| UK singles chart number ones |
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| UK singles chart |
| Other charts |
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Melody Maker was a British weekly pop music newspaper which was published from 1926 to 2000. Record charts in the United Kingdom began life on 14 November 1952 when NME (New Musical Express) began compiling the first UK-wide sales-based hit parade. Melody Maker's own chart began on 7 April 1956. Prior to 15 February 1969, when the British Market Research Bureau chart was established, there was no one universally accepted source and many periodicals compiled their own chart. During this time the BBC used aggregated results of charts from the NME and other sources to compile the Pick of the Pops chart. In 1969, Record Retailer and the BBC commissioned the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) to compile the singles chart. [1]
Prior to this, The Official Charts Company and Guinness' British Hit Singles & Albums, consider Record Retailer the canonical source for the British singles chart in the 1960s; [1] While NME had the biggest circulation of charts in the 1960s and was more widely followed, Melody Maker's chart was considered more influential and equally highly cited. [2] [3] After 1969, the joint venture between Record Retailer and the BBC is widely considered as the beginning of the official UK Singles Chart. [2] [3] [4] Melody Maker, like NME, continued compiling its own chart until 14 May 1988. [5]
Notable differences in the Melody Maker charts in this decade when compared to the official chart run by BMRB and even NME are additional number-one singles for Gary Glitter, Queen, Showaddywaddy, Wings, The Real Thing, David Soul, John Travolta and The Jam. Such songs as "Boogie Nights" by Heatwave and "Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)" by Joe Tex reached the top of the Melody Maker chart although neither topped the BMRB or NME charts. [6] Twenty-two acts achieved a number-one single on the Melody Maker chart but never had an official number-one single, [nb 1] although one of them was part of a singing duo whose other half had reached number one solo. [nb 2]
During the 1970s, Melody Maker charted 201 number-one singles, of which 49 did not make the top of the official UK Singles Chart. Of that figure, 18 singles also did not reach number one on the NME charts. One of the standouts in Melody Maker's unique number ones of the 1970s was "Rodrigo's Guitar Concerto de Aranjuez (Theme From 2nd Movement)" by Manuel and the Music of the Mountains (pseudonym of veteran arranger/conductor Geoff Love), which was number one for one week in February 1976. The BBC, which drew their charts from the BMRB, had announced this as the number one single in the United Kingdom, but the chart was withdrawn four hours later due to compilation errors, making it the shortest period that a song had been number one on the official charts. [7] Melody Maker thus had this at number one for six days and twenty hours longer than the BBC.
| ‡ | The song did not reach number one on the BMRB chart which is considered as the official chart after 15 February 1969. |
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| [nb #] | The song spent a week at number one where it shared the top spot with another song. |
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British Hit Singles & Albums was a music reference book originally published in the United Kingdom by the publishing arm of the Guinness breweries, Guinness Superlatives. Later editions were published by HiT Entertainment. It listed all the singles and albums featured in the Top 75 pop charts in the UK. In 2004 the book became an amalgamation of two earlier Guinness publications, originally known as British Hit Singles and British Hit Albums. The publication of this amalgamation ceased in 2006, with Guinness World Records being sold to The Jim Pattison Group, owner of Ripley's Believe It or Not!. At this point, the Official UK Charts Company teamed up with Random House/Ebury Publishing to release a new version of the book under the Virgin Books brand. Entitled The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles, it was first published in November 2008 with a separate albums book and second edition being published over the next couple of years.
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-selling singles in the United Kingdom, based upon physical sales, paid-for downloads and streaming. The Official Chart, broadcast on BBC Radio 1 and MTV, is the UK music industry's recognised official measure of singles and albums popularity because it is the most comprehensive research panel of its kind, today surveying over 15,000 retailers and digital services daily, capturing 99.9% of all singles consumed in Britain across the week, and over 98% of albums. To be eligible for the chart, a single is currently defined by the Official Charts Company (OCC) as either a 'single bundle' having no more than four tracks and not lasting longer than 25 minutes or one digital audio track not longer than 15 minutes with a minimum sale price of 40 pence. The rules have changed many times as technology has developed, the most notable being the inclusion of digital downloads in 2005 and streaming in July 2014.
Until 15th February 1969, there was no officially compiled chart.