Collecting the Charts

For pop fans of a certain age, contemporary Britain is a strange place to reside. There are many who, like me, find it difficult to know what the latest number one record is, let alone songs further down the charts. Meanwhile, they are living a parallel existence, where they are caught up in the Top 40 singles of the early 1980s. BBC4 has now reached 1981 with its re-runs of Top of the Pops. These programmes are met with fervent anticipation. Bob Stanley, for example, could not wait for this particular year’s repeats.

Two things, in particular, stand out about these re-runs. One is how memorable the singles are. I regularly know all of the records from a given week’s Top 40 in the 1980s and can recall most of the Top of the Pops performances. The other thing is the quality of the music. The last episode that I watched was from 4 June 1981 (sadly, BBC4 have moved away from synchronising the week of original broadcast with the week of the year in which in which that episode is being repeated). It opened with Siouxsie and the Banshees' brilliant ‘Spellbound’, went on to feature the Jam’s ‘Funeral Pyre’, Odyssey’s ‘Going Back to My Roots’, and Imagination’s astonishing performance of ‘Body Talk’; Adam and the Ants’ ‘Stand and Deliver’ was number one.

I know that I am on dangerous ground here – old people need to be wary about claiming that the past is better than the present – but I do have a defence. One of the reasons why the 1981 charts were superior to today's is because people were buying physical records rather than purchasing downloads or accessing digital streams. And one of the consequences of having analogue formats is that people collected them. The Jam had huge hits in this era because they had an avid fanbase who would buy every release no matter what its quality and pretty much in disregard of whether they had heard the song or not. This was also an era in which bands with less mainstream appeal (Siouxsie and the Banshees, for example) would still have sufficient followers who were dedicated enough and consumerist enough to get their records into the lower regions of the Top 40.

Record companies took advantage of this collecting mentality. One method was to build up demand for a record and make sure that fans knew the release date. They would therefore go out and buy the single in bulk, giving it enough impetus to get into the charts. Another method, arriving slightly later, was to release records in multiple formats. This too played to the collector's mindset. Committed fans would buy a song several times over to ensure they had each of its versions. As well as guaranteeing a high first-week entry, this method could also prolong a song’s success. A case in point was Frankie Goes to Hollywood, who maintained ‘Two Tribes’ presence at number one by regularly releasing new 12” remixes during its chart run.

But why should this result in better music, particularly if the fans were collecting artefacts rather than songs? Here we have to address the reasons why fans become fans in the first place. They become devoted to artists because they sense a special something in them. This usually derives from the music itself (even if they end up buying every release or going to every possible performance by an artist, regardless of their quality, they will have been attracted in the first place because of a record that they found outstanding) and because of the personality of the performer (fans repeatedly invest in an artist when they feel a strong bond). And this bond persists. I love ‘Spellbound’ not just because it is a great song, but because Siouxsie was a transformative artist and she transformed me.

And what of now? We live in an era when hits really are hits. This has produced numerous great songs, but overall a sense of commitment – to artists, to performances, to the charts, to anything other than the song itself – has been lost. Streaming, in particular, has meant that the charts are based more on use value than they are on collecting appeal. One consequence of the fandom of collecting physical records was a fans’ partisan enjoyment in following those records' successes in the charts. Today, there is less need to know where a song has got to and what its position is because there is less of a bond with the record (if you have streamed it, you might not even have paid for it and yet you will have affected its position in the charts) and there is less of a bond with the artist (one consequence of buying records was that you entered into financial and commodified bonds with the performer). 

Fandom does still play a part in the Top 40, but it is now largely the preserve of teen idols, as Justin Bieber’s Yuletide domination of the charts testifies. Older music collectors, meanwhile, are buying vinyl re-issues and they are lost in the hit parades of 1981.

Quiz Team Aguilera

From the 1950s through to the 1990s there was great awareness, in Britain at least, of what was going on in the pop charts. It wasn’t just the number one record that was common knowledge, the rest of the Top 30 was widely known as well. One way that this can best be revealed is though general knowledge quizzes, whether these are shown on television or held in pubs. The best contestants have a remarkable memory for the music of the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s, but it fades once the Britpop era is over. This tendency can be heard regularly amongst the contestants on Ken Bruce’s ‘Pop Master’ on Radio 2, and it’s also something that Richard Osman of Pointless has noted. When asked what, as a quiz show presenter, he had learnt about the British public’s general knowledge, he replied ‘Anyone that was famous in the 1970s or 1980s is gonna be famous forever’.

