Next week, one of those oft-celebrated music anniversaries comes around again. It’ll be a staggering 29 years since the summer of Britpop, as and fought it out for Number 1 in the singles charts. Heady days for rock indeed, and not just because between them, the two bands sold a frankly incredible 490,000 singles in just seven days.
And yet today, the entire notion of a band going in with a bullet at Number 1 – or even Number 40 – is frankly absurd. Consider this; the were number 1 in January 2000. Since then, only 10 bands – and we’re defining them strictly as your typical rock or indie line-up, rather than a pop group – have reached the top of the charts.
Re-entries and remastered novelties aside (hello, The Beatles), the last original Number 1 by a band was by Florence & The Machine, 12 years ago. In fact, the last indie rock song to rocket to Number 1 out of nowhere was Arctic Monkeys’ debut single , in 2005. Compare that to the similarly brilliant , Wet Leg’s Grammy award-winning debut single from 2021.
Peak chart position? 76. You can see why it’s tempting to ask, as did recently on podcast: where have all the bands gone? This isn’t a question borne of BBC Six Music dads railing against modern music or manufactured pop. It’s just that when there are only two songs from bands in the – those being 21 and 37 years old respectively (The Killers’ and Fleetwood Mac’s ) – it does feel like the charts are out of kilter and the Spotify algorithm mig.