Kate Nash: success in the charts still tastes sweet. Photo: PR
Following the singles chart used to be a formative part of the average childhood, and one that - due to downloading, loss of relevance, whatever you want to blame it on - post-millennial teenagers will never know. Or will they? I ask because, despite physical sales falling to heartbreakingly low levels (this week's number one, Timbaland's The Way I Are, sold only 33,758 copies), the chart is actually becoming an interesting place again.
The top five is looking very much like top fives did before singles began hurtling in one week and dropping like stones the next. Apart from The Way I Are, each single this week (Kate Nash's Foundations, Rihanna's Umbrella, Fergie's Big Girls Don't Cry and Enrique Iglesias's Do You Know?) has spent between five and 11 weeks in the chart - enough time to put its feet up, get comfy and say hello to the neighbours.
There's even a proper battle between two of them - Foundations and The Way I Are - to be next week's number one, after Foundations missed out by just 16 sales this week. And, if anyone needed reminding, in Umbrella we've just had a 10-week number one. This is the kind of thing that hasn't happened in years.
Umbrella's long run has been attributed to the weather. The longevity of the rest? It's probably related to the fact that downloading makes it possible to buy music whenever a fan feels like doing it (Sunday is one of the biggest days for singles downloads), so the pent-up demand that used to send records zooming to the top of the chart in their first week, then out again the next, has dissipated.
And the Nash/Timbaland rivalry? It will be properly interesting to see whether the growing interest in quirky new singer Nash, who's spent four weeks at number two, can unseat an established MC.
But why should it matter when the decline of physical singles is seemingly unstoppable, and the sensible money is on CD singles ceasing to exist in the next few years? And when the chart, even now that it's been updated to include downloads (which, amazingly, it didn't until 17 months ago), doesn't influence people's buying habits as it did? Who's going to care that, as of today, Foundations is only 300 sales behind The Way I Are when reaching number one no longer signifies a Very Special Record?
But it does matter.
It matters to Kate Nash, who was on the Chart Show the other day, gushing about how much she'd love it if Foundations finally reached the top of the chart. (See? No matter how cool-ish they are, nobody would say no to having the biggest-selling song in the country.)
It matters to punters, or it should, because by keeping the same songs in the chart for weeks on end, they're thwarting record labels' marketing plans, which hinge on ramming as many acts as possible into the chart. Right now, the punter is king.
And it matters to anyone who ever sat glued to the Chart Show with a little notebook, copying down that week's top 10 (unsurprisingly, that was me). If the singles chart is no longer "relevant", at least it's mustering up a brave last salute.
