A few weeks ago, in one of my weeknotes, I wrote that I had, for the first time, heard Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In. At that point, it had spent 18 weeks at No. 1, equalling the all-time UK record set by Frankie Laine’s I Believe in 1953. Sorry, but it hasn’t stuck in my head so I can’t hum it for you.
James Masterton, of chart commentary fame, says that I Believe subsequently returned to Number 1 in a version by Robson & Jerome for another four weeks in 1995. So, the song accumulated 22 weeks as the UK’s Number 1.
This week is the 23rd non-consecutive week at the top for Rein Me In, beating any other combination of Frankie Laine and Robson & Jerome. While looking up these facts, I learned that Rein Me In has now triggered something called the Accelerated Chart Ratio, which seems to be a fancy term for some rule that requires a song’s streams to work harder before they count toward a chart position. There is a trigger when a song starts to move down the charts after 10 weeks, and another trigger if something has been at number one for 20 weeks. So, Sam and Olivia have triggered it, although they might wish they hadn’t. Or, they may have gone all Wet Wet Wet, who famously stopped pressing any more copies of the single version of their long-running number one, Love Is All Around, after 15 weeks at the top. There are so many facts that date that last sentence! Much harder to stop pressing a stream. All these rules seem incredibly complicated, but I guess they stop some 80s classic from ruining the charts for kids these days.
Back in the 80s, of course, I could not have looked up the official Chart Company website or the chart commentary. We learned these facts only from Bruno Brooks, who hosted the Top 40 show on Radio 1 on Sunday nights, or, for a bit of pop trivia, from the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles. I think any serious music lover in the 80s had a copy. There were 19 editions of that book published under the name Guinness Book of British Hit Singles, and then a couple under the name Virgin Book of British Hit Singles. I don’t think it’s around anymore.
The 12th edition of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles was released in 1999, and somehow, on my walk to the supermarket this evening, a copy appeared dumped on the pavement. I did not bend down to pick it up or examine it. I don’t know why it was there, but it intrigued me and reminded me of the days when you had to look up music facts. Rein Me In might not appear in that copy, but I bet it is full of useless, quiz-winning pop trivia. Maybe I should have picked it up.