OfficialCharts.com: We Are 1 (Part 1)

Happy birthday to us! Happy birthday to us! Happy birthday OfficialCharts.com! Happy birthday to us!

In case you hadn’t guessed, the revamped OfficialCharts.com is celebrating its birthday today… Yep, we are a whole year old!

On October 11, 2011 the Official Charts Company re-launched OfficialCharts.com as the all-singing, all-dancing online destination for chart fans that you’ve come to know and love. We won’t bore you with talk of increases in page impressions and unique users, though we’re very excited that there are 73% more of you chart nutters hanging around on here than there was this time last year (woohoo!), but, like any parent, we’re immensely proud of our little one’s achievements. So, as a thank you to the millions and millions of you who have supported us week in, week out, we’re going to relive some of our favourite, poptastic moments from OfficialCharts.com’s first year of life.

October, 2011

When OfficialCharts.com launched, Rihanna had just topped the Official Singles Chart with We Found Love, her sixth Number 1 single in five consecutive years, Adele was poised to equal The Beatles chart records on both sides of the Atlantic (some things never change, then), and Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out Of My Head was celebrating its 10th anniversary (yes, we felt old when we uncovered that). We chatted to Kylie’s old mentor, legendary hit maker, Pete Waterman about what it was like in Camp Kylie the week Can’t Get You Out Of My Head went to Number 1, his favourite memories of working with her over the years, and how Simon Cowell passed up the opportunity to release her first UK hit, I Should Be So Lucky, because she was “a TV star”. Watch the interview below:

Later that month, Westlife announced that they were splitting up, and Coldplay’s Mylo Xyloto set a new record as the fastest selling digital album in Official Charts history.

November, 2011

November kicked off with Professor Green and Cher Lloyd locked in a battle for Number 1 on the Official Singles Chart. Despite taking the lead in the Official Update, Cher Lloyd’s With Ur Love didn’t have enough swagger to topple Pro Green’s Read All About It, which spent a second week at Number 1. Here’s a clip of Professor Green and Emeli Sande talking about the track backstage at Top Of The Pops:

Adele’s unstoppable rise and rise helped usher in a new era of Girl Power (bigger than the Spice Girls 1997 heyday, in fact) with one in three albums bought in the UK during 2011 being by a female artist. Other big sellers included Rihanna, Jessie J and Lady Gaga.

December, 2011

The month started with us revealing the mighty Adele's 21 becoming the biggest selling album of the 21st Century., and finished with the highlight of the Official Chart year - the coveted Official Singles Chart Christmas Number 1. The 2011 contenders included the then newly crowned X Factor winners Little Mix (who hit Number 1 the week before Christmas with their cover of Damien Rice's Cannonball), Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, The Wombles and of course The Military Wives with Gareth Malone.

However, the week before Christmas we got an usual phone call into the office from a lady saying she was a friend of somebody called ‘Alex Day’ and wanted to enquire as to how he could compete for the Christmas Number 1. The caller went on to explain “he’s an unsigned musician and YouTube blogger and wants to be Christmas Number 1”. Hmmm. At which point we politely asked her to pop some details into an email as we had to dash into a meeting and we would do what we could to advise her on the process for getting a release into the Official Chart (never thinking for a moment that this would be something that would be bothering the Top 40 immediately).

Well, when the email came through, there were some extra details about this Alex Day person. Alex Day was a 22 year old YouTube blogger, his YouTube channel has 500,000 subscribers, his channel was getting more views per day than Lady Gaga’s, having racked up 66 million views at that point. He had written a song called Forever Yours, roped in some mates to help him make a little video for it and a handful of remixes, posted it online and it had clocked up 2 million views already. To put this into context, the Military Wives, who were bookies’ favourites to be Christmas Number 1, had at that point received 140,000 views.

Woah. Who is this kid? We popped our head up from our desk and shouted out to the rest of the office, “Has anybody heard of a YouTube blogger called Alex Day?” To which, we were greeted with a series of blank faces. We got back in touch with the caller to get the paperwork done, as Alex had no label or manager we helped him register on the Official Charts system so that any retail sales of his track would be safely counted and the song would be eligible to chart the following week.

Less than a week later, the Christmas Number 1 race was underway. The first sales flash on Tuesday morning of Christmas week showed Alex Day currently rocking up into fourth place, and being on course for a Top 5. Bonkers stuff! We whistled him in sharpish for a chat with OfficialCharts.com. First question “Alex Day, who the hell are you?!”

Watch the video below:

And there you have it, Alex Day, unsigned musician, YouTube blogging phenomenon bagged himself a debut Top 10 single for Christmas 2011, finishing the week at Number 4. Good work, fella!

The Military Wives were crowned as 2011’s Christmas Number 1 (on Christmas Day no less!), and, not only that, they became the first ever recipients of the new Official Singles Chart Number 1 Award – launched in conjunction with Radio 1 to celebrate 60 years of the Official Singles Chart in 2012! Watch Official Chart host Reggie Yates present them with their glittering trophy below:

Be sure to log on to OfficialCharts.com tomorrow for the second part of first year of life in review!