Dance Music in the UK Singles Chart

I'm now up to 1992 in my yearly look at the UK singles chart. Many genres of music have come and gone, some have had much less of a presence in the charts than one would think and some have perhaps had more. One thing that has struck my though was the sheer quantity of Dance music in the charts in the years I've looked at recently.

There's no doubt that Dance music at times has seemed the most popular genre of music, at the moment purely from a commercial perspective EDM is possibly the biggest thing out there at the moment, but in the early 90s it does seem like the singles chart would suggest that dance music was bigger than it perhaps was.

Many will say that in the early 90s the music world was divided into those who liked Dance and those who liked Rock. I wouldn't say one was bigger than the other, why would Dance music fans have that rivalry with Rock music fans if they didn't have a similar sized following.

Amongst my peers I would say Rock music had the bigger following, though that did change in the late 90s where the rivalries tended to be what type of dance music you were into.

It's probably fair to say that the singles chart was somewhat an after thought for many rock bands. AC/DC have the second biggest selling album of all time, but until there was a Facebook campaign to get them to Christmas number one a few years ago they held the record for most singles without a Top 10. Rage Against the Machine who actually did get the Christmas number one only managed number 25 with the same record originally despite the fact it was a hugely popular song at the time.

But Dance music wasn't exactly chart orientated either. One thing I loved about a lot of the Dance music I listened to was that it never go into the charts.

There is however one obvious reason why a Dance record was more likely to chart than a Rock record. Several Rock fans get themselves a Guitar and learn to play the music as well as listen to it. The equivalent in Dance music is to get some decks and therefore buy the vinyl to mix with which in turn helps to boost singles sales, learning to play a Rock song on the guitar obviously doesn't.

That's not just it though. Another clear distinction between Dance music and possibly any other genre is that Dance records aren't often about the artist who creates them, but more about a DJ who plays the records. In other genres it's all about the artist.

The only Dance act from the early 90s that the average music fan could recognise down the street or name the members of is The Prodigy. There are many dance anthems that many people know and could name the act, but how much do people generally know about Nomad, Shades of Rhythm or Oceanic?

When a Dance act is faceless like that, you don't know whether there will be an album or if you'll ever hear anything from them again, so you buy the single. With someone like AC/DC, someone who likes their single will know it will be on the next album so would probably wait for that rather than buy the single which is probably why their UK singles record isn't great.

Even if there is an album though, it can often take a long time for it to come out. Take The Prodigy for example, their first single "Charly" came out in August 1991, their first album came out in September 1992. The first single from the 2nd album "One Love" came out in October 1993, the album came out in July 1994. Then there was the number one "Firestarter" which was March 1996 but the album didn't come out until July 1997.

Take another chart topping Dance act, Baby D. The number one "Let Me Be Your Fantasy" originally came out in 1992 but didn't chart until 1994 and the album didn't come out until 1996, so it was 4 years old by the time you could own it on an album.

So that's my theory as to why there was more Dance music in the charts than you'd perhaps expect.