Talk:Lists of UK singles chart number ones

Naming

I've moved this page so that it now conforms to the same naming pattern as the corresponding List of Number 1 Hits (USA). Future pages for other countries can follow the same scheme. Bonalaw 13:14, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Shouldn't this page be moved to List of Number 1 singles (UK). This would allow for the creation of List of Number 1 albums (UK) and remove the word 'hits' which doesn't sound very encyclopaedic. Dmn 23:07, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Now you mention it, yes. The same should be done for the US number ones page too. Bonalaw 11:44, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Chart source

I think there should perhaps be some clarification about the charts and their validity and general acceptance, in the opening paragraph here. I know little about this other than the Network Chart was rivalling the more established chart during the late 80s early 90s. Worth mentioning-

• Record Mirror charts (1955-62) - after that RM used the Record Retailer survey
• Melody Maker charts (1956-???
• Disc and Music Echo charts (1958-67)
• MRIB Network Chart (1984-???

Mintguy (T) 10:52, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

A rather nice thing about the formatting on the article page is that it gives us the freedom to include information from the other charts as well. Might be worth looking into. -- Bonalaw 20:45, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Split?

This article involves a lot of scrolling - perhaps it should be split into List of Number 1 singles (UK) 1952-1981 and List of Number 1 singles (UK) 1982-2004 or something? violet/riga (t) 18:30, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I wondered about that. It can take a long time to load. In the latest list on Special:longpages, this is the 106th longest page on Wikipedia. Dividing it up somehow seems a good idea. Bonalaw 12:18, 30 Aug 2004 (UTC)

We should probably start moving on this. Maybe we could split it up by decade? I'm not sure of how a split should properly be done on wikipedia to preserve page history, but it does need to be done. Bonalaw 10:06, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

We need a request for demerge! I agree splitting it by decades might be good, and I was thinking of adding a little write-up about the number ones from each year. violet/riga (t) 16:38, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

From VP

With the size of List of Number 1 singles (UK) approaching 80k (though yes, lists are partially exempt from the size limit) it's time for this article to be split. I'm not sure how well the edit history would survive, however, and that's why I haven't done a manual move/copy/edit/etc.. I'd appreciate it if someone could split it into:

• List of hit singles from the 1950s (UK)
• List of hit singles from the 1960s (UK)
• List of hit singles from the 1970s (UK)
• List of hit singles from the 1980s (UK)
• List of hit singles from the 1990s (UK)
• List of hit singles from the 2000s (UK)

List of hit singles (UK) would be a disambig page (with List of Number 1 singles (UK) being a redirect to it). My plan is to write an overview of the main hits of the decade with the number ones being the main aspect. Any discussion prior/in objection to this would be appreciated. violet/riga (t) 22:56, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

• I made a page just for the 1950s. Will that work? — RJH 22:20, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• It was mentioned to me that the name should be List of Number 1 singles from the 1950s (UK) (&c.) to preserve the original intent. (That differs from "hit singles", which may not have been at number 1 on the charts.) So I moved the page and updated the links on List of Number 1 singles (UK) — RJH 17:43, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

• If that's what you think but, as said above, I planned to expand the list into an article mentioning other major singles from each decade - smash hit singles that didn't get to number 1, or memorable or mentionable songs from that era. violet/riga (t) 22:41, 7 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Copyright?

Are we allowed to re-publish this information under the GFDL, isn't it already copyright by the Official UK Charts Company? Edward 16:10, 19 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Photos

I added a few photos. What do people think about the change? [[User:Dmn|Dmn / Դմն ]] 21:03, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Good idea, though I don't think the Kylie image is the most appropriate. Be nice to find some ones for the older number ones too - there must be a The Beatles single cover somewhere. violet/riga (t) 21:28, 16 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Together I think we've made some great additions. Shame there are quite a few famous names without associated pictures, but they'll be added I'm sure. Good work [[User:Dmn|Dmn / Դմն ]]! violet/riga (t) 16:56, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Dates

There is a problem with this, On the list the number ones are recorded as being number one 6 days after they were actually number one. Can someone please sort this out? Jeffy

There are two possible solutions. Either we can change the dates, or we can add a header explaining the "week ending" system, like on the US number ones page. Bonalaw 06:24, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

From what I can tell the chart compilation day changed from Wednesday to Sunday in 1969. The dates before that are Wednesdays and I've now changed all the ones after that to Sundays. If anyone else can check the dates I'd really appreciate it. violet/riga (t) 17:00, 18 Oct 2004 (UTC)

