THE FIRST 935 ARE ALREADY AVAILABLE
ON THIS BLOG.
I am adding the rest shortly ....
1,000 Number One Albums:
A chart history
Just some of the 999 albums that have reached number
one... so far
Last Sunday, Lady Gaga scored the
999th UK number one album, with her brazen pop opus ARTPOP.
Early sales figures suggest she'll be replaced at the chart summit on Sunday
with Robbie Williams and Jake Bugg the early contenders for the 1,000th number
one.
As the landmark approaches, we look at the records that paved the way,
starting with the UK's first ever chart topper, in 1956.
The first album chart was published in the Record Mirror in July 1956. It
listed just five albums, and Frank Sinatra was leader of the (rat) pack.
Songs For Swingin' Lovers was his 10th solo album and is still, arguably, his
greatest swing collection.
First ever album chart
- 1. Frank Sinatra - Songs For Swingin' Lovers
- 2. Original Cast - Carousel Soundtrack
- 3. Mel Torme - At The Crescendo
- 4. Louis Armstrong - At The Crescendo
- 5. Original Cast - Oklahoma Soundtrack
A challenge to the tide of rock and roll that was
sweeping over America, it's a loose concept record about a man who leaves his
lover and pursues a new romance.
Backed by Nelson Riddle's fresh, hip arrangements, Sinatra sounded on top of
the world - delivering some of his best-known performances on You Make Me Feel
So Young and I've Got You Under My Skin.
Given a perfect five-star review by Rolling Stone, it was the UK's number one
for three weeks, and the fifth best-selling album of 1956 (number one was the
soundtrack to Carousel).
But albums were still niche products. Only 12 million were sold in 1956 -
compared to 100.5m in 2012.
It took 15 years for the 100th number one to roll around - thanks mainly to
The Beatles, who spent a combined three years in pole position.
But it was John Lennon who scored the chart centenary with his second solo
album, Imagine.
A huge commercial success both in 1971 and immediately after his murder, it
is less abrasive and more fondly remembered than his debut, Plastic Ono
Band.
Every facet of his mercurial personality is on display: He's head-over-heels
on Oh Yoko!; vulnerable on Jealous Guy; and venomous on How Do You Sleep? (a
thinly-veiled character assassination of Paul McCartney).
But it is the optimistic, simple title track that endures. Lennon confessed
it was "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional [and]
anti-capitalistic" but "because it is sugar-coated it is accepted".
"It was just what John believed," said Yoko Ono. "That we are all one
country, one world, one people. He wanted to get that idea out."
Released in September 1978, Boney M's Night Flight To Venus was the band's
most successful record, clinging to the top spot for four weeks.
It contained several global hits, including Brown Girl In The Ring and Rivers
Of Babylon - but not, strangely, that year's Christmas number one, Mary's Boy
Child.
The band were the brainchild of German pop svengali Frank Farian (later
responsible for Milli Vanilli), who reached a creative peak on this willfully
experimental third album.
The seven-minute title track was a freaky space odyssey, which envisaged an
interstellar journey to a terraformed planet.
"It took almost 90 years to cool down the planet from its 500 degrees to the
current pleasant 75 degrees, and to transform the atmosphere to make it
inhabitable for Earth people," noted the narrator, over a pounding drum track
based on Cozy Powell's hit Dance With The Devil.
It set the record up to be a space-age disco concept album, but the idea was
immediately ditched on track two - Rasputin - a deranged ode to a 19th Century
Russian mystic.
Compilation albums were included in the main countdown until 1989, and the
Now... series regularly outsold all the competition.
The third installment was released in July 1984 and contained four number one
singles - including Wham's Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go and Duran Duran's The
Reflex.
But the track-listing also provides a few insights into the year's prevailing
social issues. Special AKA's Nelson Mandela reflected the increasing disquiet
over South Africa's apartheid laws, while Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel
delivered a funky anti-drugs message on White Lines (Don't Do It).
Other songs on the 30-strong track-list included Queen's I Want To Break Free,
Tina Turner's What's Love Got To Do With It and The Weather Girls' wedding disco
staple It's Raining Men.
The sleeve starred the series' short-lived (and frankly unnecessary) porcine
mascot, and exhorted fans to "complete your collection!" by purchasing the two
preceding volumes, as well as their VHS and Betamax companions "for all you
videoholics".
Thirty years later, and the series is thriving - Now 83 was the
fastest-selling album of 2012.
But the most successful installment was number 44, which kicked off with
Britney Spears ...Baby, One More Time, and shifted a remarkable 2.3m copies in
1999.
Selling 400,000 copies in just four days, Wild! was the second in a run of
five consecutive number one albums for synthpop duo Erasure.
Despite the titular exclamation mark, it was their most mature record to
date, opening with a sombre piano instrumental, and taking melodic flights of
fancy on the hit single Blue Savannah.
At the time, frontman Andy Bell was one of the few openly gay pop stars and,
while the record addressed gay themes (Drama! is about a "drama queen" who puts
his friends through "one psychological drama after another"), the band were
careful not to be too outrageous.
"If we did an openly gay video, it wouldn't get played on MTV," Bell told
Australia's Countdown magazine in 1990.
"By approaching it the way we approach it - not being too aggressive or
shouting at people, just showing them it's part of life but not the only thing
in life - it's easy for people to deal with, and maybe there will be fewer
people afraid to come out."