            Of course age has something to do with this. Many quiz show contestants are middle aged and are much better at recalling the music of their youth than they are at recalling the music of their first mortgage. But it’s not just this: these contestants also have a good knowledge of music that was made before they were born. I do too: when I look at the Top 30 of any week in the 1960s, I’m struck by the fact that I know just about every song. When I look at the Top 30 of a week in the 2000s, I feel pained that I hardly know any. Moreover, young people do take part in quiz shows such as Pointless and they too are rubbish at the pop music of the modern era.

            There are a number of reasons why the British pop charts have less centrality than they used to, but the most important is that British media has less centrality these days. The BBC’s pop radio station, Radio One, had an audience of millions before it started hemorrhaging listeners in the mid-1990s. Top of the Pops, the BBC’s television chart show, regularly had an audience of 15 million in the 1970s; this had declined to less than three million by 2004. The sales figures of the British music press have also declined drastically: the NME sold 300,000 copies a week in the 1970s; it sells under 15,000 today. In the 1960s the charts were front-page news of the British music journals. They were also news in the British daily press. In the present day the tabloids still cover pop, but this coverage is focused on gossip rather than on who is number one in the charts.

            The overall effect of this is that the average listener’s knowledge of chart music is spread more thinly. In the pre-internet years, the committed pop fan would be quite capable of carrying each week’s Top 30 in their heads. They would know all the tunes and they would know about their rise and fall. Such matters do not pre-occupy people any more. Rather than surveying the Top 30, it is only the very biggest records that register widely. We live in an era of blockbuster hits: ‘Take Me to Church’, ‘All About That Bass’, ‘Let it Go’, ‘Let Her Go’, ‘Happy’, ‘Royals’, ‘Blurred Lines’, ‘Get Lucky’, ‘Gangnam Style’. The rest of the Top 30 merely props up these songs; it exists to catch out the contestants of quiz shows.

The Likely Lads Test

‘No Hiding Place’, broadcast in 1973 as part of the first season of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?, is one of the most memorable episodes of a British sitcom. If you have seen it, and have an interest in sport, you are unlikely to have forgotten it. The premise is simple. The English football team is playing Bulgaria in a game that kicks off at midday. The television highlights of the match won’t be shown until 10.00 in the evening. The ‘likely lads’, our Geordie heroes Terry and Bob, try to avoid hearing the result so they can enjoy the full drama of the game when it is shown on TV.

            This is not easy. A hairdresser tells them they’ll ‘never make it . . . there’s the radio, evening papers, television news’. On top of this, their friend Flint gets wind of their media blackout and enters into a bet with them that they won’t escape the score. Terry and Bob make a good go of it. They run for home, so that they can flee Flint and his radio that is broadcasting the game. Home isn’t safe either. The phone rings, but rather than pick it up, out of fear it will be someone wanting to talk about the game, they seek sanctuary in a church. Flint tracks them down there and is about to announce the result when a vicar appears. This intervention provides Terry and Bob with an opportunity to escape. On the run for the rest of the day, they avoid news of the game by giving blood and attending a talk on flower arranging at the local Women’s Institute. Eventually, they settle on their sofa as the TV broadcast is about to begin. But they’ve left the front door unlocked. Flint enters. They let him win the bet, with the proviso that he leave without telling them the score. They then turn on the TV. It is showing ice skating rather than the football. Terry and Bob look dumbfounded. And then a commentator explains that the England v Bulgaria game has been postponed because of a waterlogged pitch.  

            This is the likely lads’ ‘longest day’, one they describe as being ‘endless’. They live in a world where the news is everywhere – on radio, on television, in the papers, on the phone. Avoiding it is like avoiding life itself. ‘No Hiding Place’ is still worth watching, and not only because it’s such an elegantly constructed sitcom. To see it again is to be reminded that media saturation is not a new thing.

But is ‘No Hiding Place’ timeless? The programme has been remade. This century’s most famous Geordie duo, Ant and Dec, assumed the roles of Terry and Bob in a version broadcast in 2002. What’s interesting about this remake is how similar it is to the original. Once again our heroes are told they will ‘never make it . . . there’s the radio, evening papers, television news’.

