If you think that pop music started in 1955 or 1963 or even 2000, you have come to the right place if you want to read about the pop music charts going back much further than that. There are two main sections to this site, a year by year list of the number ones and number twos in both the US and UK charts, singles, albums and EPs and another subsection titled Miscellaneous which covers some of the important records that weren’t quite so successful in the charts.
There is also a detailed commentary about the UK albums charts from 1956 to 2020 where this this site documents the achievements of the artists who have had hit albums since that year. The USA album charts began in 1945
The weekly singles charts in the US began officially in 1940 but prior to that, there were a series of weekly charts published in a magazine USA Weekly from 1930 and then in 1935, a radio broadcast of the biggest hits of the week called Your Hit Parade (sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes). As far back as around 1925, the sales of recorded discs had overtaken those of sheet music about the time of the introduction of electric recording as opposed to mechanical means. This meant that singers in particular could be more expressive and sing softly instead of having to virtually shout into a giant horn. The same applied to a lesser degree to musicians playing instruments too, it was no longer a competition to be the loudest in order to be heard. There were unofficial lists of the relative sales of records throughout the 1930s and indeed, these have since been extrapolated back to the very beginning of the industry in 1890 and depict with various degrees of accuracy, what the best-selling cylinders would have been on any given date. These unofficial charts have many supporters and opponents but finally in 1940 Billboard introduced a national list of the best-selling records which was to become the definitive guide throughout the rest of the century.
The compilation of the charts between 1930 and 1940 follow a similar pattern to the official charts, published by Billboard, the only real differences being that there were several criteria used for compiling the positions, not just retail sales of discs and only the top artist to record any specific song is listed. Once the official Best selling retail records arrived in 1940, there were multiple entries of each song allowed. From 1900 onwards, the details of each song and artist are given, some historical chart information regarding the artists and songs composers and what the song was actually about. Where possible, there is a link to listen to the record after each entry.
Prior to 1930, there were no weekly charts, official or otherwise, however, some people have extrapolated backwards to the beginning of the century what charts would have looked like had they existed. These extrapolations have come in for much criticism from music experts who claim that these charts are highly inaccurate, in some cases impossible and they guide the novice to particular records which may have been less popular than stated. In the early part of the twentieth century it would have been impossible to create a national chart as the distribution system of records simply didn’t exist. If a record was popular in Los Angeles, it would take weeks or even months to get in into shops in New York and vice-versa. Even more impossible would be for people to obtain a copy of the record, whatever it was in a sleepy little town in the centre. Therefore, to claim a national chart for 1900 or 1920 was just not physically possible. But it didn’t need to be that extensive. There was a chart compiled retrospectively from the beginning of the century and that was bi-weekly, actually two charts per month, one at the beginning and one in the middle of each month, so therefore twenty-four charts per year. After the 1930s when there was a weekly chart published in USA weekly, these chart continued and although these were not the same week by week, or even bi-weekly, they were not too far distant from each other which suggested that both were reasonable accurate.
Even in 1940 with their accepted official national chart, Billboard only used the services of forty-eight shops to report on what their weekly best-sellers were, so who can say that the extrapolated charts of the 1920s were any less accurate than the 1940s. The people who have undertaken this massive task of mathematically calculating the charts as they would have looked are well-respected musicologists like Joel Whitburn and Edward Foote Gardner who have both used different methodology to produce pop music charts going back to 1900. Possibly Whitburn went too far by going back to 1890 when sales would have been minimal but certainly his charts from 1900 are remarkably similar to the Gardner versions. Whitburn produced a weekly chart which may be pushing the boundaries as the industry was not only disjointed but slow, a weekly chart would not have changed much from one week to the next. There are some that argue that some records were popular for years and the sales of singles early in the century should resemble more the early album charts where titles remained at no.1 for months or even years, not merely a few weeks. Edward Foote Gardner’s extrapolated charts are bi-weekly and are published in a book called The Encyclopaedia Of Popular Songs Of The Twentieth Century and it is your decision as the reader whether you consider the charts prior to 1940 accurate or not.
The UK singles charts were even more complicated. Please see the section on UK number one singles for a complete explanation. The listings begin in 1940 with a top 10 weekly listing and although endorsed by the Official Charts Company, are considered unofficial and in 1952, a weekly official list which continues, albeit compiled by different organisations until the present day.
This site therefore has entries with links on the Contents pages to the following information:
USA singles from 1900
USA albums from 1945
USA EPs from 1953 – 1960
UK singles from 1940
UK albums from 1956
UK EPs from 1959 – 1967
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The pop music charts 