Singles are a type of music release that typically have fewer tracks than an extended play or album; during the 1950s, sales of singles in the United Kingdom were compiled by the magazine New Musical Express (NME), and published weekly as a record chart. The singles chart was founded in 1952 by Percy Dickins of the NME, who wanted to imitate the hit parade that featured in the American magazine Billboard; before this, the popularity of a song had been measured by its sales of sheet music. Dickins sampled twenty shops, asking which their ten biggest-selling singles were. His aggregated list of sales was then published in the NME on 14 November 1952 as a Top 12 chart. The NME's chart is considered by the Official Charts Company (OCC) to be the canonical UK Singles Chart during the 1950s; it was expanded to a Top 20 on 1 October 1954.
Sales of records significantly increased in the mid-fifties, following the birth of rock and roll. As a result, the top ten biggest-selling singles of the 1950s were all released in the latter half of the decade. The biggest-selling single of this period was "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets, which became the first single ever to sell more than a million copies in the UK.
Singles +Best-selling singles of the 1950s in the UKSingleArtistRecord labelYearSalesChartpeak1"Rock Around the Clock"Brunswick19551,390,00012"Diana"Columbia19571,240,00013"Mary's Boy Child"RCA19571,170,00014"What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?"Pye1959920,00015"Jailhouse Rock"RCA1958880,00016"What Do You Want?"Parlophone1959820,00017"Living Doll"Columbia1959770,00018"All Shook Up"His Master's Voice1957740,00019"Love Letters in the Sand"London1957710,000210"It Doesn't Matter Anymore"Coral1959680,0001
References General (chart positions)
Specific