Viva La Difference

Anyone who is even the tiniest bit interested in the British charts cannot fail to have noticed the dramatic transformation that the Official Charts Company website has undergone of late. Having listened carefully to what chart fans truly wanted they have undertaken a dramatic transformation not only of their corporate presence but also their entire approach to their archive. Finally we have, officially, a near complete set of singles and albums charts, dating right the way back to the 1950s and all online for browsing. Complete chart histories for each song are just a click away, a comprehensive entry for each artist can be pulled up (except for those with non-alphanumeric characters in their name, a bug which has been flagged but remains uncorrected) and it is possible to jump to any chart in history just by typing in a date. I have a groaning shelf of printed books that have been instantly rendered obsolete.

Behind the scenes, they have been careful to make sure things are as accurate as possible. Those of us who beta tested the site prior to launch were asked among other things to double check that particular chart listings were correct, and I made a special point of browsing those countdowns which for one reason or another were tweaked and corrected in between broadcast and publication. However, it is this very desire for completeness which has had one extraordinary and possibly unforeseen consequence. A hitherto unpublished chart which has for 16 years lain unnoticed in the database is now live for the record — and in the process has rewritten some small parts of singles chart history.

Specifically, it is the chart for the week ending July 10th 1999, first broadcast by Radio One on July 4th and which, as this BBC news story from the time recounts, was based on incomplete data.

As the story goes on to note, missing the data for an entire chain for the whole week was unprecedented and to re-calculate the chart would cause a huge problem, allowing business rivals to compare the two figures side by side and work out the market share of Virgin and Our Price, the protection of which was enshrined in the confidentiality clauses of the agreements that led to sales data being supplied to them in the first place.

Several weeks later the clamour to correct the error became too great. As I noted in my own column of August 7th that year:

It seems like the done thing to demand chart re-runs at the moment. Both the music and the mainstream press gave much coverage to the row that erupted a few weeks ago when it emerged that a chart published earlier in the month was lacking data from some of the larger record chains, resulting in the data for some singles being badly skewed. Both Blur and Semisonic felt aggrieved by this as both Coffee + TV and Secret Smile were expected to land inside the Top 10 but instead were listed as falling some way short. After much behind the scenes muttering their pleas were heard and the relevant chart (the one for the first week of July) is to be recalculated with the missing data the benefit of the record books (and indeed overseas marketing).

Except that, as usual, I was only partially correct. The 10/7 chart was indeed recompiled with the missing shop data added and the results added to the master chart database. But it remained hidden and unpublished, with the result that every reference book ever since has remained true to the broadcast version and which was printed in Music Week that week. As a consequence, several tracks went down in history with what should now be noted as the “wrong” chart peak.

The most high profile single to be affected was Viva La Radio by Lolly. Here is the relevant section of the singles chart that week as published in Music Week:

Here is the relevant section of the chart, as taken from the Virgin Book of Top 40 charts:

And here is Lolly’s entry from the third edition of the Complete Book Of The British Charts:

The record has until now gone down in history as a Number 6 hit, having entered the chart that week, diving down to Number 12 seven days later. But not so according to the data now to be found on the Official Charts company website. As of now, Viva La Radio goes down in history as a Number 7 hit:

In actual fact, there are no fewer than 10 singles on that week’s Top 40 which have their chart peaks revised up or down. For example Word Up by Melanie G is now a Number 13 hit, not Number 14; No Pigeons by Sporty Thievz is a Number 16 hit rather than Number 21; The Animal Song by Savage Garden is demoted from Number 16 to Number 18.

The ultimate irony, however, has to be the fate of the two singles whose labels originally kicked up such a fuss and who forced the hand of both Millward Brown and CIN (as they were back then) in re-compiling to hopefully give both the Top 10 berths they appeared to be heading for as of midweek. Coffee + TV by Blur does not move on the revised countdown and remains a Number 11 hit. Secret Smile by Semisonic did indeed benefit, but only to the tune of one place, revised upwards from Number 13 to Number 12.

However perhaps the most significant change is much lower down and which concerns one single whose sales appeared to be entirely concentrated in branches of either Virgin or Our Price who were clearly the only chains who had chosen to stock it in any numbers. Five years ago I told the story of Australian hit Buses And Trains by Bachelor Girl and how it had been released and promoted here thanks to the urging of the managers of one particular group of radio stations. The original chart of July 10th 1999 had listed the track as a Number 84 hit, thus killing off any prospects of the single becoming a UK hit. Maybe that would never have been the case anyway, but as the revised chart now shows the single was slightly more popular than anyone has ever realised.