@Bonalaw, UK week chart dates in Wikipedia are all wrong! They're not like the USA Billboard Hot 100 indeed: the week ending date IS NOT the one on which is announced but the last day of the week previous to the day another chart is announced and, thus, another week starts; another new week that IS NOT the current sales week! When a new chart is announced counts have already been done in the UK so in this date the chart week starts, IT DOESN'T ENDS! Take a look at the current UK chart, please: the week ending date HAS STILL TO COME! In view of this all the dates are wrong. Let's take an example: on January 8, 1995, the new number 1 was "Cotton Eye Joe" by Rednex BUT Wikipedia lists it on January 14 assuming that sales were for previous days starting with day 8 and ending with day 14 while in reality sales refer to the whole week before day 8. That other week was instead the chart week, NOT the sales week! So we need to clarify what a week ending date actually is. --Morbius (talk) 13:29, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion the column header Week ending date is ambiguous because, differently from the US Billboard Hot 100, in the UK Singles Chart there are two of them and they don't match: the first one is at the end of the sales week; the second one is at the end of the chart week that starts the day following the end of the sales week. We should call it Week starting date or Issue date updating every date to 6 days earlier as UK OffcialCharts.com actually shows. --Morbius (talk) 16:07, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Downloads

I just created this page: List of Number 1 music downloads (UK). Any help would be appreciated. I'm not even sure if I have the dates right. [[User:Dmn|Dmn / Դմն ]] 17:22, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Total change

After looking at ways of changing this article I've viewed Hot 100 No. 1 Hits of 2004 and List of Number 1 Hits (USA). I think that is a great way of doing it and propose this is changed over to the same format. Yes, it'll take a lot of time and effort but I think it is quite a superior way of organising it. After that is done we could remove a lot of US bias in List of musical events and 2004 in music etc. and integrate information there. Anyone have any comments? violet/riga (t) 12:15, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I've always thought that there must be a better way to organise this page, the table format of the US charts looks a lot better - I agree that this should be adopted. But I question the need to have each year on a different page (an earlier suggestion of splitting by decade would be a good compromise). And I also agree that the music year pages are far too US-centric, but this is going to be harder to overcome (it doesn't mean we shouldn't try though). I'm happy to help. David 5000 17:21, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yeah that's a good point. I think it'd be OK if we can have the number one singles and then (perhaps some of) the following:

• Number one albums by week
• Number one downloads by week (for the later years)
• "Important" hit singles of the year

I think that should give it enough scope to justify individual articles. violet/riga (t) 17:59, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ooh, "important" hit singles that weren't number 1 - I like the sound of that. Presumably we could include the cumulative chart of the year too. It sounds as though you're talking about making something like a purely UK-based 'year in music' page, incorporating all of the charts of the year, plus additional information. I like the sound of this, but I'm not quite sure how it would fit into the existing structure of Wikipedia's music pages. Could we split the current, say, "2004 in music" page into "2004 in music (US)", "2004 in music (UK)" etc., with just the "2004 in music" page being a general one covering births, deaths etc, and then disambiguating to the other pages? David 5000 18:06, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I reckon so. The 2004 in music (US) pages would need to be created by somebody, perhaps by using the details from Hot 100 No. 1 Hits of 2004 (which I think is an awful name, tbh) in the same way that we'd create the UK ones. I've cobbled together a little test example for you to look at - feel free to play around with it to suggest anything. violet/riga (t) 18:41, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea and a worthwhile project - I've added some comments on your test page. BUT one fundamental thing is: if we make each year's page this detailed, I think we still need a page like this, simply showing a list of number 1s. Which brings us right back around to the start of the discussion.... David 5000 19:27, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We could use the List of Number 1 Hits (USA) kind of format with links to each of these pages. I'm sure there's an article with a list of record-breaking singles somewhere too. violet/riga (t) 19:48, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In the week ending 14th/15th November 1952, Al Martino hit #1 with "Here In My Heart" becoming the first #1 single in the UK ever. I'd be happy to do as much as you people would like on this project of transforming the UK #1's to be like the US #1's, however, I will need to know 2 things:-

1) do you want to do week beginning's, week ending's or both?

2) please let me know the starting date, whichever method you choose, for "Here In My Heart" so I know how to structure the dates. Thank you Ultimate Star Wars Freak 17:28, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Delete the charts?

Editors might be intested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2005 Oricon Top 100 Singles. Kappa 18:28, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Genre-specific charts?

Does the UK have number one singles by genre specific charts like the US does? For example List of number-one modern rock hits (United States) ? Nagelfar 04:36, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Kind of - there are never-referred to official indie, rock, R'n'B and dance charts, listed here [1]. These are almost universally ignored, basicially because the UK is so much smaller and so to get onto a genre specific chart is not really that big news; any album that is perhaps on sale can do well; for example, Nevermind by Nirvana is in the top 10 of the rock albums, whilst Green Day have three records in the top 10. Robdurbar 09:08, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

There is also a country music albums chart in the UK that is published in Country music people magazine every month (yes, this chart compilies the whole months sales not a week). However as Robdurbar has said these charts are overlooked becausde the UK is much smaller and while there is an audience for country, jazz and other music, the sales will be much smaller than the United States. 74.65.39.59 00:23, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Dates

I don't know if anyone else agrees but it is not clear to me whether the dates for each single are for the period when the single was at number 1 or whether it covers the entire period that the single was in the charts. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.101.228.218 (talk) 01:39, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

for someone who loves disambig/category clarity...

