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Dance music accounts for quarter of UK top ten tracks this year
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 1 November 2022
Dance music has been having a good year in the UK music charts according to new number crunching from record industry trade group BPI. It says that dance tracks are now only second to pop music when it comes to dominating the top ten.
According to the BPI’s analysis of Official Charts Company data, 26.1% of all the tracks to enter the UK singles top ten this year have been from the dance genre, which is an 80% increase on 2021, and nearly three times as much as in 2019. It means that dance music is dominating the singles chart more than hip hop and rap, which has accounted for 21.7% of the tracks to enter the top ten this year. Though pop music, however that’s defined, is still way ahead at 40.6%.
More than half of the dance hits to enter the top ten come from or feature UK artists, so that’s good news, for UK artists. That includes Bad Boy Chiller Crew, Becky Hill, Calum Scott, Calvin Harris, Eliza Rose, Ella Henderson, Jax Jones, LF System and MNEK.
Non-UK acts to boost the dance stats include David Guetta and Tiesto, as well as Beyonce and Drake, whose new music is dancey enough to be classified as dance. Indeed, a number of artists better known for making hip hop and pop have helped to boost the dance music stats by releasing records that have been classified under that genre.
So that’s all fun isn’t it? Though if those stats aren’t geeky enough for you, here’s another one. Presumably because dance music is more dominant chart-wise at the moment, the average beats per minute of tracks in the UK top 10 is now 127.9bpm, up around 9% on 2018 when the average was 117.3bpm, with the average going up each year since then. That’s the sort of thing that you’d like to see in an infographic right? So, you know, why not make yourself an infographic?
Says BPI boss Geoff Taylor: “Britain has always excelled at dance music, so it’s gratifying that the genre’s renaissance is powered in part by homegrown talent, including breakthrough artists LF System and Eliza Rose, who have both spent multiple weeks at number one on the Official Singles Chart this year. It’s fascinating to see how other genres such as hip hop and pop are morphing into dance and to see dance music being embraced by global superstars including Drake and Beyonce”.
While Drake was indeed one of the artists from other genres to move into dance this year, he doesn’t actually appear in the BPI’s overall dance top ten. While two tracks from his ‘Certified Lover Boy’ album made it into the UK dance singles chart, neither performed well enough to be counted as one of the biggest dance tracks of 2022.
If you care, here are the ten biggest dance tracks so far this year…
1. Lost Frequencies & Calum Scott – Where Are You Now
2. LF System – Afraid To Feel
3. Belters Only – Make Me Feel Good (feat Jazzy)
4. Jax Jones – Where Did You Go (feat MNEK)
5. Luude – Down Under (feat Colin Hay)
6. David Guetta, Becky Hill & Ella Henderson – Crazy What Love Can Do
7. Bad Boy Chiller Crew – BMW
8. Beyonce – Break My Soul
9. Eliza Rose & Interplanetary Criminal – BOTA (Baddest Of Them All)
10. Tiesto & Ava Max – The Motto
