New Feature - The Top 40 Leaderboard

Last week I decided to bring my Top of the Pops posts to a close after 3 years. The question is what do I do instead? I thought it should be something that isn't been done elsewhere and is reflective of the charts in the modern era.

I've asked a number of people recently if they'd heard of Tones & I. Everybody said no. For those of you who don't know, Tones & I recently spent 11 weeks at number one. Years ago that would pretty much guarantee to make you a household name, not anymore.

The Spice Girls were the most successful chart act of their era. They topped the charts with 9 of their first 10 hits. Then came Westlife who also topped the charts with 9 of their first 10 hits.

In the modern era, the 3 most successful chart acts are Ed Sheeran, Drake and Justin Bieber. Yet if you look at the first 10 Top 40 hits for each of them, only one of Drakes reached number one and none of Ed Sheeran's or Justin Bieber's did. In fact despite all 3 acts having over 40 Top 40 hits to their name, none of them have reached 9 number ones yet.

Over half of Drake and Justin Bieber's Top 40 hits haven't even made the Top 10. When Ed Sheeran was having the time of his life in 2017, one of his hits only reached 19. That would have been considered a major flop in years gone by, but when you consider that 15 other Ed Sheeran songs were preventing it from charting higher, it doesn't sound so bad.

It would seem that chart position is no longer that important. What seems to be more important is quantity. This year has been more low key for Drake with just 4 Top 40 singles. In years gone by that would be as many as you would expect for an individual artist, but not anymore. It's not unusual for one to reach double figures in terms of number of Top 40 hits in a year. The only times it happened in the Top of the Pops era were when The Wedding Present released a single every month in 1992 and when all of Elvis Presley's number one singles were re-released in 2005.

This is what the Top 40 leaderboard will be, who has had the most Top 40 hits so far in the year. I'll begin next Thursday with the final leaderboard for 2019 before starting a new one the following week.