{"id":1873,"date":"2013-04-14T23:42:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-14T22:42:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1873"},"modified":"2013-04-14T23:42:55","modified_gmt":"2013-04-14T22:42:55","slug":"charts-14-april-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1873","title":{"rendered":"Charts &#8211; 14 April 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The podcast is just below, so I&#8217;m kind of deluging you with material today, but this seems like a day to try and get the chart post up quickly.<\/p>\n<p>This week: Margaret Thatcher dies, the chart goes berserk, and the BBC makes an incredible hash of the whole situation.<\/p>\n<p>Where there is harmony, let us bring discord.<\/p>\n<p><strong>35. \u00a0The Notsensibles &#8211; &#8220;I&#8217;m in Love with Margaret Thatcher&#8221;<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/nnToK3kSKKg\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nnToK3kSKKg?rel=0\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Margaret Thatcher died on Monday following a stroke, at the age of 87. \u00a0To call her divisive would be an understatement. \u00a0Everyone can agree that she&#8217;s an important historical figure &#8211; the first female Prime Minister, the longest serving of the post-war era, and somebody who actually succeeded in remaking the British political culture in ways that have stuck. \u00a0Where people disagree, and passionately, is on whether this was a good thing.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The modern Conservative Party tends to regard her as little short of a secular saint, and the unquestioned template for all that should follow. \u00a0Many on the left regard her as a wrecker of communities and a destroyer of civic values; there are entire communities where the loathsomeness of Margaret Thatcher is pretty much taken as read. \u00a0It probably hasn&#8217;t helped that the government is acting as if her death was an occasion of national mourning, which it plainly isn&#8217;t, and will be paying \u00a310m of taxpayers&#8217; money towards the cost of her funeral. \u00a0Opinion polls show the public pretty solidly against that.\u00a0 This has prompted many people who might otherwise have been more indifferent to consider that there is an attempt at canonisation going on which needs to be pushed back.<\/p>\n<p>One result of this is the remarkable campaign to get a record to number one literally celebrating her death. \u00a0We&#8217;ll come to that later. \u00a0But that campaign itself sparked a minor backlash which resulted in a campaign to get\u00a0<em>this<\/em> oddity into the charts.<\/p>\n<p>The Notsensibles, as the name might suggest, were (and in fact still are) a not-terribly-serious punk band from Burnley. \u00a0This record, which came out in 1980, gives them their first top 40 hit &#8211; though it did reach number 8 on the UK indie chart back in the day. \u00a0One might surmise that the search for vaguely pro-Thatcher songs turned up a fairly short list; her world view was never viewed with great sympathy in creative circles. \u00a0Even this song isn&#8217;t exactly\u00a0a pro-Thatcher record, and would probably be better classed as neutral-to-absurd.<\/p>\n<p>And now, some other new entries which nobody will pay the slightest attention to.<\/p>\n<p><strong>31. \u00a0Nicki Minaj (featuring Lil Wayne) &#8211; &#8220;High School&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RnpyRe_7jZA?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>This is the second bonus track from the reissued version of the &#8220;Roman Reloaded&#8221; album to be released as a single. \u00a0It&#8217;s loosely recycled from an old mixtape track called &#8220;Hood Story&#8221;, which might explain why it&#8217;s one of the relatively rare Nicki Minaj singles which is both relatively commercial and features plenty of rapping.<\/p>\n<p><strong>30. \u00a0AlunaGeorge &#8211; &#8220;Attracting Flies&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7d_HD89ZlJE?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>AlunaGeorge are a vocal\/production duo who previously cropped up as guests on Disclosure&#8217;s number 2 single &#8220;White Noise&#8221; (still on the chart), and now follow it up a hit of their own. \u00a0The 80s synthpop influence is unmistakeable, and it&#8217;s a pretty good song to boot. \u00a0I&#8217;d expect this to go further &#8211; there&#8217;s no obvious reason why it shouldn&#8217;t do as well as &#8220;White Noise&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>26. \u00a0Paramore &#8211; &#8220;Still Into You&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OblL026SvD4?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You know it&#8217;s a weird chart when it&#8217;s Paramore who provide the ray of sunny optimism. \u00a0More usually a bit of an angst-ridden proposition, this time Paramore are in love and they want you know how happy and exuberant they feel about that. \u00a0It&#8217;s a wonderfully cheerful song.<\/p>\n<p><strong>21. \u00a0Nina Nesbitt &#8211; &#8220;Stay Out&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mpHK2mb-FKk?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Someone from Edinburgh! \u00a0Well, Balerno, but close enough. \u00a0We haven&#8217;t produced a successful singer since Shirley Manson (and before that you pretty have to go back to the Bay City Rollers). \u00a0We are truly\u00a0<em>terrible<\/em> at producing musicians; we do writers and festivals here, we leave the music to Glasgow. \u00a0And indeed, that&#8217;s Glasgow in the video.<\/p>\n<p>Nina Nesbitt is 18, she&#8217;s half Swedish, and she supported Ed Sheeran on his last UK tour, which can&#8217;t have done her any harm &#8211; though she reminds me more of Amy McDonald. \u00a0Sales on this must have been pretty frontloaded, as it was 13 in the midweeks.