In some ways there’s been a greater leap between 2002 and 2015 than there was between 1973 and 2002. The world wide web was up and running in 2002, but less than half of UK homes were connected to it, while only 6% had broadband. Wi-Fi barely existed; there were no smart phones. There was no MySpace, let alone Facebook. Twitter was still four years away, and it would be eight years before we had Instagram.

You see where I’m going with this? If ‘No Hiding Place’ were to be remade today, it wouldn’t just be newspapers, TV and radio that Terry and Bob would have to avoid; there would be all manner of social media to escape and all sorts of interconnectivity to unplug. Moreover, if technological futurists are right, 2015 is just about the last time that ‘No Hiding Place’ could be reworked. In a few years time we’ll all have Google glasses wrapped around our faces and we’ll be hardwired to the internet. If we’ve told our machines that we’re interested in football, then avoiding the scores will be impossible.

A side-effect of current levels of mediation is that the story is becoming as important as the game. In Britain, football highlights are still shown in the evenings of a big match day. However, as well as reviewing the game itself, these programmes now feature highlights of the players’ tweets that followed it. Moreover, such is the voracious appetite of social media for content, we’re now weighed down with stories that have nothing to do with the game itself. Gossip rules.

This situation is amplified when it comes to popular music. In sports the results do still matter. In music, it is now difficult to know what the real output of an artist is. Is the gossip there to back up a musical career, or is the musical career there to back up the gossip?

In 1973 it would have been possible to make a version of ‘No Hiding Place’ that focused on pop music rather than football. Flint could have placed a bet with Terry and Bob that they would never make it through a week without knowing what was number one in the charts. This would have been difficult, as the best-selling record was major news at this time. Radio One’s chart show was heard by millions; Top of the Pops, the television equivalent, was watched by even more. The Top 30 was published in the music press, which back then had a vast reach. It was also published in the tabloid newspapers, which in the 1970s were read by the majority of the population.

You couldn’t make this pop version of ‘No Hiding Place’ today. I regularly ask my university students what’s number one in the charts. Despite the repetition of my tests, it is rare that any of them knows the answer. And this is young people who are studying popular music. In the 1970s, most mums and dads would know what was number one. It’s safe to say that hardly any would today.

And yet they may well know what Lady Gaga has been up to, or Rihanna, or Kanye West. Today’s tabloids feature several pages of pop gossip. They don’t feature the charts. And young people aren’t the only ones who use social media. The middle aged and elderly are online. They might not be using the internet to connect to Radio One, but their Twitter feeds may well be telling them about Justin Bieber’s misdemeanours. Have they heard his music? Probably not.

It’s enough to make you want to break out into song. The Likely Lads theme tune will do: Oh, what happened to you, whatever happened to me? What became of the people, we used to be?

The Brit Awards 2014: There's Got to be a Way to Blockbuster!

In theory, the Brit Awards are about the recent past. To qualify for an award, an album or single must have been released in the previous 12 months and an artist must have released a recording in that period. In practice, they are all about the future. One aim of the televised ceremony is to maximize album and single sales. The awards presentations are leavened with live performances, and it is the latter that are more effective at promoting releases (following Adele’s performance at the 2011 ceremony, sales of ‘Someone Like You’ increased by 785%). Another aim is to promote new artists. The British Phonographic Industry, which operates the awards, has orientated them in this direction. In 2008 they introduced a ‘critics’ choice’ award, whereby a panel of industry insiders designate a forthcoming star. More recently, they have dropped their ‘outstanding contribution’ award, which used to be given to industry veterans, and replaced it with a ‘global success’ award, which seems to be the exclusive preserve of One Direction.

In theory, the Brit Awards are fair and open. The official website claims ‘The Brit Awards operates a completely transparent procedure’. It details the qualifying criteria: all albums and the 1,000 best-selling singles released by British artists in the preceding sales period are eligible. Industry figures then put forward their personal top fives after being sent a list of these titles. In practice, the awards are closed and unclear. There is no information about who chooses the eventual winners or how they are chosen. There is also no explanation of why, despite the multitude of qualifying artists and records, such a small number make it through to the final shortlist. This year, nine separate awards were available for British artists, with winners chosen from 46 shortlist places. However, only 24 acts shared the nominations between them.

