List of best-selling singles of the 1950s in the United Kingdom (original) (raw)

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 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 NME on 14 November 1952 as a Top 12 chart. NME's chart is considered by the Official Charts Company (OCC) to be the canonical UK Singles Chart during the 1950s; it was expanded