MontyVeda
a short-tempered ill-controlled small-minded troll
- Location
- Lancaster... the little city.
Well it's 60 years since the UK's first number one single... and god it was awful! Nearly as bad as that Bryan Adam's thing that haunted us for some 4months in the late 80's or early '90's.
Now I've always assumed that singles sales peaked sometime in the early 80's and have been in steady decline ever since... but as usual, I'm wrong.
Now I've got that ^ off my chest... back to the single... it looks like it's not dead at all, in fact it's more alive than ever!
but is it?
The problem these days is that every track is a potential single whereas back in my day, a single was an album track released on a specific 'single' format... so Adam & the Ants had 3 singles from their Kings of the Wild Frontier LP... no more, no less.
However a few years back, The Arctic Monkeys had all 12 tracks from their Favourite Worst Nightmare album in the Top 200 of the official singles chart... they all weren't released as singles but were all bought as singles and are therefore eligible.
now in one sense this is good, especially when some bugger does an average cover of Journey's Don't Stop Believing... and the original, yet equally average Journey version chases it up the charts. This wouldn't have been possible, back in my day unless Journey's publishing company re-released the single... so yeah, if a modern cover can give the original a boost in sales it's good.
But...
it's still not, in my mind, a 'proper' singles chart. The single as an artefact has gone... or not so much gone, but is buried under a mountain of downloads of any and every other track that is available.
Single releases still exist, but can still be further down the singles chart than an album track which hasn't been released specifically as a 'single'.
So is the 'single' dead?
...or alive and kicking and better than ever?
Now I've always assumed that singles sales peaked sometime in the early 80's and have been in steady decline ever since... but as usual, I'm wrong.
**Shame on all of you who bought Candle in the Wind '97 by Elton 'bloody' John... I hope you all spend eternity listening to it on repeat!
Now I've got that ^ off my chest... back to the single... it looks like it's not dead at all, in fact it's more alive than ever!
but is it?
The problem these days is that every track is a potential single whereas back in my day, a single was an album track released on a specific 'single' format... so Adam & the Ants had 3 singles from their Kings of the Wild Frontier LP... no more, no less.
However a few years back, The Arctic Monkeys had all 12 tracks from their Favourite Worst Nightmare album in the Top 200 of the official singles chart... they all weren't released as singles but were all bought as singles and are therefore eligible.
now in one sense this is good, especially when some bugger does an average cover of Journey's Don't Stop Believing... and the original, yet equally average Journey version chases it up the charts. This wouldn't have been possible, back in my day unless Journey's publishing company re-released the single... so yeah, if a modern cover can give the original a boost in sales it's good.
But...
it's still not, in my mind, a 'proper' singles chart. The single as an artefact has gone... or not so much gone, but is buried under a mountain of downloads of any and every other track that is available.
Single releases still exist, but can still be further down the singles chart than an album track which hasn't been released specifically as a 'single'.
So is the 'single' dead?
...or alive and kicking and better than ever?
