An odd week. The midweek charts were practically dead, with a scattering of new entries right at the bottom. All of them have picked up pace significantly in the second half of the week, presumably because radio is now returning to normal, and listeners are slowly picking up on the new songs that are entering rotation.

We also have a new number 1, as “Domino” by Jessie J climbs to the top on its third week.  Regular readers will have picked up that I’m rather underwhelmed by it. It’s catchy enough, I guess, but there’s something about Jessie J herself that I find rather unconvincing.  I feel like I’m watching a string of tried-and-tested ideas that she’s picked up from studying other artists, with no real soul holding it together.  If you fed a load of pop songs to a computer and told it to make more based on the patterns it could discern, it’d come up with something like Jessie J.  This month’s template: the complete works of Katy Perry.

At any rate, this is Jessie J’s second number one, following “Price Tag” last February.  Apparently she’s going to be a judge on the UK version of The Voice when it starts in March, so maybe that’ll help her shake off her vaguely stage-school persona.  (The other judges, according to Wikipedia: Tom Jones, will.i.am, and Danny O’Donoghue from the Script.  Now there’s a weird panel.)

Further down the chart:

Number 8 is a re-entry for “Titanium” by David Guetta.  This was one of the numerous tracks released in advance of Guetta’s album, and it reached number 16 in August; it’s now being promoted as a proper single, which is to say that it’s got a video.  Which… is basically X-Men on a budget, isn’t it? It was at 25 in the midweeks, so it’s clearly gathering steam.  At time of writing, iTunes has it mounting a challenge for next week’s number one.

Number 14 is “Kiss the Stars” by Pixie Lott, continuing her off the peg electropop direction.  The video is… well, I’m sure it looked exciting on the storyboard.  It’s climbed 20 places since the midweeks, so again, it may have legs.  Again, iTunes says it’s now in the top five.

Number 21 is Kelly Clarkson with “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)”.  Her track record with UK singles has always been a bit patchy.  22 is a re-entry for “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People, which was just outside the top 40 last week.  This seems to be a spillover effect from a discount campaign on the album – having been reminded of Foster the People’s existence, a fair few customers have apparently also remembered that they’ve only had one hit.  And at 23 is “International Love” by Pitbull ft Chris Brown.  More of his usual routine, basically.

Number 25 is a surprise re-entry for Birdy‘s version of “Skinny Love”, beating its number 17 peak from last spring.  This seems to be a rare instance of a song being propelled back into the chart after it was used in the first episode of ITV’s Dancing on Ice last weekend.  It was the backing track for Hollyoaks actress Jorgie Porter who, unexpectedly, turned out to be genuinely very good straight off the blocks – hence a lot of people sitting up and paying attention to the routine, and then wondering what that song was.  The routine isn’t on YouTube (well, it is, but not in a form that’s likely to stay around for very long), so here’s the alternative video for the Birdy song.

The last new entry is perhaps the most interesting.  “Somebody I Used To Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra enters at 36 – but since it was at 97 last week, that’s a big jump, and iTunes suggests it’s going to climb further.  Gotye is an Australian songwriter who’s been releasing records down there for almost a decade, both as a solo artist and as a member of the Basics.  In neither guise has he previously troubled international markets.  But this single was a massive hit in Australia last year, where it spent eight weeks at number one.  The international licensees have sat up and taken notice, and this track has already been number one in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Holland.

Fortunately, it’s really very good.  Give it time, it builds.

Kimbra Johnson is from New Zealand and I assume they’ll try to launch her internationally on the back of this single.  Her solo material is rather interesting too; here’s her 2010 single “Settle Down.”