The UK charts are broken – they’re the worst they’ve been since the 1950s-Robert Oliver-Entertainment – Metro

The UK charts are broken – what can be done to fix them? (Picture: Official Charts Company)

Something is wrong with the UK pop charts.

Not the tunes – they say pop gets worse as you age, but the 2020s are already a major improvement on the 2010s.

The mix of genres getting exposure has returned to healthy levels not seen for years and the kinds of artists getting hits have diversified rapidly.

Singer-songwriters are back in style, too, following a decade plus of near ubiquitous dominance from monied executives and ‘super-producers’.

No, what’s wrong with the UK charts is the way in which they’re compiled. The true story of pop music in Britain is no longer being told.

Things haven’t been right since 2014. That was when streaming figures were first counted towards a song’s chart position – a decade on, streaming is now the dominant format.

Streaming services are now the dominant platform (Picture: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Of course, that isn’t a problem – technology constantly changes and it’s only right that the Official Charts Company (OCC) endeavours to reflect that.

The problem is that streaming’s introduction unleashed untold chaos that, as of 2024, still hasn’t calmed down.

Something first felt wrong in January 2016, when Justin Bieber became the first artist in UK chart history to hold the top three positions at the same time, with his singles Love Yourself, Sorry, What Do You Mean?

Justin Bieber made chart history in January 2016 (Picture: Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

A few months later, Drake’s One Dance stayed at number one for 15 consecutive weeks. It was a big hit, but definitely not the fourth biggest of all time in the UK.

After 2014, any song, streamed from anywhere – actively or passively – was eligible to chart. This marked a drastic change from the 20th century, when songs had to be officially, formally issued and then purchased in person.

Then, on March 10, 2017, inevitable disaster struck: after the release of his multi-platinum album Divide, Ed Sheeran occupied nine spaces of that week’s UK top 10. It was the day the British pop charts as we knew them died.

Streaming figures had distorted things so much that the release of a new album had instantly undermined the meritocracy of the singles chart, which had stood firm for 65 years.

The OCC, to their credit, acted fast: they immediately changed the rules so that only three songs from the same album could chart simultaneously.

Sadly, that only temporarily fixed one problem, and several artists have taken up 30% of the top 10 in numerous weeks ever since. The problems don’t stop there either, and are more wide-reaching than we initially realised.

Ed Sheeran held nine spaces in the top 10 in March 2017 (Picture: Bradley Collyer/PA Wire)

Ed completely took over the charts and the rules had to be changed (Picture: Official Charts Company)

In the 2000s, the average number of songs entering the top 10 each year stood at 176 – the highest in history. The song at the top of the charts changed 28 times per year, on average.

Generations ago, the rate of change wasn’t so fast, but it was gathering a healthy speed – the 1960s saw 99 new top 10 entries per year (on average) as the charts grew in popularity.

The turnover rate of number one singles slowed through the 1970s and 1980s, but the amount of songs reaching the top 10 remained strong.

The 1970s averaged 120 new entries per year and the 1980s notched up 137. The mass spread of the CD single in the 1990s saw things trend even further upwards to 158. Dozens of artists, new and established, were landing numerous big hits on a regular basis.

Those numbers ballooned around the turn of the millennium – the UK number one changed almost every week and new entries rushed into the top 10 on a level never seen before.

However, the introduction of mp3 downloads in 2005 quickly restored some balance, and the number of songs entering the top 10 between 2010 and 2014 leveled out at a steady average of 137. For a while, there was a sense of equilibrium.

The rate of number ones per year has slowed down to 1950s levels (Picture: Officialcharts.com/Shutterstock)

Then 2014 happened. The picture painted since then is not pretty.

Looking at the top 10 from each week of the last decade proves one thing: the UK charts are almost frozen still.

In the period between 2015 and 2024, the average number of changes atop the charts per year completely collapsed to just 18. You’d have to go back 33 years, to the summer of Bryan Adams, if you wanted to find similar numbers.

As for new songs entering the top 10 since 2015, that total crashed from 137 all the way down to 86 in less than a decade – the lowest average since 1959. 51 songs per year – almost a song per week – lost to the nether regions of the charts.

You could argue that returning to numbers last seen in the 1950s is simply a return to a former state, rather than evidence of a crisis. But in the 1950s, not only was the seven-inch single the only format available to buy, the charts frequently only counted 12 songs, and far fewer songs were being recorded altogether.

It’s a fact: pop singles are now spending longer in the top 10 than at any other point in history. It’s shutting other artists out, and people are losing interest.

The Beatles and Elvis Presley used to be two of a kind… (Pictures: Getty/Official Charts Company)

Worse still, there’s also been an alarming increase in the number of artists replacing themselves at number one. Between 1952 and 2014, only The Beatles and Elvis Presley managed to pull off such a feat. Replacing yourself at number one was once the mark of otherworldly legendary status.

In just 10 years between 2014 and 2024, however, Justin Bieber, Ed Sheeran (three times), Sir Elton John, Ariana Grande (twice), and Sabrina Carpenter (also twice) have all achieved it. All major artists in their own right, but the increase is stark.

The internet and streaming platforms were supposed to democratise pop music – artists could, ostensibly, bypass major labels and upload music from anywhere, at any time, and have a shot at landing a hit. Instead, the complete opposite has happened.

The issues facing the British charts in the present day are far more existential than previous threats, too, and are unique to this current time. For many reasons, public interest is seemingly dwindling year on year.

This is perhaps no better represented than the change in Radio 1’s coverage of the top 40. Between 1987 and 2015, the official chart show went out on Sunday afternoons for three hours – it is now awkwardly squeezed into 60 or 90 minute slots during Friday drivetime.

Long gone, too, are the rituals of recording the top 40 songs onto cassette tapes every Tuesday or Sunday night. In fact, the amount of time people spend listening to Radio 1 at all has dropped by 54% between 2000 and 2021.

You’d have to go back to the 1950s and Frankie Laine to find another period when the charts were so slow (Picture: George Rinhart/Corbis/Getty)

More troubling for OCC is that Gen Z and Gen Alpha are barely paying attention – they love pop just as much as any generation before them, but they couldn’t care less about the competition of the charts.

And the one chart that older generations still care about – the race for Christmas number one – has been distorted and wrecked beyond all recognition in recent years.

One of Wham or Mariah Carey will inevitably hit number one at Christmastime again this year – simply by default, as they open numerous Christmas playlists on Spotify and Apple Music. They will likely only be stopped if LadBaby decide to come back for a sixth time.

The UK charts are in desperate need of reform.

It’s okay to write the last 10 years off as teething problems brought on by fluctuating and fast-moving technological advancements. But the next 10 years cannot be the same.

At present, the UK singles charts resemble an empty carousel, spinning in an abandoned theme park in the dead of night, only performing its rudimentary function because someone forgot to unplug it after everybody went home.

It could, and should, be so much more than that.

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