The one you want
By Bernard Zuel
April 24, 2009 — 10.00am
NATALIE BASSINGTHWAIGHTE remembers it happening as if it had been yesterday.
"I had just been filming So You Think You Can Dance and I walked off-stage and my manager was staring at me and he said, 'No.1'."
"I said, 'Don't be stupid,' and started hitting him in the shoulder.
"I did this for about five minutes because I thought he was having a gag with me, saying [to him], 'Don't lie, this is ridiculous, stop it.'
"I lost the plot for about an hour. I ran up and down saying, 'I'm No.1, I've just got No.1."'
When Bassingthwaighte's first solo album, 1000 Stars, debuted at No.1 on the Australian pop chart last month keeping Lily Allen's album from the top spot the actor-cum-singer-cum-television presenter achieved something she hadn't managed with the highly successful electro-pop outfit Rogue Traders. Along the way she managed something few Australian women have achieved in the past decade. And as her obvious excitement even now attests, it still matters to be No.1.
Reaching No.1 was once the ultimate measure of pop music success. The Beatles did it a dozen times or more; Abba did it for weeks on end; John Farnham and Silverchair came out of virtual retirement (or out of nowhere) to do it.
If you had a No.1 single you would be played at the end of Countdown. If your album was at No.1 you were considered among the heavyweights and your record would be featured prominently in every store in the land.
Being No.1 on the singles or album chart, even if only temporarily, meant you were a bona fide success. And everyone, not just your fans, not just those who listened to commercial radio, knew it. The No.1 was a marker of the zeitgeist.
You didn't have to like him but everyone knew Michael Jackson was the flavour of the year; whether gold hotpants rang your bells or not, you would have to have been under a rock not to have noticed Kylie Minogue's cultural domination; Madonna, for a time, was everywhere.
And today? We keep hearing that downloads rather than over-the-counter sales are where it's at; that the single is all but dead and that albums are really only bought by the middle-aged. There's no musical centre and little cultural importance. Yet the charts persist and proliferate.
As well as the singles and album charts, there are radio airplay charts, dance charts, club charts, urban charts, country charts, physical and digital charts, compilation charts and Australian-only charts. It's tempting to think that if you put music out and can't find a chart somewhere on which to be No.1, then you really aren't trying very hard.
So, does it still matter if you reach No.1? Is anybody paying attention?
"Yes, absolutely," insists Mark Poston, chairman of EMI Australia.
"I think for artists, it's still the ultimate thing," he says. "We have artists who would probably disagree with it, but as a general statement, artists want to have their work heard or consumed by as many people as possible, so their art is connecting with people.
"To get that No.1, whether it be radio play or iTunes or the album chart is still something that is meaningful."
Even with the proliferation of charts, Poston argues that the central charts the ARIA singles and album charts still unify aspirations and attention.
"I just think that one mainstream chart is still the one unified measure that gets thrown around whether it's the schoolyard or in the paper or blogs. Yeah, the world is more fragmented but still the ultimate measure is that proper No.1 on the mainstream singles or album chart."
Crucially, the rewards are not just for the artists: the spin merchants benefit as well from the lingering cachet of being No.1 on the charts, says Bassingthwaighte's manager, Mark Byrne.
"It gives a marketing tag that we believe has worth, otherwise it wouldn't be splashed across the advertising," says Byrne, who describes watching Bassingthwaighte's reaction as the best moment of the whole experience.
"That transition from pop, from singles to albums, is always a challenge and [publicising being No.1] hopefully lets people investigate her album more than listening to the commercial singles.
"People go, 'Oh, there is actually a collection of songs from an artist that may be worth picking up."' So there is a practical benefit to being No.1, not just the warm inner glow or boasting rights.
"There certainly is," Byrne says. "There was a Billboard article about her last week in the US and that was a credit to Nat reaching No.1 on the chart locally. That sort of acknowledgement probably wouldn't happen if she'd come in at No.9."
