For the first time in over a decade, the Official Top40 Singles Chart this week contains 11 homegrown hits.
L.A.B., Six60, Jawsh 685, Stan Walker, DRAX Project and Niko Walters all feature, while just outside the Top40, three more tracks (by BENEE, DRAX Project and Six60) are within a few places of upping the Kiwi count still further.
You have to look back to June 2010 to find a chart with this many Kiwis on show, back when The Naked And Famous were riding high ahead of the likes of J.Williams, Nesian Mystik, Opshop and I Am Giant. Shout out to Stan Walker who was part of both the 2020 and the 2010 boom (currently with Bigger, previously with Unbroken)!
Only 12 times in the last 45 years has the Singles Chart contained a greater number of local tracks. However, to make this all the more notable, all but one of those occasions were back when the chart was a Top50.
The all-time high is 13 tracks, which has occurred five times in 45 years, once in 1994 and then a golden four-week run in 2003. All of these were back when the chart was a Top50 though.
If we add in the lurkers mentioned above, there are actually 14 local tunes in the top 50 tracks. Which would make it an unofficial all-time record!
Past highs have occurred in an era when either physical or download sales were the primary influence on the chart which meant success was sometimes secured via the buying habits of just a few hundred fans at a time. Today’s Kiwi content high, in an era well and truly dominated by streaming, is vastly harder to achieve. This week’s Kiwi ‘First XI’ collectively racked up more than 1.8 million streams in seven days via tens of thousands of users.