When Guy Sebastian debuted at No.1 in mid-August with his sixth No.1 single “Battle Scars”, not only did he break a new record for most No.1 singles by an Australian MALE artist, he also became the 99th No.1 single to debut at the top of the charts, meaning we only have one more to go to make it to the 100th No.1 debut.
Guy Sebastian - Photo By Ros O'Gorman
Australia’s list of No.1 debuts is here, where you can see that forty-one of the first-week No.1 openers are by local Australian artists (they’re also highlighted in bold). In fact the first No.1 debut was on the 3rd of December, 1985 when Midnight Oil, who had seen their first No.1 album a year earlier; “Red Sails in the Sunset” (4 weeks from Nov. 1984), landed with the four-track EP “Species Deceases”, which spent six broken weeks at No.1 becoming their only No.1 on the singles chart. The second and final 80’s No.1 debut was the third single for (then) teen-sensation Kylie Minogue with “Got to Be Certain” (July 1988), who has had the most No.1 debuts with seven.
Eight songs during the 90’s reached No.1 first week (the decade of CD Singles), most of them initially were big name acts who had been building up a large following, and with fans rabid for new material it would benefit their sales within the first week. U2, Meat Loaf, George Michael and Metallica were the big acts, but newcomers later in the decade who debuted at No.1 were The Fugees, Silverchair and Hanson.
There were seventy-seven No.1 debuts within the first decade of this century (2000 to 2009) most of those coming in 2004 (16) and 2005 (17) (Australian Idol era), but by 2008 there were no No.1 debuts that year at all. 2007 was the time of the blending between physical sales and digital, plus the slow demise of the CD Single itself, ARIA at one time having the rule that ‘a song must have a physical release in order to make the charts’, thus many great No.1 digital songs never made it onto the charts during their digital reigns, “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol and “Rehab” by Amy Winehouse are two examples of this. (Although they did later chart, but after the rule was amended they never made it to their digital sales heights).
Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music” (Feb 2008) was the first song to make it to No.1 on digital sales alone (it climbed to No.1), but the first No.1 debut from digital only sales was Flo Rida and Ke$ha with “Right Round” (23-Feb-2009), and we haven’t looked back since, this decade so far we have had eleven No.1 debuts, four of them this year and three by local acts during 2012 (Reece Mastin, Karise Eden and Guy Sebastian, P!nk being the fourth).
In the UK it is common for songs to debut up high or at the top and gradually fall away, but here in Australia it (was) general to work your way up the charts, with such popularity comes higher chart positions, thus you could climb to No.1. It’s a rarer feat on the US Billboard charts, where only 20 songs have landed at No.1, their first being “You Are Not Alone” for Michael Jackson (2-Sept-1995), the most recent “Part of Me” for Katy Perry (3-March-2012).
So now we can wait for our next No.1 debut in Australia, but with the fact that I have revealed this information, will record companies try and maneuver a song into that position, or will the X-Factor winner be the next No.1 debut, because PSY isn’t going nowhere for sometimes me thinks.