Is that just the excitement of a manager who still claims that getting to No.1 was never part of the plan but a glorious bonus? It seems not, judging by the response of John Watson, very familiar with being No.1 after managing Silverchair and Missy Higgins.
"There are CD-buying people for whom an artist's topping the charts, like being the highest-grossing film or the best-selling book, is an arbiter of quality or at least demanding of attention," Watson says.
But the influence is wider still and self-perpetuating.
"To [the media] a No.1 suggests popularity so it means the artist is likely to benefit from more airplay or a cover feature on the basis that the audience wants it," Watson says.
"To the industry, the label or the promoter, it's a status symbol that's likely to increase their future expectations of success. As expectations often lead to results, a No.1 single is therefore likely to help lead to more No.1 singles because the industry pays closer attention to subsequent works and provides them with extra support.
"On a more basic level, which kind of combines all of the above, a No.1 single leads to greater exposure on the various top40 countdowns and featuring in the iTunes' most popular songs success tends to begat success in many areas of life."
Of course, this whole discussion raises the question of whether the charts then or now ever reflected anything of genuine value. Inherently imperfect methods of measuring, inherently corruptible structures, inherently transient effects and, of course, personal tastes all suggest the charts, such as television ratings, should not be treated with complete respect (see box opposite).
Crazy Frog and the Macarena made the top of the charts once, so we're not talking lasting or demonstrable quality. Shaddup You Face is among the biggest-selling singles of all time, Abba's Fernando topped the charts for what seemed like half a generation. Both reflected a communal gathering, both may now induce violence if played even one more time.
And of course, being No.1 doesn't necessarily mean high sales. You can get to No.1 in Australia with sales of less than 5000 some weeks and in other weeks it might take 10,000 (and a prayer that Coldplay or U2 don't release an album at the same time). You could also make No.1 with the best sales of that week but drop precipitously the following week and end up selling very little overall. Any number of Australian Idol releases have had thatexperience.
In the mid-'90s, You Am I debuted four consecutive albums at No.1 but only one of them was classified as platinum (sales in excess of 70,000). By comparison, Pearl Jam's breakthrough album Ten never reached No.1 but has sold six times platinum and is back in the Australian charts at the moment.
Bassingthwaighte's album 1000 Stars made it to No.1, while Beyonce's I Am ... Sasha Fierce didn't. But Beyonce's album has been credited with platinum sales in 21weeks; Bassingthwaighte's has gone gold (sales in excess of 30,000) in eight weeks. Lily Allen's album made it to No.1, was pushed back by Bassingthwaighte's for a week and then U2 the week after but while 1000 Stars is charting in the mid-20s ahead of a new single, Allen's album is back at No.1 and has sold more.
Just to further confuse the picture, keep in mind that platinum and gold awards are wonky measures as they are record-company driven, based on what the record company sent to or sold in to stores, whether they've sold to the public or not, while the chart positions represent actual sales.
ARIA's chief executive, Stephen Peach, told the Herald five years ago: "If it sits on the retailer's shelf for six months, it's still a sale as far as the record company is concerned."
But all those caveats won't stop your immediate career with the record company being measured against these imperfect indicators. And measured very quickly and brutally because as EMI's Mark Poston explains, "broadly speaking, artists have to make their mark quicker than they used to and they know it all too well.
"It's no secret that record labels are not in as good a position as they were and they can't sit around and wait for a band to make three or five records before they start breaking even," Poston says. "Like any investment, therehas to be a measure of whether something isliving up to expectations and whether it makes sense to keep spending money on a project."
In the end, No.1 means first of all very public success but just as importantly, no matter how it's disguised, very personal satisfaction. Ata pop music existential level, being No.1 mattersif being No.1matters to you.
Bassingthwaighte says being No.1 "is notwhy Ibecame part of this industry", citing instead the thrill of performing live.
"But in saying that, as soon as it happens it still feels pretty great. I never thought itwas that important but when it happens it feels like you are a part of that thing inhistory and you can't take thataway."
Natalie Bassingthwaighte's single 1000 Stars is out on Friday.