Last year, in this piece, I listed all the Double A Sided singles that made it to the top of the UK chart. There were 47 different releases in the list, the last of them in 2007. There are unlikely to be any more now that the singles charts are based primarily on streaming. Double A Sides at #1 are a relic from the days when the charts were based on sales of vinyl.

Another relic from those days is the EP or Extended Play single at #1. As you are probably aware, EPs typically contained 3 or 4 tracks. They would often feature a lead track that received more radio play than the others. The list of EPs that topped the singles chart is much shorter than the list of Double A Sides: just 4 entries, as you can see here.

Title	Artist	Year	Wks
The Roussos Phenomenon EP	Demis Roussos	1976	1
The Special A.K.A. Live! EP	The Special AKA	1980	2
Abba-esque EP	Erasure	1992	5
Five Live EP	George Michael & Queen with Lisa Stansfield	1993	3

Until recently I did not know that in the 1960s there was also a dedicated EP chart here in the UK. The first release to top this chart was “Expresso Bongo” by Cliff Richard (March 1960). The last was The Beach Boys “Hits” (November 1967), which spent a total of 34 non-consecutive weeks at #1 in 1966-67.

You can find a full list of the number one EPs on this Wikipedia page. Most of the artists also topped the singles charts but among those who only reached #1 in the EP list are Joan Baez and Donovan. Unsurprisingly The Beatles topped the EP charts with more releases than any other act (8 in all), including an EP called “Yesterday”.

“Yesterday” was released as a single in the US and reached #1 in 1965. It was not released as a single in the UK until 1976 when it reached #8, so it is a long-established fact that it is not one of their UK #1s. But if you include the little-known EP charts, “Yesterday” was indeed a UK #1. It’s all rather complicated.

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