The battle for the coveted number one spot in the UK album charts used to be hotly contested week after week and no feat was more sought after for a musician – especially from a commercial standpoint – than being number one at Christmas.
Over the years, the way we listen to music has changed dramatically. Radio listeners have dropped off, preferring to choose their own music than listen to the pre-set playlists of the UK’s radio hosts. And music is so much easier to obtain than it was ten years ago; farewell Walkman and mp3 players, even the ipod has been relegated to the bottom drawers of history. Now we don’t even need to download music, we can simply stream all our favourite tracks directly from our phones thanks to apps like Spotify.
Thanks to streaming services and downloads, the UK chart is not what it was. With so few people heading out to buy albums and/or singles or even downloading them, the UK chart has devolved into an ethereal zone where modern music is very unfairly represented.
The Christmas number one first started to change dramatically during the peak of TV shows such as Pop idol and X Factor. The winner of the show coincided with Christmas album charts to guarantee that the winner secured the Christmas number one spot each year, generally with a cover of a pretty recent track from another artist.
But it didn’t stop there. Charity awareness raising songs have done well in the UK charts throughout history, but recently we have been seeing a large number of charity tracks dominate the charts, especially around Christmas.
Youtube star Mark Hoyle, or Ladbaby as he is known to his army of five million plus followers, secured top spot last Christmas with his rendition of Starship’s ‘We Built this city’ parody, changed to include Gregg’s ‘sausage rolls’ in place of ‘Rock and Roll’.
The song clinched top spot last Christmas, and in doing so, raised enough money to send over 70,000 food packages to food banks across the country through the Trussel Trust, in the hopes of eradicating UK poverty.
Ladbaby looks set to continue the fight this year with a reworked version of ‘I Love Sausage Rolls’ to Joan Jett’s ‘I Love Rock’n’Roll’.
With most music fans finding their tunes elsewhere, we might expect to see more parody songs dominating the UK charts in the name of charity. And with the great work the funds raised last year, hopefully Ladbaby can do as well this year, too.