Top Pops is a former British weekly pop music newspaper. Top Pops was founded initially as a monthly publication by Woodrow Wyatt in May 1967, becoming fortnightly in November 1967. On 25 May 1968, editor Colin Bostock-Smith began compiling a chart using a telephone sample from approximately 12 W H Smith & Son stores. The charts and paper became weekly on 22 June 1968.[1] On 20 September 1969 the paper was rebranded Top Pops & Music Now which became Music Now from 21 March 1970 – at this point the chart was sampling between 30 and 40 stores. From 27 February 1971 the chart was no longer published—in May 1971 the newspaper ceased publication.[1]
Record charts in the United Kingdom began life on 14 November 1952 when NME imitated an idea started in the American Billboard magazine. Prior to 1969 there had been no official singles chart[2][3][4] and, from 15 February 1969, Record Retailer and the BBC jointly commissioned the British Market Research Bureau (BMRB) to compile the charts.[2][5] The BMRB compiled its first chart from postal returns of sales logs from 250 record shops.[5] The sampling cost approximately £52,000 and shops were randomly chosen from a pool of around 6,000 and they submitted figures for sales taken up to the close of trade on Saturday. However, the BMRB sometimes struggled to have the full sample of sales figures returned by post and the 1971 postal strike meant that data had to be collected by telephone.[2] Prior to the formation of the BMRB, the Record Retailer chart is considered the canonical source for number-one singles from March 1960.[5] However, Retailer had a significantly smaller sample size than some of the rival charts, such as NME.[2]
Charts compiled by Top Pops had fifteen number-one singles that did not reach top spot in the Record Retailer chart; in comparison, a total of nine Top Pops number-ones did not top the NME chart.[6] Seven records failed to top either, with Edwin Hawkins Singers' "Oh Happy Day", Robin Gibb's "Saved By the Bell", Bee Gees "Don't Forget to Remember", and The Tremeloes "(Call Me) Number One" peaking at number two in both charts, Herman's Hermits "My Sentimental Friend" and Don Fardon's "Indian Reservation" placed with one number two and one number three in each chart, and Stevie Wonder's "My Cherie Amour" reached fourth and third spot in the two charts.[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]
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| 1968 · 1969 · 1970 · 1971 |
Rees, Dafydd; Lazell, Barry; Osborne, Roger (1995). Forty Years of "NME" Charts (2nd ed.). Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0-7522-0829-2.