Long Live the King?
by Louis Cooke

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND — A quick glance at the UK Top 40 singles charts from the past few weeks and you'd be forgiven for thinking large swaths of the country were shaking with a nostalgic fever.

Since the start of this year, Elvis Presley, the king of rock 'n' roll, has had eight top-five hits. Three of them went straight in at No. 1. In mid-February, he held six positions in the Top 40.

Musical zeitgeists normally contain a healthy dose of retro, but never in this way. Elvis' resurrected success has been facilitated by a blanket-bomb re-release campaign. His record label, SonyBMG, began reissuing all 18 of his No. 1 singles in January to celebrate his 70th birthday, and is currently just over halfway through its four-month mission.

"This will be the first time one artist will release this number of chart singles consecutively in such a short space of time," cooed Darren Henderson in a SonyBMG press release for the campaign's launch on Jan. 3. "It will make UK singles chart history and is a phenomenal testament to the staying power of Elvis."

Elvis did make chart history, by snagging the 1,000th No. 1, which fell, by fortunate coincidence, slap-bang during SonyBMG's campaign (Jan. 16, "I Got Stung/One Night" double-A side). He also became the first artist in the chart's 53-year history to debut at No. 1 on consecutive weeks, and will no doubt pick up more ink in the book of Guinness World Records as the weeks pass.

But the re-releases are a testament more to the limp, desperate state of the Top 40 chart than Elvis' "phenomenal" staying power. The chart has been struggling for a few years, and SonyBMG has delivered the most brazen blow yet to its credibility.

"The Elvis re-releases are the logical extent of the manipulation of the charts we've seen over the last decade or so," says Alex Needham, deputy editor of the weekly music paper NME, via e-mail. In the '90s, he says, record companies started to place an emphasis on a song entering the chart at a high position, rather than climbing it. This had a revitalizing effect for a while, and single releases were turned into an event — in 1995, Blur and Oasis had a high-profile slog for the No. 1 spot (Blur's "Country House" edged Oasis's "Roll with It"). Singles started to appear in or two or three different versions, each with its own "exclusive" B-sides or "collector's limted edition" artwork. An initial price of 99p was often bumped to £2.99 or £3.99 after a few weeks, to maximize returns once a song had peaked in the chart. The process suffered from its own hype, though, and sales fell sharply at the end of the decade. Despite a slight resurgence, figures still show the number of singles sold weekly has halved since the 1980s.

"The Elvis thing just highlights how low singles sales are in general that the chart is so easy to manipulate by clever marketing," says Needham. The abuse the chart has suffered has become so transparent that fewer and fewer people take it seriously. A carefully managed cycle of create-a-popstar TV shows that pump out acts with maximum 12-month shelf-lives has revealed how the music industry works and added to the suspicion and cynicism. The chart's flagship TV show, "Top of the Pops," faced the axe from the BBC and, despite a makeover, is a shadow of its former glory. ("To end it would be a mercy killing" is Needham's forthright opinion.)

It's a sorry state for a barometer of popular music taste, but even that's questionable because the chart only counts CD single sales, and they're no longer the only way songs are consumed. Distribution has fragmented. As well as download sales, which are healthy (downloads outnumbered physical sales in the last week of 2004), there are several music TV channels where viewers can vote by phone, text message or online to hear their favorite songs.

Many of these offer their own charts, smudging the picture even more. Responding to these shifts, the Official Charts Co., which compiles the Top 40 singles and albums charts, launched its first download chart in September last year. There are noticeable differences to the CD chart. It's less dominated by prefab pop acts, perhaps reflecting a more mature audience — as James Gillespie of Official Charts told the Guardian, "It's not like you can take your pocket money down to iTunes." It operates more like the Top 40 used to, with songs entering at low positions before climbing to higher ones. And because songs are offered for download at the same time they're made available to radio stations for airplay, it often feels much fresher.

The download chart and the singles chart still exist separately for the moment, but Official Charts is set to follow the lead of the Billboard Hot 100 and amalgamate the two "within the first half of this year," according to the British Phonographic Industry. Figures from 21 download outlets, including iTunes and Napster, will be incorporated with traditional sales.

It is hoped a new hybrid approach will help the chart recover some of its worth, and revitalize public interest. "It might work for a bit," reckons Needham, "but it'll need to be constantly looked at and refreshed. A lot of the reason for the chart's current malaise is that no one noticed that it was dying on its feet, and they weren't prepared to do anything about it until it was almost too late."

Billboard produces more than 30 US singles charts, in everything from Hot Christian Adult Contemporary to Hot Ringtones. As tastes, distribution and consumption have evolved, it has had to adapt, and significantly it now produces two general charts, the Hot 100 and the Pop 100, which collect figures from multiple sources, including downloads and airplay. This kind of multidimensional approach does not exist in the UK. Traditionally, the Top 40 is the only singles chart that matters. There are specialist and independent charts but as yet they don't carry the same weight as the one that carries an "official" tag.

For that reason, it's important the Top 40 recovers at least some of its credibility: Its official status means it has a duty to be meaningful and reliable. It's also vital that its recent struggle is recorded as a blip. Otherwise, in years to come, historians might turn to official records and puzzle as to why, if Elvis dominated the top of the British charts for the first half of 2005, contemporary fashion didn't see young adult men sporting teddy boy haircuts, muttonchops, leather jackets or sequined jump suits.

E-mail Louis Cooke at louis at mintcake dot com.