<\/p>\n<p>So, back to Thatcher.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. \u00a0Wizard of Oz Film Cast &#8211; &#8220;Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PHQLQ1Rc_Js?rel=0\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Yes,\u00a0<em>really<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with the technical stuff, shall we?<\/p>\n<p>First: the track in the charts, strictly speaking, is only the first fifty-one seconds of the video above, since that&#8217;s what you get if you download &#8220;Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead&#8221; from the\u00a0<em>Wizard of Oz<\/em> soundtrack album. \u00a0This is not the shortest record ever to make the singles chart &#8211; that dubious record is held by the novelty jingle <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/Vd2yyT__EDM\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;The Ladies&#8217; Bras&#8221; by Jonny Trunk &amp; Wisby<\/a>, which made number 26 in 2007 thanks to the (heavily ironic) support of Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills, and clocks in at 35 seconds. \u00a0It did, however, come very close to finally breaking the record for the shortest number one single, which has been stuck at 1:38 since\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/4DcYepES7Eo\" target=\"_blank\">Adam Faith&#8217;s &#8220;What Do You Want&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0topped the chart in 1959<\/p>\n<p>Second: this recording is available on numerous compilations with assorted artist credits. \u00a0The version on iTunes is credited to &#8220;Judy Garland et al&#8221;, but that&#8217;s simply because they&#8217;ve credited the entire soundtrack album to &#8220;Judy Garland et al&#8221; &#8211; as you can see above, she doesn&#8217;t appear on this track, which is actually performed by the Munchkins. \u00a0The Official Charts Company has settled on crediting the track to &#8220;Wizard of Oz Film Cast&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>But that&#8217;s not what&#8217;s grabbing attention here. \u00a0The concern here, and the headache for BBC Radio 1 with its Sunday afternoon top 40 show, is that here we have a Facebook campaign which is not merely pursuing a political agenda, but actively celebrating the death of another human being. \u00a0Issues of taste inevitably arise. \u00a0And it has to be said that if the objection to Thatcher&#8217;s policies is that they lacked compassion, this is a funny way of making the point. \u00a0Whatever you may think of her, there&#8217;s a family out there, after all.<\/p>\n<p>All that being said, Thatcher herself probably wouldn&#8217;t have been bothered. \u00a0Never exactly a consensus politician, she often seemed to view strength of opposition as a sign that she was doing something right. And people often seem to feel normal standards of civility don&#8217;t apply to public figures, since they relate to them\u00a0<em>as\u00a0<\/em>public figures, rather than as fellow humans. \u00a0All the more so with the likes of Thatcher, who had an entire ideology named after her. \u00a0And, as noted above, there&#8217;s also a degree of backlash against the reaction of her supporters, adding to any personal animus. \u00a0Nonetheless, there&#8217;s something ultimately rather depressing about this whole affair.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, choosing one of the thousands of actual anti-Thatcher songs would not have had the same impact. \u00a0The obvious choice would have been the Specials&#8217; &#8220;Ghost Town&#8221;, a number one hit in 1981 and an acknowledged classic of English ska, though it&#8217;s really more a lament about the state of the country in 1981 rather than anything personal.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1WhhSBgd3KI?rel=0\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There are songs by major artists which make the same point with perhaps equal venom, though. \u00a0In its response to this fiasco (which I&#8217;ll come to), the BBC made the point that &#8220;Ding-Dong&#8221; is not a political song. \u00a0But would they really have been happier having to play <a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/NjQRN230npE\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Tramp the Dirt Down&#8221;<\/a> by Elvis Costello? <a href=\"&quot;Margaret on the Guillotine&quot;\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Margaret on the Guillotine&#8221;<\/a> by Morrissey (not exactly the self-proclaimed poet&#8217;s subtlest hour)? \u00a0It seems unlikely.<\/p>\n<p>The prospect of &#8220;Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead&#8221; making number one threw the BBC into something of a tailspin panic, since in theory that meant they would have to play it on the Sunday afternoon chart show. \u00a0 \u00a0They have made a bit of a meal of their response. \u00a0The pre-announced decision was that they wouldn&#8217;t play it, but would instead run a news item about the controversy in its place. \u00a0Rather bizarrely, they claimed this to be a compromise to avoid &#8220;banning&#8221; the record, though of course that&#8217;s exactly what it was &#8211; at least in the vague sense in which Radio 1 can ever be said to &#8220;ban&#8221; a freely available record. \u00a0The word people are looking for, really, is &#8220;refuse to play&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The idea of Radio 1 banning a record had rather more content in the days when their policy was to playlist everything in the top 40, but they stopped doing that some twenty years ago. \u00a0The general \u00a0practice, though, is indeed to play every new entry on the chart show. \u00a0The last time they refused was when a spoiler cover of &#8220;Payphone&#8221; credited to Precision Tunes made the top ten; they played the Maroon 5 single instead. \u00a0Refusing to play a hit single on grounds of content, though, is vanishingly rare. From memory, for an outright ban on content grounds, I think I&#8217;ve you got to go back to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/cIshse2x6Cc\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;(I Want To) Kill Somebody&#8221; by S*M*A*S*H<\/a>, a punk song which made number 26 in 1994, and names several politicians as suitable objects of said urge. \u00a0Including Thatcher, as it happens.