No Rock And Roll Fun

ROBBIE WILLIAMS IS KING OF EUROPE: Airplay figures for 2003 show that Feel by Robbie Williams was the most played track across the entire continent's radio. The full top ten was:
1. Feel - Robbie Williams
2. White Flag - Dido
3. Rise and Fall - Craig David ft Sting
4. Beautiful - Christina Aguilera
5. I'm With You - Avril Lavigne
6. Where is the Love? - Black Eyed Peas
7. Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word - Blue ft Elton John
8. Family Portrait - Pink
9. Crazy in Love - Beyonce
10. Bring Me to Life - Evanescence

Which suggests that if you want to catch the pulse of the continent, writing something fairly slow and dreary worked like a charm over the last twelve months. Jesus, I know there was a war on, but apart from Beyonce the chart is just so full of gloom and doom.

There's another interesting stat in the light of the French CD market shrinking by fourteen percent over the year, too: the share of "European" (i.e. from the bit that gets cut off by fog in the channel) artists in the 200 most played songs fell from 38.6% in 1999 to just under a quarter in 2003.