The Beatles Top Singles Chart 60 Years After Their First Hit

The Beatles’ single, Now and Then, topped the charts, making them the act with the longest gap between their first and last number ones.

Sixty years after From Me to You was number one, Sir Paul McCartney exclaimed, “It’s blown my socks off!”
According to the Official Charts Company, Now and Then is also the fastest-selling vinyl single of the century.

John Lennon wrote the initial bars in 1978, and it was finally finished last year.
“It’s mind-boggling,” stated Sir Paul. It’s completely blown my mind. It’s also an emotional time for me. “I adore it!”

The Beatles last topped the charts with The Ballad of John and Yoko in 1969, surpassing the 44-year gap between Wuthering Heights (1978) and Running Up That Hill (2022).

Sir Paul McCartney is 82, and Sir Ringo Starr is 83, making them the oldest band to reach number one.

They are also the second and third-oldest chart-topping musicians, following Sir Captain Tom Moore, 99, whose cover of You’ll Never Walk Alone with Michael Ball reached number one in 2020.
Now and Then debuted at number 42 on the rankings after its November 2 release, based on only 10 hours of sales.

Since then, it has risen 41 places in the charts to become Sir Paul, Sir Ringo Starr, and the late John Lennon and George Harrison’s 18th number-one hit.

The song has 78,200 combined UK chart units from sales and streaming and the most one-week physical sales in nearly a decade, with 38,000 copies sold – the most since X Factor 2014 winner Ben Haenow sold 47,000 copies of Something I Need.

Only US musician Elvis Presley had more number-one singles in UK chart history than The Beatles, with 21 chart-topping singles.
Harold Macmillan was the Conservative Prime Minister in 1963 when From Me To You topped the charts.

The Beatles Top Singles Chart 60 Years After Their First Hit

The single dethroned Gerry & The Pacemakers’ How Do You Do It? which had held the #1 spot for seven weeks.

Now and Then has all four Beatles, with the final track credited to Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. It was released as a double A-side record with Love Me Do, their debut single 1962.

After the Beatles broke up in 1970, Lennon wrote Now and Then, which had circulated as a bootleg for years.
It’s an apologetic love ballad dedicated to an old friend (or lover), to whom Lennon says, “Now and then, I miss you / Now and then, I want you to return to me.”

Sir Paul had longed to finish the tune ever since, and advances in audio technology made it possible.

Martin Talbot, chief executive of the Official Charts Company, said: “The return of John, Paul, George and Ringo with the last ever.

Beatles single has cemented their legend by breaking a catalog of records – and in doing so underlined the extraordinary scope of their enduring appeal, across all the generations, with huge numbers of streams, downloads and vinyl singles.”

BTS member Jung Kook achieved his fourth solo top 10 song with Standing Next to You, while Casso, Raye, and D-Block Europe’s
Prada rose one spot to number two.

Last week’s number one, Taylor Swift’s Is It Over Now (Taylor’s Version), slid to number three, while Olivia Rodrigo’s Can’t Catch Me Now, from the soundtrack to the film The Hunger Games: The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes, debuted at number 18.

Taylor Swift’s new version of 1989 (Taylor’s Version) topped the album chart, beating new albums from Oasis, The Masterplan, and Jung Kook’s Golden.

The Rolling Stones’ Hackney Diamonds was at number four, with Sir Cliff Richard at number five with Strings – My Kinda Life.

SOURCE – (BBC)