Today’s the day that the UK officially leaves the European Union, although a transition period until at least the end of this year means big changes won’t be happening immediately. But Brexit Day has sparked a ‘chart battle’ between the rival camps of leave and remain supporters, both keen to send a message to the other side by… getting a song up the charts.
Pro-Europeans have been rallying around ‘Ode to Joy’, which was adopted as the anthem of Europe back in 1972. Meanwhile, Brexiters’ choise is the charmingly-titled ’17 Million F**k-Offs’ by a comedian called Dominic Frisby – a reference to the 17.4m votes to leave that won the Brexit referendum in 2016. Cue discussion over which track will do best on Apple’s iTunes chart in the UK: at the time of writing this morning, ‘Ode to Joy’ is at number two, while ’17 Million F**k-Offs’ is at number five.
Draw your own conclusions about the Brexit views of all the people who’ve chosen to buy top-ranked ‘Blinding Lights’ by The Weeknd instead, then. This is also the point we intervene to point out that topping the iTunes download-sales chart is not, in 2020, really that much of an achievement any more, since the growth of streaming. Neither of the two tracks are in Spotify’s UK Top 50 chart at the time of writing – Frisby currently has fewer than 5,500 monthly listeners on that platform and the new version of his Brexit track has been streamed just 21.2k times. His latest single, released earlier this month, is actually called ‘That S**t is Bland Mother-F**ker’. It seems the greater public may have adopted that view for the entire Brexit chart battle.
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