Are number one singles getting shorter? (TL;DR: #1s shorter Y/N?)

Are number one singles getting shorter?

Harry Styles amiable earworm As It Was (pictured) spent ten weeks at number one recently. That's more than double the chart-topped weeks achieved by all of One Direction's singles combined. He's a one-man One Direction twice over.

One of the most notable things about the track is its brevity. It's short, like my trousers, my temper or this senten--. It doffs its polite hat for a bit then, at two minutes 44 seconds, bows out quicker than you can say Larry Stylinson.

When I think of singles that camp out at number one for ages, I think of really long songs. Epics like Bohemian Rhapsody and that archery song by Bryan Adams. And quite right. If a track is going to wedge itself in the top spot for what seems like an eternity, it had better have some heft. BoRap was just shy of six minutes. Ten-weeker I Will Always Love You was almost five minutes long. Almost five excruciating, ear-destroying minutes.

Styles isn't the only shortie to shoot his shot at number one. TikTok star Gayle's abcdefu comes in at two minutes 54 seconds, two minutes 53 of which are very rude words indeed. The current number one is LF System's Afraid To Feel. This is essentially a caffeinated sample of 1970s funk band Silk, and it comes in at just two minutes 54 seconds. The 3 minutes 30 seconds of Dave's Sinatra-themed chart topper Starlight seemed like Homer's Odyssey in comparison.

Obviously, there are still longer chart-topping singles in the 2020s. Adele knows how to string out a narrative, and those LadBaby lads certainly know how to string out their sausages. It just seems these days, we're more likely to get a Stormzy or 24KGolden dropping something brief. Not dropping their briefs. That's an entirely different thing.

Let's take a quick sample of the charts ten years ago as a comparison. All the number ones are long. Maroon 5, Florence & The Machine, Gotye: their four or five minute structures feel substantial. Strong. Beefy. They were proper units.

Is this the result of the truncated window of Instagram or TikTok? Pruned because of the platform? you can be more throwaway if you're not traipsing into town to buy the vinyl from HMV. Soundcloud dump? Make 'em short, it doesn't matter.

I haven't done much analysis, and I certainly haven't done what I should have done: entered every number one's track length into a spreadsheet and pressed a lot of complicated buttons. In fact, this entire blog post took one minutes 22 seconds to write, which is half a Harry Styles, or about 0.00001% of that archery song.

What can Harry Styles' back teach us?

I was going to blog about new music tonight, but my PC seems to be staging some kind of protest. It keeps switching itself off.

It's probably because I listened to the new Harry Styles single. You know the one. He's trying to sound a bit like Bowie and it goes on for ages. I want to like it but it sounds like it's been made for dads. And, as we all know, all dads have terrible taste in music. All of them.

The cover of Harry Styles' new album is a picture of his damp back. It's a nice picture of a damp back, and it reminded me that all people who have freckles are better than non-freckled people. That might sound extreme, but it's true. Everyone with freckles is better.

If your damp back isn't as good as Harry's damp back, then you are a bad person. This sounds like an opinion, but it's fact.

Although I think my computer should be on, it has decided to be off. I would prefer my computer to be on so I can write stuff on my blog. But my PC really wants to be off. There is no middle ground: my computer and I have polarised views on its ideal state. If only we could reach a compromise: perhaps it could be half-on / half-off. Some kind of digital grey area, so my computer can get some shut-eye while I get some writing done.

So I won't be able to publish a blog post tonight. I won't be able to mention any new music, nor give my delicately considered opinions on things. All because no-one's interested in grey areas, in the beauty of nuance.

All computers have ugly backs, full of warts and gangrene. Worse than dad backs.

5 pop music predictions for 2014

JUSTIN BIEBER WILL NOT ONLY RETIRE, HE WILL GROW OLD AND DIE.

Justin Bieber will age before our eyes. He will bulk up some more before his muscles reduce to fat and then massive wrinkles. He will take up golf but it will wreck his feeble, wrinkled physique. He will have a reunion tour with himself but abandon it on doctor’s orders. He will die with Usher at his side.

THERE WILL BE A NUMBER ONE SINGLE SO EYE-WATERINGLY SEXIST, A PERMANENT SCHISM WILL DEVELOP BETWEEN CONFIDENT, SEXUALLY-ACTIVE YOUNG MEN AND REPRESSED, PAUNCHY LIBERALS.

The usual schism stuff. Arch looks at award ceremonies. Passive-aggressive lyric / Guardian article wars. Mud-wrestling. That kind of thing.

HARRY STYLES WILL SET UP HIS OWN CULT.

Harry Styles (pictured) will see Twitter feeds like Harry My Cat Died and Bad Harry Art. He will see an opportunity. After a series of top-level meetings with the Scientologists, which is a church and not a cult, he will buy the Scientology movement, which is a church and not a cult, and change the name of the Scientology movement, which is a church and not a cult, into The Styleologists. He will change it into a cult, because it is definitely a church, by changing absolutely nothing else whatsoever.

NEW APHEX TWIN ALBUM.

Ha ha. Only joking. In fact, what will happen is that Daft Punk will sell another million records with an Aphex Twin covers album. For the titles, they will take existing Aphex Twin titles and stick 'Get Lucky' on the end. For example, Donkey Rhubarb Get Lucky, Halibut Acid Get Lucky, and

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Get Lucky.

The music will be produced with similar care and attention. It will feature the return of Basshunter, Robert Miles, DJ Caspar and two members of Fleetwood Mac.

COUNTRY AND WESTERN WILL GO DUBSTEP.

Country and western music will thereby obtain widespread respect and support in Europe for the first time ever. A broadsheet journalist will coin the term ‘Dubstep Country & Western’, while the NME journo who thought of ‘C**t-step’, complete with asterisks, but didn’t get it into print in time will be fired and then thrown into a skip.

What are your pop predictions for 2014? Why not write them on a piece of paper and show them to a child?