Liam wound Damon up,
going, "We're number one," or something, "We're number one,"
and Damon then responded by moving his single
but they moved it to the same week
so that we would be going up against them.
But tonight, there's no denying Blur are top of the pops!
MUSIC: "Country House" by Blur
In the event, Blur won, but the battle was good for both bands.
So the story begins
# City dweller, successful fella... #
I was on holiday with my family in Devon.
I made my family drive into town so they could take me to a record shop
so I could buy the Cassingle of Country House, so I could...
and I was really pleased,
I remember seeing them on Top Of The Pops when they won,
and again, it felt like... Because I'm not a big sports fan,
it felt in the same way that, if you support a football team,
it felt like I'd backed the winning team. This was my team.
# And now he lives in a house, a very big house in the country
# Watching nothing but repeats and the food he eats in the country... #
But it was all so petty, and it was ridiculous,
but it was a genius move for us
because we were the underdogs,
although it doesn't look like that now, but Oasis at that point
were 500,000 or 600,000 into Definitely Maybe,
whereas Parklife was hitting on 2 million
so they were a much, much bigger band.
# In touch with his own mortality... #
But that actual argument, or fight between the two bands,
made Oasis national, kind of like, news,
and we were getting on, literally, News At Ten
and rubbish, like that, you know.
# He lives in a house, a very big house in the country... #
'Hello?'
Hello. Is Mr Gallagher there, please?
'Who's this?' It's... Is that Liam?
'Yeah.' Hello, Liam. It's Jeremy Vine from Newsnight here.
How are you doing? 'I'm BLEEP sound, how are you?'
Not bad. Are you coming out? 'Am I BLEEP. It's raining, mate.'
Despite the press hysteria, sales were low -
274,000 versus 216,000
in Blur's favour.
The modesty of these figures would be thrown into sharp relief in 1997
when one particular number one sold over 4.5 million copies.
FANFARE PLAYS
And right now, it's time for the bestselling UK singles of all time
and the Top 10 look like this.
Mary's Boy Child/Oh, My Lord medley, Boney M at number ten.
Unchained Melody/There'll Be Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover, Robson and Jerome.
At eight, You're The One That I Want, John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John.
At seven, She Loves You, the Beatles,
and at number six, Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Relax.
Top five, they're on the way.
At number five, Boney M, Rivers Of Babylon / Brown Girl In The Ring.
At four, Mull Of Kintyre and Girls' School from Wings.
The terrific three look like this -
Bohemian Rhapsody, Queen, at number three.
Band Aid, Do They Know It's Christmas at number two.
What's number one? Tell you in a moment.
At number one, it's Candle In The Wind 1997
and Something About The Way You Look Tonight
and that comes from the great Elton John.
# Goodbye England's rose
# May you ever grow in our hearts
# You were to grace that placed herself
# Where lives were torn apart
# You called out to our country
# And you whispered to those in pain... #
The new recording of Candle In The Wind,
Elton John's tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales,
has now become the biggest-selling single in the world.
# And it seems to me, you lived your life
# Like a candle in the wind
# Never failing with the sunset
# When the rain set in... #
Candle In The Wind was a watershed moment.
As the millennium drew to a close,
the chart would find itself in crisis.
By now, marketing had become a multi-million-pound pseudoscience
and it gave the Top 10 more than a whiff of implausibility.
Record companies had finally worked out
how to make something go straight in at number one and drop the next week,
so it looked very impressive in theory, but of course,
it just meant people were losing interest in the chart
because the charts weren't a consensus
of what the country was listening to or what the country liked.
With 43 number ones, 2000 saw almost continual change at the top,
but by now, the chart's biggest problem
was what was NOT going on on the high street.
The rise of the internet was a double whammy.
It offered kids a host of entertainment options
that took them away from the Top 40
and if they craved music,
well, now, they could fill their boots - for free.
I think by 2002, we were in an interesting situation
where the record business was in a mess
and the record business was in a mess because it didn't see
and didn't work out what to do with downloading.
The charts had become certainly a little bit odd.