In theory, the aim of the Brit Awards is to celebrate British music. In practice, they are reliant on foreign talent. There are three ‘international’ awards, and in order to maximize viewing figures (and sell the latest tracks and concerts by the artists concerned) there are live performances by major global stars. This presents an awkward balancing act for the British Phonographic Industry. The nascent British acts that it is promoting – last night Disclosure, Bastille and Rudimental were among the artists to perform live – have to measure up against seasoned American performers – Beyoncé, Katy Perry and Bruno Mars all appeared, and the show was stolen by Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers.

The Brit Awards are evidence of a culture of blockbusters. In her recent book of the same name, Anita Elberse argues, ‘The highest-performing entertainment businesses take their chances on a small group of titles and turn those choices into successes by investing heavily in their development’. This is the opposite of Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory; rather than the ‘future of business’ coming from ‘selling less of more’, the focus of media corporations is concentrated on a few stars and a few key releases. Time is concentrated, too. Aside from talent shows, there are now few opportunities to promote music on British television. The record companies have to focus much of their promotional activity on this single annual event.

As a result, the Brit Awards have to ensure that the critic’s choice is right. These are the future blockbuster acts who they hope will sit alongside the American stars. So far, they haven’t done badly. The first winner was Adele, who was the best selling albums artist in the world in 2011. The second was Florence and the Machine, whose two albums topped the UK charts. The third was Ellie Goulding, who has sold over 10 million singles worldwide. The fourth was Jessie J, whose first single ‘Price Tag’ debuted at number on in the UK singles chart. The fifth was Emeli Sandé, who had the UK’s biggest selling album of 2012. The sixth was Tom O’Dell, who perhaps has the lowest profile of the winners so far, but has still achieved a number one UK album.

2014’s critics’ choice is Sam Smith. He has already proved his worth via the music industry’s version of an apprentice scheme. He has been ‘featured’ on a number of singles by other acts. The first was ‘Latch’ by Disclosure, which reached the UK top 20 in late 2012. His next guest spot was on ‘La La La’ by Naughty Boy, which reached number one in Britain, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy and the Lebanon. Confirming the concentrated nature of the Brit Awards and the British music industry, Disclosure were nominated for four awards this year and ‘La La La’ was shortlisted for best single and best video.

Back in 1973, the British glam rock group Sweet released a single which asked ‘does anyone know the way, there’s got to be a way, to blockbuster?’ They found the answer. After the group appeared on Top of the Pops wearing make-up and German army uniforms their record went to number one. In 2014 there is a new response: get your act nominated for as many Brit Awards as possible. We’ll need to look at next week’s charts to find out who the real winners were.

N.B. An edited version of this article is available, with academic rigour and journalistic flair, at The Conversation.

Do You Remember the Days of the Old Schoolyard?

Musical taste at school is dynamic. The popularity of any band or any genre can go from being cool to being embarrassing; woe betide any student who doesn’t keep up with what is in and what is out. There are shifts in taste in each school year. There also differences in the ways that each school year uses its music. But are these differences caused by psychology, aesthetics or political economy? And do they hold true at different periods in time?

In 1972 Simon Frith surveyed a school in West Yorkshire. He found that, as pupils grew older, they moved away from the mainstream towards the underground, and away from group consensus towards greater individuality of taste. Fourth formers had ‘maximum involvement in youth groups’; fifth formers ‘emphasised beat and sound in their tastes rather than meaning’; sixth formers scorned ‘“commercial” tastes’.

In general, this remained true at my own school in the late 1970s/early 1980s. We were the punk generation. At first, there was mass consensus that all punk was a good thing. Then, in later school years, there was greater discernment: some bands were in (the Fall) other bands were out (the Boomtown Rats). There was a shift from chart punk released by major record companies (the Clash, the Stranglers), to more obscure punk released by independent labels (Discharge, Crass). By the time I left school I was ordering albums from America so that I could get hold of records that no other students owned.

Two of my nieces are currently at high school and their taste is just as nuanced and distinct. A couple of years ago they were into One Direction. They were displaying their ‘maximum involvement’ by following Britain’s biggest boy band. This year One Direction are out. My nieces are now fans of K-pop. Although their musical taste might seem far removed from the punk that dominated my school, their reasoning is not so different. My nieces are not into Psy; what they like is the more obscure K-pop. They told me they like it because it is not written about in the mainstream press. They are displaying excellent scorn for commercial taste.