<\/p>\n<p>The cause celebre in this field, and the closest comparison, is\u00a0&#8220;God Save The Queen&#8221; by the Sex Pistols, which notoriously made number 2 in the Silver Jubilee week of 1977. \u00a0<i><br \/>\n<\/i><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dtUH2YSFlVU?rel=0\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, there&#8217;s a persistent urban legend that the chart was rigged to stop the Sex Pistols getting to number 1, which might conceivably be true, but the evidence is hardly compelling. \u00a0It\u00a0<em>did<\/em> make number 1 on the rival NME chart, but it wasn&#8217;t that unusual for the two charts to disagree on the number 1 placing, and it&#8217;s precisely the sort of story that Malcolm McClaren would have put about whether there was any basis to it or not. \u00a0No doubt we&#8217;ll have the same rumours this week, but the number 2 placement is entirely plausible. \u00a0Sales didn&#8217;t start to pick up until some way into the week, by which point the existing number 1 single had an established lead. \u00a0&#8220;Ding-Dong&#8221; had already dropped off the iTunes number 1 spot by Saturday night. \u00a0And while the BBC may have been running scared of this story, the Official Charts Company certainly weren&#8217;t &#8211; they were bending over backwards to promote it, recognising the value to them in anything that makes the charts newsworthy.<\/p>\n<p>The BBC&#8217;s reluctance to go within a mile of &#8220;Ding-Dong&#8221; is understandable, particularly given the media furore. \u00a0But the execution on Sunday&#8217;s show was hopeless. \u00a0It&#8217;s one thing to decide that you&#8217;re not going to play the record, but beleaguered presenter Jameela Jamil had clearly been told that on no account was she to mention Thatcher&#8217;s name or acknowledge the controversy\u00a0<em>at all<\/em>. \u00a0Which of course meant that she couldn&#8217;t hype the contenders for number 1, or in any way address the main story of her own show. \u00a0And since they cancelled all the studio guests and phone-in competitions due to the Sensitivity Of The Occasion, that didn&#8217;t leave her much to work with.<\/p>\n<p>The Nonsensibles track was played in full, but she was only permitted to introduce it as &#8220;a new entry for the Nonsensibles&#8221;. \u00a0She was only allowed to identify the number 2 single as a new entry and then hand over to a news reporter. \u00a0Perhaps the idea was to insulate her from controversy, but it seems a shame to hobble her that badly on the highest-profile show of her career. \u00a0Then again, perhaps she welcomed not having the chance to screw things up. \u00a0Who knows?<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, if Thatcher had died a couple of weeks earlier, there would have been the added absurdity that Jamil spent the whole of March wearing a chicken suit for charity. \u00a0(Yes, the <em>whole<\/em> of March.)\u00a0 I can only imagine the high-level debates that would have ensued about whether she should have been ordered to remove the chicken suit as a show of respect.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/FnJIb4A-DuY\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>1. \u00a0Duke Dumont (featuring A*M*E) &#8211; &#8220;Need U (100%)&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Duke Dumont hangs on for a second week. \u00a0Nobody is paying attention.<\/p>\n<p>On the album chart:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 13px;\"><strong>&#8220;Paramore&#8221; by Paramore<\/strong> is at number 1 &#8211; their second number 1 album.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Overgrown&#8221; by James Blake<\/strong> at 8, the sophomore album from the producer who doesn&#8217;t really fit in the dance classification.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;House of Gold &amp; Bones Part 2&#8221; by Stone Sour<\/strong> at 11. \u00a0The second half of a concept album.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;English Electric&#8221; by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark<\/strong> at 12; their second album since reforming in 2006.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Deleted Scenes from The Cutting Room Floor&#8221; by Caro Emerald<\/strong> is presumably being re-promoted again, since it shows up at 13.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Shaking the Habitual&#8221; by the Knife<\/strong> lands at 31, for fans of off-kilter Swedish synthpop.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The podcast is just below, so I&#8217;m kind of deluging you with material today, but this seems like a day to try and get the chart post up quickly. This week: Margaret Thatcher dies, the chart goes berserk, and the BBC makes an incredible hash of the whole situation. Where there is harmony, let us [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1873"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1886,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1873\/revisions\/1886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}