With Ellie Goulding’s latest single “Love me Like you Do” spending its third week at number one, could the days where songs cling on to that highly sought after top spot for weeks on end be making a comeback?

If you look at the early 90s, you’ll notice that there are significantly fewer number one singles than there have been in more recent years, meaning that songs were staying at number one for longer. Notable singles from this time are Bryan Adams’ (Everything I Do) I Do it For You which spent 15 weeks at number one in 1991 and Love is All Around by Wet Wet Wet which was also number one for 15 weeks in 1994.

Looking at the years leading up to and post-millennium, the vast majority of number one singles were only holding on to the title for one week at a time. There is no definitive answer as to why this is but the optimistic among us may suggest that this is because there was a higher volume of high quality music being released around this time. The less optimistic may say that it was because the market was being saturated with a high number of mediocre songs and the public simply had to make do with whatever the music industry graced us with.

Choice is by no means a bad thing when it comes to any form of media but when the choices you are given are all sub-standard then it becomes less a choice and more a case of necessity. Nobody wants to live in a world without music and if you only have access to popularised music then you have to make the best of what you have.

As we moved away from the CD single and into the current age of the digital download, music has become more and more accessible in a way that was never before possible and the sheer number of singles reaching number one has never been more prominent.

This year has been unusual in that we are now into its ninth week and so far have only had two number ones in Ellie Goulding and Mark Ronson ft Bruno Mars with “Uptown Funk”, which held the position for six weeks.

It’s interesting in a time where we have more choice than ever and more songs being released weekly than ever before that the British public should fixate on a handful of songs. Notably, Goulding’s “Love Me Like You Do” has received a lot of publicity through the fact that it is the main single from the latest Fifty Shades of Grey film and this has certainly not harmed its popularity.

It will be even more interesting to see how new patterns emerge and how the face of popular music will change as a result.

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