The return to the charts of the Lightning Seeds’ Three Lions is no surprise. Like elections and the Olympic Games, football tournaments come around at regular intervals and the English just can’t keep themselves from singing along every two years. In a secular age such big events are about as near as we get to discussing matters of theological intensity. Oft-exhumed football hits such as New Order’ s World in Motion have a resonance that nothing else in their back catalogue can ever match.

A few decades ago only Christmas songs were guaranteed a long life. They were part of a tradition going back centuries. More importantly they were extremely lucrative for writers and performers. Pen a good one such as White Christmas or Santa Claus is Coming to Town and you could be set for life. Get it spot on, as Slade did with Merry Xmas Everybody, recorded in New York during a summer heatwave, and you could still be on the charts two months after Christmas. Wizzard, Mud, Wham!, Band Aid — all aimed for that lucrative seasonal prize.

The charts have changed, though. The advent of downloading means that no song need ever be unavailable. The introduction of downloaded sales into the main chart, as well as a separate chart for those songs not available in physical form, has put life back to the charts. Phil Matcham, of the Official UK Charts Company, which supplies data to the media and industry, says: “Downloads have added to chart longevity.” The average hit now lasts five weeks in the Top 40, up from a mere three and a half before the system was overhauled in the spring of 2005.

The digital charts are full of hits that never leave — Angels, Bitter Sweet Symphony, Wonderwall and Can’t Get You Out of My Head still lurk in the Top 100. Recent hits by Orson, Pussycat Dolls and Bodyrockers continue to sell healthily online. More interestingly, there are sudden sales spikes. ELO’s Mr Blue Sky, recently featured on Doctor Who, and Mama Cass Elliot’s Make Your Own Kind of Music, heard on Lost, both charted soon after.

The “long tail” effect, by which the long-term sales can outweigh the initial interest on release, has become a given of e-commerce. Virtual catalogues are keeping music alive.

Downloading at least solves one historic problem associated with hits that linger. Wet Wet Wet famously deleted their 1994 version of Love is All Around rather than equal the 16-week run of Bryan Adams’s (Everything I Do) I Do It for You.

Today such chronic popularity is dealt with by the deletion of the physical format, leaving only the virtual version on sale. Gnarls Barkley recently did just that with the overplayed, but still selling, Crazy. If only technology had been so advanced in 1997, when Elton John’s Candle in the Wind sold 33 million copies, all on CD. Notoriously, in Canada it topped the charts for 45 weeks.

Records don’t necessarily have long chart lives because of overwhelming success. Sometimes the opposite is true. Back in the 1980s talent-rich, cash-poor independent labels such as Factory temporarily made their own best-sellers unavailable as they waited to gather enough confirmed orders — a reason why New Order’s Blue Monday charted more than once.

Sometimes this can be planned. Oasis, then more popular than football, were selling out of back catalogue so frequently that each time their singles became available they charted again as the adidas nation hungrily snapped them up. Cigarettes and Alcohol, to name but one, re-entered the Top 75 no fewer than ten times. Even Whatever managed the trick eight times, and that was rubbish.

But predicting huge success remains tricky. Often films and adverts will throw up obvious hits — the Righteous Brothers’ Unchained Melody was a smash after being featured in the movie Ghost, for instance (though it was their superior You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling that charted four times in 25 years). Yet who knew that Bill Clinton’s choice of Fleetwood Mac’s Don’t Stop as his campaign theme would launch it back into the American charts? Over here we were stuck with D:Ream’s now discredited Things Can Only Get Better, the soundtrack to new Labour’s 1997 election victory.

Sometimes even the experts are baffled. “I have noticed that I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing by Aerosmith always creeps back into the download chart in January,” Matcham says. “I have no idea why.”

Maybe the explosions-in-space movie Armageddon, which features it prominently, has become a seasonal fixture without anyone noticing.

Those we have loved (more than once)

You’ve Got the Love — the Source, featuring Candi Staton Originally written for a diet video, this early rave anthem has now been a hit for three generations of dancers.

Blue Monday — New Order The impressively lavish packaging meant every copy was sold at a loss.

Bohemian Rhapsody — Queen The biggest non-Christmas Christmas hit yet, and a chart topper twice.

I’m Gonna Be (500 miles) — Proclaimers This 1988 hit must have a chance of being chosen as Scotland’s new national anthem, having been on the iTunes chart since 2004.

Relax — Frankie Goes to Hollywood The definitive Eighties anthem to hedonism spent more than a year onthe charts and was a hit more than once.

Ian Broudie podcast

In this week’s free music podcast Ian Broudie talks to Pete Paphides about how Three Lions almost killed off the Lightning Seeds, how he’s enjoying a month off to watch the World Cup and how he’s celebrating 25 years in the business. Plus he performs live.

Download the podcast today, along with every other show recorded so far, including interviews and live music from artists such as Paul Weller, David Bowie, Fatboy Slim and Keane. Just visit iTunes or www.timesonline.co.uk/podcasts.

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