Yes. It dropped out years ago but for some reason re-entered the chart a few weeks ago and has been there since.
There’s also Someone You Loved Lewis Capaldi 143 weeks, As It Was by Harry Styles 67 weeks and I Ain’t Worried by One Republic 57 weeks.
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For some reason I think it sounds like a recycled version of “drivers license”.
Also not to mention The Killers’ “Mr Brightside” which despite being released close to two decades ago spent most (if not all) of 2022 in the top 50.
Interesting to note that two weeks ago, Maisie Peters’ second studio album “The Good Witch” debuted at number four yet dropped out of the top 50 completely the following week.
Same thing happened with U2’s “Songs of Surrender” which debuted at number three in the week starting 27 March 2023 then bombed out altogether.
Last September, Muse’s album “Will of the People” debuted at number one then plummeted to #49 the next week.
Between them, neither of these three artists have had a single chart in Australia since 2015. U2’s last entry “Get on Your Boots” charted in February 2009; Muse’s most recent entry was “Psycho” in March/April 2015 while Maisie Peters has not had a single song chart in the country neither does her music get any radio airplay.
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This is my favourite circular argument on the board cos it’s never going to get fixed.
The death of the mono-culture in the last 15 years but especially the last 5, plus no one with any idea how to present streaming numbers has pretty much killed any relevance of the charts.
As soon as the big artists release something it swallows up the charts because nothing else can compete numbers wise as it’s not as popular and doesn’t get cut through. There was always big artists but there’s now virtually no strong tiers below. So even when Taylor Swift doesn’t have any new music out, there’s nothing to push her off the charts. Same goes for radio airplay, the big artists stick around for longer as they’re more popular in listener polls etc.
Secondly, streaming actually captures what people are listening to…but that’s not what the charts were for. They were for purchases of (new) music as well as airplay. The fact no one buys music anymore has never been properly accounted for - the charts never accounted how many times you played your CD single after purchasing it.
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One solution might be to exclude streaming from the charts, so only CDs and iTunes sales are counted.
Another might be for artists to nominate one new “single” per month to be included, up to a maximum of 5 singles from any album.
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I just don’t think that would work in 2023. No-one is buying CDs and iTunes sales are so small now too - it would be an even more warped chart.
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It might encourage people to buy their music again.
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I can’t see it.
The same could be said for Ed Sheeran while I’m also anticipating that Olivia Rodrigo will dominate the singles charts once her album “GUTS” drops on September 8.
It’s also worth noting that Rodrigo turned 20 earlier this year and is already achieving (close to) Taylor Swift-like levels of dominance.
Steady on. Wait until you see how the second album and singles do first. There’s such a thing as a sophomore jinx where many artists can’t recreate the success of their debut album. Seeing that her new single dropped from the top stop after one week suggests she won’t be as dominant this time around.
Sometimes an artist’s second (or later) album can do better than their first both in terms of commerce and exposure. Cases in point: Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande with their sophomore albums “Fearless” and “My Everything” respectively.
The Script’s second album (“Science and Faith”) was their most successful in Australia (peaking at #2 on the Albums chart) but IMO its singles didn’t produce the same commercial success as what “Breakeven” (#3, from their self-titled first album which was released in 2008) did and what “Hall of Fame” (#4, from their third album #3 which was released in 2012) would achieve.
True. There are many artists who can become more successful as their career moves on. But my point is, there are many more one hit wonders and one album wonders than there are artists with long running careers.
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Speaking of one-hit wonders, I fear that Rosa Linn (“Snap”) could be heading down that path as she hasn’t had another single that’s been commercially successful in the short-term.
Some examples of modern-day one-hit wonders I can think of:
- “A Thousand Miles” - Vanessa Carlton (topped the ARIA charts in August 2002)
- “Wherever You Will Go” - The Calling (peaked at #5 in May 2002)
- “Shut Up and Dance” - Walk the Moon (peaked at #3 in the first half of 2015)
- “Release Me” - Agnes (peaked at #26 in October 2009)
- “Call Me Maybe” - Carly Rae Jepsen (can’t think of another song by hers that has been commercially successful in Australia, apart from her duet with Owl City called “Good Time” in 2012)
- “Heat Waves” - Glass Animals (as successful as it has been even to this day, I also can’t think of another song by theirs that has been as commercially successful in Australia)
- “Hanging by a Moment” - Lifehouse (though their other two ARIA Chart entries, “You and Me” and “Halfway Gone”, did chart moderately in 2005 and 2010 respectively it didn’t really achieve the same level of success as said song)
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I reckon one hit wonder songs can be the best to listen to because they are quite different to most other songs.
Consistently successful artists tend to have more of a “formula” to their music so their songs tend to sound a bit more similar to each other.
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I still love that Vanessa Carlton song, I’ve noticed it tended to be played more on radio (specifically on smoothfm and Hope 103.2) since Joelle performed it on The X Factor in 2013.
In saying that, some older songs in recent times also tend to have a new lease on life too, like we saw last year with “Mr Brightside” by The Killers and “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush. I wonder what’s next - the Spice Girls?
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The artists with one hit wonders will usually have other songs but they sound so similar that they don’t find any fans.
Also, artists can be one hit wonders worldwide but in their own countries have multiple hits. I’ve noticed this with the 80s Now music channel. It’s a UK channel so they are playing UK hits. I’ve discovered some artists who are new to me who had hits there but not in Australia. Also, a lot of artists played who only had one hit in Australia but were more successful in the UK.
Probably also because the song isn’t very good - it probably wouldn’t have been a hit in any case even if their successful one didn’t exist.
Yes, some artists resonate better in some countries than others - Journey have had quite a few hits in their home country of the USA, but only the one big one here (Don’t Stop Believing).
She’s an interesting one because her follow up album Emotion got released to critical praise but flopped commercially.
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The question needs to be asked, what is the point of the chart (now)? Is it to show what people are listening to or is it to show another metric? Because if it’s the former, then it seems to be doing a reasonable job (even if it shows an inconvenient reality), if it’s the latter then perhaps the way the chart is constructed needs reassessment.
The way we consume media (including music) has significantly shifted in recent times - we’re listening to the radio less and not buying music (rather effectively leasing it), this has a significant impact on what music people are listening to and the current charts are showing this. It’s become easy for an artist/band to flood the chart because their music is so readily available, no longer do you have to wait for the radio to play it or traipse down to Brashs or Kmart to buy the latest single. Radio stations are playing stuff that they believe will resonate with their audiences but rather than using their power to widen people’s exposure to new music, we’ve seen a contraction to effectively low volume, high replay playlists during critical times of the day.
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The two examples you provide are very different though - Mr Brightside hasn’t exactly gone away and come back, it bubbled along in the background helped by it being regularly used at events/locations and has remained relatively popular, whereas the resurgence of Running Up That Hill came on the back of a what, a 3-minute (?) scene in Stranger Things.
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I completely agree and think the singles charts should reflect the latter.
By all means have a streaming chart if you want to measure what songs are continually being streamed but keep that separate.
What if the official singles chart was made up of only unique listens? So if you listened to a song once then that counts once for the single chart. But if you listen to the same song again for 100 or 1000 times then thst doesn’t count. That would make the singles chart similar to what they were in the past where only a single sale of a single was counted. There must be a way they can identify unique listens.