Music News - New Zealand’s official Top 40 turns 30 years old
01 May 2005 - 0 Comments
On May 2, 1975 the first New Zealand Top 40 chart was published listing the 40 biggest selling singles and albums for the week.
The first chart was numbered 1 and Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks was the first # 1 album and Helen Reddy’s Free and Easy was the country’s first top single. This week’s chart (released on Wednesday 4 May), number 1458, will mark the 30th anniversary.
Weekly, the Official New Zealand Music Chart monitors our favourite albums, singles, compilations, DVDs and heatseeker music.
It was 1973 when a national sales chart for ranking popular music was first mooted in New Zealand by the Federation of Phonographic Industries (NZFPI).
But it was another two years before the NZFPI – the predecessor to the Recording Industry Association of NZ – appointed Heylen Research Centre to compile the first chart.
RIANZ chief executive Campbell Smith –says there are numerous milestones from the past 30 years.
“You’d need a book bigger than a grand piano to publish the highs of the charts,” Smith says. “But one thing’s for sure, New Zealand music has made a huge impact right across the decades.”
During the past three decades, 30 Kiwi albums have debuted on The Chart at #1. However, only 10 singles have managed the feat.
The strength of New Zealand music in the past five years is illustrated with 21 of the 24 local #1 albums since 2000 all entering The Chart at #1.
The country’s most successful local act is Neil Finn who has had more #1s than any other Kiwi artist with a total of nine albums and four singles reaching the weekly sales pinnacle.
Mark Williams’ Yesterday was just the Beginning of my Life was the first #1 Kiwi single on June 27, 1975 and Bill & Boyd’s Bill & Boyd was the first Kiwi #1 album in March 1976. But it took another seven years before Dave Dobbyn’s DD Smash was the first local act with an album debut at #1 with Cool Bananas in 1982.
Top single by a New Zealand artist is Scribe’s Stand Up / Not Many which spent 24 weeks on The Chart in 2003 – 12 weeks at #1. The 1986 America’s Cup song Sailing Away was second on nine weeks at #1.
Hayley Westenra has New Zealand’s best placed album of the 30 years with the 11-times platinum Pure spending 19 out of 56 weeks at the top of The Chart in 2003.
Next best Kiwi is Bic Runga with Beautiful Collision on 101 weeks in The Chart, eight of them at #1.
Shania Twain’s Come on Over is the top album of the past 30 years in New Zealand. It spent 104 weeks in The Chart in 1999, 23 weeks at the top.
Today, the raw retail sales data for The Chart is compiled independently with the Top 40 albums rated on retail sales figures and the Top 40 singles based on a 50:50 data split between sales and radio play information.
Thanks to www.rianz.org.nz for this story.
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