And yet I’m not sure that it’s quite so easy to wrap up the tastes of school years and put them into boxes. There are factors that make these groupings unstable. One is the role of other family members. When I was at school there were fourth formers who already displayed refined taste. The common factor amongst them was that they had older brothers or sisters. These siblings gave them advanced warning of the rules of their own school years. While I’m sure this dynamic remains in place, there is now further family intrusion. The taste of parents used to be something to rebel against, but this is no longer always the case. Some ‘cooler’ parents insist on taking up the role of older siblings; they advise their children about what is and what is not to like. From what I have seen, it is as children get older that they are coming into closer alignment with their parents’ tastes. Fourth formers are still winding up their mums and dads by insisting that chart pop is amazing; but today’s sixth formers are asking their parents if they can borrow their old vinyl LPs.

Music also plays apart. There are always acts and genres that are aimed specifically at school kids, but this music varies in both quantity and quality. Some of this comes down to demographics: when there are lots school kids around the music industry aims a lot of music at them. Some of it comes down to luck. Bliss was it to be young in the late 1970s when punk held sway. This music was aimed at children, but it was also complex. It felt important at the time and still feels important today; it informed the philosophy by which I live. While I’m an arch populist and an out-and-out lover of hits, I struggle to find similar significance in One Direction.

The media infrastructure also changes from generation to generation. When I was at school the move away from the mainstream was largely a game of one-upmanship. It also wasn’t that hard to escape mass media. Although there was a greater presence of popular music on terrestrial television in those days (Top of the Pops was being broadcast to 15 million viewers each week), the music was hardly touched upon in the daily papers (it wasn’t until the mid-1980s that both the tabloids and the broadsheets gave it greater coverage). As such, it wasn’t difficult to access ‘obscure’ music (listening to John Peel’s radio show or buying Sounds would do the trick).

Things are different today. My nieces aren’t just turning away from chart pop out of a desire to refuse mainstream taste; they are also turning away from it because its depressing to be confronted with the antics of today’s pop stars in the mass media. It’s simply not safe to be a fan of Rihanna, Rita Ora, Justin Bieber or the other performers who receive media saturation. Who knows what they’ll do next? Their disrobing is embarrassing and their antics are stupid. And so instead my nieces are putting their faith in K-pop acts about whom we know nothing and who chose to say nothing in the press. Although there is wisdom in this, I’m not sure that it’s a design for life.

The Revolution will be Solarized

The subject of one of Robert Elms’ radio programmes on BBC London this week was Top of the Pops, occasioned by the fact that next year will mark the 50^th anniversary of the first edition of the show. Listeners were asked to phone in with their memories of the programme. Many of them chimed with a point I raised in my previous blog entry. It was family viewing that made Top of the Pops exciting: parents disapproving of performers that their kids liked; kids hating the easy listening of which their parents approved; the kids not getting the point of the dancing girls; the dads getting the point.

            We do need to be careful that these recollections are genuine, though. Listeners memories seemed to have been clouded by their easy access to Top of the Pops repeats and clips. They also appeared to have been affected by analyses of the show’s most important moments. At times it was as though they were being forced to self-reflect on the impact of David Bowie’s ‘Starman’ appearance. Another listener’s comments made me pause for thought. He recalled with fondness the Rolling Stones’ 1971 appearance for ‘Brown Sugar’, singling out the beauty of Mick Jagger’s pink satin suit.

            But did he actually see it like this? Although Top of the Pops had been filmed and broadcast in colour since 1969, during the early 1970s most British households watched it on black and white TVs. By 1972 only 17% of households had colour receivers. It would be 1976 before colour sets outnumbered black-and-white ones.

            These figures should also make us think again about glam rock and Top of the Pops. Looked at today, colour television appears to chime perfectly with this spectacular music. On YouTube we can see performances by Bolan, Bowie, Slade and the Sweet in all their technicolour glory. When these shows were broadcast, however, my family was among the majority who saw them in black and white. For me, what is being lost amongst the digital archive is how good these performances looked on monochrome TVs. In particular, the frequent employment of solarization processes had an intensity that is lost in the colour versions. In fact, the effects were so effective on black and white television that I’d like to know more about the priorities of the producers: was the glam Top of the Pops made with the monochrome audience in mind?