The Big Topic: Are we witnessing the return of chart battles?
During the 1990s, chart battles were at the heart of the music industry and became a weekly soap area observed by millions. Those days are long gone, but for one week only, it’s returning, thanks to Arctic Monkeys going toe-to-toe with Taylor Swift for the top spot.
Both artists have had six consecutive number-one albums in the United Kingdom, but for one of them, that streak is about to come to an abrupt end on October 28th. Arctic Monkeys likely don’t care much about where their album lands in the charts, but their fans are already in full-force fighting online warfare against the Swifties.
Swift (or her team) has previous of using dirty tactics to secure a number-one album. In 2020, at the last minute, the singer brought forward the physical release of Folklore by a series of weeks when it looked like she was going to get beaten by Fontaines D.C. with their second album, A Hero’s Death.
Fontaines frontman Grian Chatten found the battle to be an unwanted ordeal and later reflected: “We didn’t need to beat Taylor Swift for number one; we weren’t dying for that. The only reason we would have wanted that number one is for the team that works around us, our management and stuff; it would have been really good for them as they put a lot of work into it.”
Arctic Monkeys almost certainly feel similarly about a chart battle as Chatten. However, even though they act too cool for school, that hasn’t stopped them from announcing a stadium tour which encouraged fans to buy The Car for pre-sale access. Their tactic would guarantee a number-one album in any other week, but Taylor Swift has other plans.
Although she hasn’t announced any tour dates yet, Swift informed her fans in the UK about her plans to perform on British soil next year and told them to buy her new album if they wanted to guarantee tickets. Therefore, the battle between the two artists is more related to how many tickets they can sell rather than the popularity of their current record.
The reason why artists are encouraging fans to buy their albums is largely down to the weighting system of the chart rather than for financial reasons, as it takes 1,000 streams of an album to count for an album sale. Therefore, musicians with a loyal following of fans who will buy a physical record can chart considerably higher than LPs that have been streamed significantly more times.
In January, Yard Act gave Years & Years a run for their money in the race for number one and did so humorously. The Leeds group had fun with the exercise, and there was nothing personal between their jovial attempt to beat Olly Alexander. “Got no beef whatsoever with him,” frontman James Smith told the Yorkshire Post. “I had listened to the album and, as expected, there’s some great banging pop tunes on it. We were in direct competition with him, but we weren’t. He just happened to be the one that week. It was hardly Blur versus Oasis.”
Meanwhile, in 2020, The Snuts mobilised their fanbase, and in a David vs Goliath-style battle, they reigned victorious against Demi Lovato, which didn’t go down well with the American singer’s fans.
Although indie bands have had fun trying to coup the chart, the music industry is now completely different from the ’90s when Oasis fought Blur. Unless Taylor Swift or Arctic Monkeys decide to talk shit about each other next week, which despite being extraordinarily out of character, may be a bit of good fun, it’s unlikely the chart battle will enter mainstream consciousness and be limited to online echo chambers.
As a music journalist, I’d be thrilled for those days to return as it would make my job more exciting. Considering the dark place of the industry in 2022, with venues closing around Britain and artists cancelling tours due to the cost of living crisis, although an old-school chart battle would be entertaining, it would be crass too.