One in every 20 chart-toppers is a "best of" album - the first being The Best
Of Ball, Barber & Bilk, - a 1962 collection of jazz standards by trumpeter
Kenny Ball, trombone player Chris Barber and band leader Acker Bilk.
Deacon Blue's greatest hits reached number one in May 1994, featuring
Scot-rock classics like Dignity, Real Gone Kid and their plaintive cover of Burt
Bacharach's I'll Never Fall In Love Again.
The band had survived through sudden, head-turning success and the
John-and-Yoko romance between frontman Ricky Ross fell and bandmate Lorraine
McIntosh. ("Nobody in a band wants the backing singer going out with the lead
singer,"
she
admitted to Scotland's Daily Record last year).
But, three weeks after Our Town was released, Deacon Blue announced they were
splitting up.
"As George Harrison once said, all things must pass," said Ross.
Now reformed, they released a new album, The Hipsters, in 2012.
During the recording of I've Been Expecting You in spring 1998, producer Guy
Chambers kept track of the work in -progress on a whiteboard, hung on the wall
of Wheeler End studio in rural Buckinghamshire.
Scrawled along the top in black marker was the legend: "Robbie Williams'
difficult second album (which isn't that difficult after all)."
"It's effortless, really," he told a
documentary
crew who turned up to film the sessions.
An ebullient victory lap after the success of Angels, the album's success was
equally effortless - sailing to number one, going 10x platinum and selling more
than three million copies.
Williams, at the peak of his fame, was so cocksure he could get away with
self-aware lyrics like this, from Strong: "In the early morning when I wake up /
I look like Kiss but without the make-up / And that's a good line to take it to
the bridge."
Singles No Regrets and She's The One still form part of his live show today.
The only real misfire was the leaden, James Bond-sampling Millennium - a cynical
ploy for airplay as the year 2000 approached.
In total, Williams has scored 10 number ones - more than anyone else except
The Beatles, Madonna and Elvis.
TV talent shows were hitting their stride in 2003, with Will Young, Gareth
Gates, Girls Aloud and Liberty X all racking up the hits - but British indie was
about to get a much-needed shot in the arm.
Liverpudlians The Coral were among the first out of the gates, blazing a
trail for the likes of Franz Ferdinand, Snow Patrol, Keane and Razorlight.
Record-breaking chart toppers
- Most weeks at number one: South Pacific Soundtrack (115
wks)
- Album that has returned to number one the most often: Sound
Of Music Soundtrack (12 times
- Most consecutive number ones: Led Zeppelin and Abba (eight
each)
- Biggest selling album of all time: Queen's Greatest Hits
(5.9m)
Source: Official Charts Company
The band had scored a minor hit the previous year with
the jangly, Merseybeat throwback Dreaming Of You, and their second album
cemented their success.
Praised by the NME for its "brutally concise and beautiful pop songs", it
spawned the top 10 singles Don't Think You're The First and Pass It On.
But the band were taken aback by their swift rise.
"The smell of money's got into everyone," singer James Skelly told
the Guardian. "Sony don't have any other good bands, there's just us, so
everything's being put on us. I feel like apologizing to people in a way, about
how in your face everything is."
He needn't have worried. Their chart rein lasted a week, after which Robbie
Williams' Escapology claimed the top spot.
Norah Jones reached number one just three years after The Coral, a sign of
the music industry's ever-decreasing attention span.
The constant churn at the top of the charts also coincided with a downturn in
sales, which were sinking faster than a brick in a swimming pool - from 237m in
2004, to 128m in 2009.
The decline is neatly encapsulated by Norah Jones' triptych of number ones.
Her debut, Come Away With Me, sold 2.4m copies in 2003. The follow-up, Feels
Like Home, managed 900,000. Not Too Late, released in 2007, scraped in with
sales of 100,000.
A deliberate step away from the coffeehouse jazz of her earlier records, it
was also Jones's first collection of original material.
She made gentle stabs at politics - lamenting the re-election of President
Bush in My Dear Country and portraying the US as a leaky boat in Sinkin' Soon -
and, ultimately, the musical experimentation ensured her longevity.
"I don't expect to sell millions of records every time. I just don't think
that's gonna be possible," she told CBS
news.
"I feel like I've had my cake and I've eaten it and it tasted great. And I
don't need another piece."
Oasis set a chart record in 1997 that still stands today, when their third
album Be Here Now sold 660,000 copies in seven days - the highest-first week
sales in history.
But, as songwriter Noel Gallagher freely admitted in the ensuing years, the
bloated, cocaine-fueled album was not his finest moment.
"Just because you sell lots of records, it doesn't mean to say you're any
good," he noted. "Look at Phil Collins."
Time Flies was the band's swansong - a double disc anthology released the
year after their acrimonious split backstage in Paris.
Over 27 tracks, it sketched how the band "dragged English guitar music out of
the gutter" (Noel's words) with football terrace anthems like Wonderwall and
Supersonic.
Oasis celebrate their 20th anniversary next year, but there is little hope of
a reunion.
"I don't think there's any unfinished business," Noel said in an
interview
with Rolling Stone magazine this week. "I don't think that we left anything
unsaid, do you know what I mean?"
JLS, Jake Bugg and Robbie Williams are the main contenders for Sunday's
historic top spot.
If Williams triumphs, it will be his 11th number one - equaling Elvis's
record.
The results will be revealed at 19:00 GMT on 24 November, with the full chart
published by the Official Charts Company
here.
Williams launched his album with a star-studded concert at the London Palladium
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