The Top 10 was still relevant to a certain extent
and really, I know Radio One's chart
was really irrelevant from ten down to 40
because there were tracks making it in there, having sold 600 copies.
Good evening. The number of singles bought in the shops
has more than halved in the last five years
and back in August, one artist managed to get to number one
by selling just 23,000 copies.
Is the single as we know it now dead?
MUSIC: "Insania" by Peter Andre
Things were just going in at number one every week
and the following week, they'd be number ten, number 12 or number 15,
so it all started to become a bit meaningless.
It was all over, you know.
# Take a look around at what technology has found... #
Peter Andre had three number ones.
Who knew?
I bet even he doesn't know.
The entertainment industry's been reluctant to sell on the internet
until they're satisfied with the protection against copying
but whilst they're trying to make that happen,
technology is making copying even easier.
Superfast downloading is becoming more widely available.
It's called broadband.
MUSIC: "Chasing cars" by Snow Patrol
# We don't need
# Anything
# Or anyone... #
The chart had become a curate's egg.
2004 witnessed an all-time low of only 31 million physical sales.
Even the BBC was beginning to have second thoughts.
# Would you lie with me and just forget the world? #
Snow Patrol gave the last ever studio performance
on a weekly Top Of The Pops.
The show was cancelled in 2006 after 42 years
but the irony was that the axe fell
just as things were beginning to turn around.
What strikes me as tragic about the decision to cease Top Of The Pops
was that if it had hung on for a bit longer, then
because of the changing way in which people started buying their music,
the charts started to behave
a little bit more like they had done before.
Things that only every used to happen in the chart a long time ago
started to happen again, things like, you know,
Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol spent a year in the chart
because it just had that thing that some records have
that just make people want to keep buying them.
# If I lay here
CHEERING
# If I just lay here
# Would you lie with me
# And just forget the world? #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
This is the only chart that counts.
This is the only place where you will find out officially
who has that number one single right here in the UK.
MUSIC: "Heatwave" by Wiley
Since 2006, the pop charts have undergone a transformation.
The consumer finally got their head around buying music online
and a renaissance is upon us.
2011 witnessed a record 177 million downloads that counted
towards what has become a song rather than singles-based Top 40.
How you doing?
It's just gone six o'clock and we are live on Radio One.
We are live online!
You know, I think a lot of people sort of thought
that when physical sales started to go through the floor,
people believed that the charts wouldn't be as important.
If you're not watching online, what are you doing?
What are you doing? Sort it out.
I actually think they've become as important as they once were,
if not more now,
because kids are consuming music in a real different way.
It's time, believe it or not, for another one of these.
New entry! And this actually features one of my biggest pet hates -
R&B sexy talking at the top of a track.
You hear a song on an advert and you download it
and suddenly it's in the chart or it's performed at the Olympics
and before you know it, straightaway it's in there.
It's a bit of a weird one, this, because it's not really a new entry,
it's just a bit of a remix
that, funnily enough, sounds like the original. Ask your mum.
MUSIC: "Running Up That Hill - 2012 Remix" by Kate Bush
I think that we love the charts because on some level,
literally everyone is a massive control freak.
We all love the opportunity to say
what we've decided as being the best is officially the best
so I think the official chart
will always have a place in people's hearts.
So Rita Ora has finally gone and done it with How We Do.
Everyone's predicting it as a number one record
and it's made it to the top of your official chart.
# Cos when the sun sets, baby, on the avenue
# I get that ... feeling, yeah, when I'm with you
# So put your arms around me, baby... #
You know, en masse, we go out and buy songs
and if you're one of the million people that pick the number one,
you've done that. That's a really special feeling as a music fan.
# Out in the streets we're running... #
MUSIC CHANGES: "Here In My Heart" by Al Martino
Aw! What are you doing?
# Say that you care
# Take this heart I give gladly
# Surely you know
# I need your love so badly... #
The era of the single as a physical artefact
and the traditional ways in which we consumed it may be over,
but it's not the end, rather a new beginning
in the constant cycle of reinvention
that makes the Top 10 so enthralling.
# Please be mine
# And stay here
# In my heart! #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd