Charting 1997: the soft launch

After the "massive" "success" of the 1996 chart I posted a few weeks ago, I somehow convinced myself it'd be a good idea to extend the #chart15yearsago hashtag for a full year; after all, 1997 is one of my favourite chart years that I can actually remember and even though it's not that long ago mathematically, it has that ring of a vanished world now, back in the days of multiple CD single formats, first-week discounting, fourth singles from albums going Top 10 and a very high turnover - unprecedentedly at the time in fact. Also unprecedented was the sheer volume of singles sold that year; as far as I know this year remains the high-water mark of physical single sales, though total sales are now higher in the download era.

So my plan is to start posting every weekly chart from the year 1997 in real time, for as long as I can stay motivated and assuming nobody tries to stop me - plus I'll be embedding as many of the new entries as I can (with apologies to people on slow connections or browsers). And I might drop in one or two of my own reminiscences if I can find anything worth saying. I contemplated setting up a new blog for this but I decided to leave it in the Hitparade blog because that's already linked from Popular and I thought I might get some interest from there. I have however set up a new Twitter account @Charting1997 where I'll be tweeting a lot of the same music, but with slightly shorter commentary. Feel free to interact through either channel.

The first chart(s) will be published on the fifth, so let's start the musical year with the three tracks I managed to  find from Jool's Holland's 1997 Hootennany. All three from acts we'll be seeing more of in future.

Kenickie - In Your Car



Paul Weller - Will It Go Round In Circles?

Simply Red - Everything Must Change

And if anyone wants a massive spoiler, here's a Spotify playlist of every charting single I could find from the entire year. That's 931 tracks even with a several omissions. What have I taken on?