Which album has topped the charts for the most consecutive weeks?
What does a number one hit even mean in the modern world? Music is a multiplatform medium these days, with physical record sales competing with streaming services and even the likes of YouTube and social media outlets. It doesn’t quite have the same artistic gravitas as days gone by and it certainly doesn’t have the same financial outcome.
Moreover, this multi-platform approach to music metrics has meant that the charts has become a far more homogonised landscape, for the monsters of commercial success can monopolise the space far easier with various outlets of marketing to harness. In many ways, it becomes more about the brand than the music.
Rarely do we see an alternative record capture the zeitgeist so powerfully that it surges its way to the top of the mountain, on the basis that the music was so compelling that it simply had to be bought by all who heard about it. And so, that’s why the word charts is met with somewhat of an eye-roll, as it’s largely expected to be attached to names like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, or Harry Styles.
But when it comes to long-term domination of the charts, well, it’s always been about the big-name players. From the 1950s all the way up until now, these titans of industry may have been treated by the odd left-field record emerging through the cracks of obscurity to have their moment in the sun, but they have never remained up there for extended periods of time.
If you look up any chart record from history, you’re likely to find either Elvis Presley’s name at the top or The Beatles. Both of those artists displayed differing but similarly clever ways of topping the charts. In Elvis’ case, his hard-nosed manager Colonel Tom Parker made a clever link between film sales and soundtrack sales, particularly when Elvis was a star in them.
An idea he most likely acquired from the roaring success of the 1958 film South Pacific, which is officially the longest-standing album on the UK charts, holding the top spot for an outrageous 115 weeks. And the proof that film soundtracks reign supreme is firmly in the pudding, as The Sound Of Music and The King And I come in at second and third with 70 weeks and 48 weeks, respectively.
But returning to the other chart toppers, The Beatles, well, their methodology largely consisted of consistent output, but moreover, brilliant artistic output. Their chart domination came from nothing more than creative brilliance, and so by releasing stellar records, sometimes two, every year for the entire 1960s, only meant one thing…or did it?
Because beneath the top three film soundtracks sits one record just above The Beatles’ Please Please Me, which spent 30 weeks at the number one spot. That record was Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water, which spent 33 weeks at the top spot of the UK number one charts.
But what about in the United States?
Well, across the pond, it’s a similar story in terms of trends. In fact, the West Side Story soundtrack took the number one spot on the Billboard record list for a total of 54 weeks, while South Pacific stayed fourth with 31 weeks at the top spot.
While The Beatles did, in fact, crack America, they didn’t run any of these soundtracks as close as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which to this day remains the highest-selling album of all time. His record spent 37 weeks at the number one spot, sitting in front of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.
The more diverse and wide-ranging demographics in the United States clearly impact the consumption of music, for the numbers in comparison to the United Kingdom are somewhat meagre and positively point towards a less homogenised landscape.
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