SortaNoTV: Sausage Roll Boy Beats Beatles for Most UK Xmas No. 1s

[Mark Jeffries]

For the fifth consecutive year, "LadBaby," the nom de YouTube for Mark and Roxanne Hoyle, have won the coveted Christmas No. 1 single in the UK for another parody song for charity about sausage rolls.  "Food Aid," a parody of the original charity Christmas record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" by Band Aid, was only released on Dec. 15 and was able to knock Wham!'s "Last Christmas" out of the top spot this week (that's for you Americans who are screaming "Whamageddon!" this year).  The previous record-holder was a tie between the Beatles and original Brit teenage idol Cliff Richard, with both hitting the holiday top spot four times (technically, one of Sir Cliff's appearances was as part of the second Band Aid recording of "Do They Know..." in 1989).  Last year the Hoyles beat the Fab Four's record for the most consecutive No. 1s ("I Want to Hold Your Hand" in 1963, "I Feel Fine" in 1964 and "Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out" in 1965):

https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/christmas-number-1-2022-ladbaby-make-uk-official-chart-history-as-food-aid-debuts-at-number-1-a-massive-apology-to-the-beatles-the-charity-wins-__38179/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=23-12-2022%20-%20The%20Official%20Word&utm_content=23-12-2022%20-%20The%20Official%20Word+CID_fcdc7d15a86bcd9fd44b655d51fb6601&utm_source=CampaignMo"nitor&utm_term=Find%20out%20now

All of the LadBaby parodies--Starship's "We Built This City" in 2018, "I Love Sausage Rolls" ("I Love Rock and Roll") in 2019, "Don't Stop Me Eatin'" ("Don't Stop Believing") in 2020 and "Sausage Rolls for Everyone" (Elton John and Ed Sheeran's "Merry Christmas"--Sir Elton and Sheeran appeared on the parody) last year--have had the proceeds go to a food bank, while this year Band Aid is receiving part of the proceeds (in exchange for the rights to use "Do They Know..."), so in some ways it's better than all those years in the oughts and 2010s when the Great British Public mindlessly followed Simon Cowell's dictates and made the winner of "The X Factor" the winner of Christmas No. 1.  But still--the Beatles beaten out by some YouTube bloke shouting about sausage rolls?

[Kevin M.]

Doing research for my class on pop music, one thing I learned is that the average age of US music consumers (meaning people who buy music either on physical media or digital downloads) has increased by nearly a decade. Young kids are conditioned to listen to music on YouTube or on free versions of sites like Spotify. It isn’t that they are buying less… they aren’t buying at all. So sales charts that used to be heavily dictated by teens are now focused on people in their early 30s. This is why you sometimes hear Mumford & Sons on a Top 40 radio station even though conventional wisdom says the kids aren’t partying to banjo music. 

It’s a confusing time to be a musician. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/7bab6eda-19c1-4f0d-96c3-4e94c6a36ad3n%40googlegroups.com.

--

Kevin M. (RPCV)

[Mark Jeffries]

Addendum:  Sir Cliff had three consecutive Christmas No. 1s ("Mistletoe and Wine" in 1988, the Band Aid remake in 1989 and "Saviour's Day" in 1990--don't forget that avowed atheist John Lennon hated him for being a Bible-thumper), as did the Spice Girls ("2 Become 1" in 1996, "Too Much" in 1997 and the aptly-named last hit "Goodbye" in 1998).  All of which left in the dust now by Sausage Rolls Boy.

--

[David Bruggeman]

This all seems ripe for another version of the 2009 campaign to get Rage Against the Machine to be Christmas #1.  The Loudwire article linked below also notes that track ("Killing in the Name" topped a 2019 poll of favorite Christmas #1s.

https://loudwire.com/rage-against-the-machine-uk-favorite-christmas-no-1-all-time/

Are the UK charts as fragmented as they are in the US, with pop and Top 40 dwarfing most of the other genres?

David

[Adam Bowie]

The charts in the UK have become largely meaningless in recent years. As others have noted, there are relatively few actual sales, with most of the chart positions driven by streaming. 

The UK charts have a complicated set of algorithms to attempt to keep things changing. One sale = 1, but you need 100 premium (i.e.paid) listens to equal 1 sale, or 600 free listens (YouTube/Spotify Free) to equal a sale. Then there's something called Accelerated Chart Ratio to keep backlist music from dominating the charts. After a few weeks, those 100 premium listens jump to 200 listens for one sale and so on. The ratio grows over time.  In other words, it doesn't matter how many times you stream Harry Styles' As It Was, it shouldn't re-enter the charts. This ratio almost kept Kate Bush off number one earlier in the year when everyone started listening to Running Up That Hill after it was featured in Stranger Things. Because it was an "old" track, it needed vast numbers of streams to compete with relatively modestly streamed new tracks. They changed the rules for it to count it as a "new release" and it reached number one.

Another change is to limit any artist to a maximum of three positions. That means that Taylor Swift couldn't do in the UK charts what she did in the Billboard charts earlier in the year and dominate them with every track from her new album. Only the top three get counted. 

All that said, there are so few actual "sales" that a concerted effort amongst activists can push songs by groups like LadBaby into the charts by getting people to actually buy the song. I'm not close enough to these things to know what they did, but I suspect it takes a smaller than you'd hope number of sales to get that uplift. Their YouTube channel has fewer than 5000 subscribers, which suggests it really is easy to juice the charts. (Another top ten track is F**k the Tories by K**ts - you can guess the missing letters - which is another "joke" entry).

The rest of the UK charts right now are Christmas songs that get enough streams, and basically no new sales, to lift them back into the charts. Hence Mariah Carey, Wham and the rest.

Looking at the current chart - https://www.officialcharts.com/charts/ - there are basically songs from Taylor Swift, Stormzy and SZA all related to recent album launches. Then a handful of joke songs - with the remainder being Christmas classics. That's even though those old Christmas songs all need 600 premium plays or 1200 free ones to equate to one actual sale.

Once upon a time, the charts were a big deal, going out late Sunday afternoon and getting big radio ratings on Radio 1 and commercial radio (there were two different charts, with BBC Radio 1 having the official one). These days, they get buried in Friday drivetime. Kids do not sit around caring that much. 

Adam

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/1551494111.2216754.1671920964936%40mail.yahoo.com.