In the 1960s, The Beatles dominated the music charts like nobody ever had before.
As their press officer, Derek Taylor, put it, “This is the biggest thing that’s ever happened, no question about it. It’s like nothing before. it’s not like Presley, it’s not like Sinatra, it’s not like the late president Kennedy… It’s The Beatles, and they are without precedent.” Of course, he had a vested interest in hyping them up, but he also had the easiest job in the world on that front.
After all, the figures proved his claim. In that decade, they sold 376 million records. For context, Elvis Presley was in second place with 131m, the Rolling Stones were third with 110m, Simon and Garfunkel garnered 89m, and the Fab Four’s own hero, Bob Dylan, was fifth with 72m. They also rattled off 11 consecutive number ones in the UK singles charts.
It was a decade of dominance like never before, and it soon became clear that it would probably never happen again. They had expanded the horizons of music, and as such, they also expanded the spread. Pop culture was no longer a narrow commercial field, and fans were funnelling further into niches. This was also amplified by the rise of technology that opened up new possibilities, and the DIY nature of punk meant the pool of favourites to choose from was bolstered by indie artists.
As such, in the 2010s, Adele topped the biggest-selling artist of the decade list, but only with 73m sales. In the 1970s, that would have sealed only her 13th place, just nestling in above Billy Joel. Thus, there is evidence to the argument that nothing is a societal sensation anymore. However, that is not entirely true, and the lowest-selling single of all time helps to explain why.
So, which number one flopped to the top?
In 2006, the trilby-wearing American indie rockers Orson hit the top spot in the UK charts with ‘No Tomorrow’. And yet, the song only sold 17,694 copies. This makes it an oddity in music history. For context, Elton John’s ‘Candle in the Wind 1997’ is the fastest-selling single, fetching 1.55m units flogged in a week. That disparity is huge!
On avergae, 50,000 copies sold in a week has generally been considered the benchmark that a song has to hit to top the charts within the industry. However, this figure is becoming increasingly difficult to ascertain and ‘No Tomorrow’ is the perfect paradigm of why.
For instance, Elton John’s record-breaking track arrived pre-streaming. By 2006, a strange transition was underway whereby streaming was taking a massive rise, as was piracy on sites like LimeWire. Orson was the unfortunate victim of this. So, despite securing a number one, this was also less of a lucrative feat than it had once been.
At the time ‘No Tomorrow’ was released, many people were snatching it up illegally on mass, and even when it came to streaming, the charts were struggling to quantify that data beyond physical iTunes purchases. Thus, in the history books, they look like the musical equivalent of a headline on a slow news day.
And while the track might be an obscurity to some, it was the 12th biggest-selling song that year once all the metrics had been worked out by the close of the annum. So, the oddity if its initial ‘floudering’ sales served as a catalyst to change how chart data was quantified, making it anything but a slow news day headline and pushing it closer to a pivotal moment in how we consume culture and quantify its success.
Now, the Official Charts Company explains that it has “been collecting streaming information since 2008 (when the Official Subscription Plays Chart was launched), but only in 2014 did streaming finally enter the core Official Charts. The first to take on board audio streams was the Official Singles Chart from the beginning of July 2014 – with 100 audio streams (drawn from services such as Spotify, Deezer, Napster and O2 Tracks, among others) equating to 1 single purchase.”