The page List of number-one singles is currently a redirect to this page, List of number-one singles (UK). That's obviously incorrect. It needs to be a disambig page.. in essence, it needs to be a list of lists. Would someone mind doing the honors? There should be a top-level category for number-one hits across the world too, shouldn't there? I'm a little busy... Thanks! 163.28.49.5 (talk) 03:37, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was Move per discussion - The current titles are ambiguous, but the originally proposed titles are lengthy. Support has been voiced for the titles proposed in the course of the discussion, which are not ambiguous and are shorter than the originally proposed titles. Neelix (talk) 20:58, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

• List of number-one singles (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart
• List of number-one singles from the 1950s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 1950s
• List of number-one singles from the 1960s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 1960s
• List of number-one singles from the 1970s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 1970s
• List of number-one singles from the 1980s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 1980s
• List of number-one singles from the 1990s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 1990s
• List of number-one singles from the 2000s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 2000s
• List of number-one singles from the 2010s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Singles Chart from the 2010s
• List of Christmas number one singles (UK) → List of Christmas number ones on the UK Singles Chart
• List of number-one albums (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart
• List of number-one albums from the 1950s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 1950s
• List of number-one albums from the 1960s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 1960s
• List of number-one albums from the 1970s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 1970s
• List of number-one albums from the 1980s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 1980s
• List of number-one albums from the 1990s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 1990s
• List of number-one albums from the 2000s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 2000s
• List of number-one albums from the 2010s (UK) → List of number ones on the UK Albums Chart from the 2010s
• List of Christmas number one albums (UK) → List of Christmas number ones on the UK Albums Chart

Relisted for further input. Jafeluv (talk) 10:36, 27 September 2011 (UTC) – This move will obviously have a significant effect on several lists, a lot of which are featured, so it seemed only polite to propose the move here rather than just moving them all without warning.

The way I see it, the titles of these lists are currently not as well-defined and clear as they could be for readers of this encyclopaedia. They say "number-one singles", but number one of what exactly? A song can be a "number-one single", but not necessarily have reached number one on the UK Singles Chart. For example, two weeks ago "Moves Like Jagger" by Maroon 5 reached number one on the UK Official Download Chart, thereby making it a "number-one single", meaning that a reader could conceivably expect to find it listed in the List of number-one singles from the 2010s (UK) article. But the song is not listed there because, as of yet, it has not reached number one on the UK Singles Chart, and that is the criterion for being listed in these articles. Hence, the titles should reflect this.

The titles to which I'm proposing moving these articles are obviously slightly longer than the current ones, but I believe that this is a fair sacrifice if it makes them less ambiguous for our readers. Thanks very much. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 19:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: This seems like a big deal over a small thing, and one that might not actually improve the situation much anyway. The thrust of the move is that the current names aren't specific enough. I can agree with that, but there's the ol' question of whether Please Please Me was ever Number One - ie, which chart are we talking about? With albums going back to the 50's here, the plethora of charts becomes an issue. I don't know enough about this matter to make a vote one way or the other, but it's not as simple as is being described in the move request. Absconded Northerner (talk) 22:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Yeah, that's a good point, maybe the rationale in my request was a little flippant – before 1969, the UK Singles Chart didn't even officially exist. What The Official Charts Company (or some earlier organisation) seems to have done is to go back retrospectively over the various pre-1969 charts and decide which of them they consider to be canonical. Therefore, "number ones on the UK Singles chart" is something that they have clearly well-defined, and we can verify from their official website whether or not a single or album reached number one. So, for example, Please Please Me was a UK Albums Chart number one during the 1960s (source: [2]), so it should be included in the List of number-one singles from the 1960s (UK). I hope that addresses your concern. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 23:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

• Question There's obviously been very little discussion of this matter over the past three weeks. I've not requested all too many moves before, so what happens if there is no consensus one way or the other about whether to move or not? Will the move request be automatically failed? I still feel that the new titles that I've suggested (although slightly longer) are clearer and more well-defined than the ones we are currently using, so I do think that it would be of benefit to Wikipedia to change them. If the request is failed due to lack of discussion, am I still within my rights to invoke WP:IAR and move them anyway? Yours inquisitively, A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 20:11, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
• I think I support the thinking behind the proposal - I also don't like the way "(UK)" is placed in brackets as if it's just a disambiguator, when in fact it's an essential part of the title - but can we not find something shorter? Like "List of 1950s UK Singles Chart number ones"?--Kotniski (talk) 07:20, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

• Yeah, I guess I could get behind that, although I don't know if there are any MOS topics that we need to consider first. For me, the most important thing is that "UK Singles Chart number ones" (or something similar) is mentioned in the list title. A Thousand Doors (talk | contribs) 08:52, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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