RSS Feed
Jan 23

Charts – 22 January 2012

Posted on Monday, January 23, 2012 by Paul in Music

Well, I don’t much care for it, but what do I know?  “Domino” by Jessie J is number 1 for a second week, which must be heartening news for anyone who has money invested in Katy Perry’s next album.  It helps, of course, that the release schedules are still pretty quiet, so that she doesn’t have much competition.  Still, the last song to spend two weeks at the top was “We Found Love” by Rihanna back in November, so she must be doing something right.

The highest new entry this week, and sole high-profile single release, is “Antidote” by Swedish House Mafia vs Knife Party at number 4.  This is the third hit for SHM as a group (though members Axwell and Steve Angello have shown up separately in various guises), and it matches the number 4 peak of their biggest hit “Miami 2 Ibiza”.  Knife Party are new to the chart, but they’re a side project of Pendulum members Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen.  By an odd coincidence, Pendulum’s biggest hit “Watercolour” also peaked at number 4.  This simply must have numerological significance.

A curious feature of this single is that there are two versions of the video, one “explicit” and one TV-friendly.  In itself that’s not so unusual, but the TV version isn’t a simple edit; the two videos show different perspectives on the same events.  This at least seems to be the idea.  Frankly, the TV version is pretty much unintelligible unless you’ve also seen the other one.  But this is a family-friendy blog, so let’s have the acceptable version.

Surprisingly, the other version is also available to view on YouTube, who really must be relaxing their standards on adult content.  (Caution: NSFW, for reasons which will be apparent within the first ten seconds.)  It’s been a while since I’ve seen a video quite so blatantly gunning for controversy, not that it seems to have sparked much.

Some high climbers among the records that are starting to pick up airplay: “Stronger” by Kelly Clarkson jumps from 21 to 11; “International Love” by Pitbull from 23 to 13; and “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye from 36 to 21.  Also, for no readily apparent reason, Pitbull’s “Give Me Everything”, a number 1 from last April, re-enters at 32.

Down in the bottom half of the chart, there are five other new entries – a mixture of album tracks picking up airplay in advance of their official single releases, along with some oddities.

Number 26 is “Want U Back” by Cher Lloyd – no connection to any songs of a vaguely similar title – which is slightly less irritating than her previous singles.  It’s a slow start, but the official release date isn’t till mid February, so I doubt they’ll be losing much sleep about that.  And number 28 is “One Thing” by One Direction, whose avid fans evidently own the album already and will be waiting for whatever comes out as the single version.  As usual with them, it’s perfectly inoffensive for what it is.  I’ve heard plenty worse pop songs.

Way off at the other end of the musical spectrum, number 33 is “Breakin’ a Sweat” by Skrillex & The Doors.

This is the first hit for Skrillex, who’s been cropping up on several of those “sound of 2012” lists as a likely breakthrough artist for the year (i.e., somebody who had something on the release schedules for the early part of the year and seemed like a safe bet).  This has been climbing from the lower reaches for a couple of weeks now, though I’m not entirely sure why.  It’s not officially a single; it’s a track from his album “Bangarang”, which came out in Britain at the end of last year.  But it does have a video, because it was originally made for a Hyundai-sponsored film called “Re:Generation”, in which various acts team up with artists from a prior generation.

Yes, odd as it sounds, this isn’t a sample – it really is a collaboration between Skrillex and the three surviving members of the Doors.  Thus, the Doors finally get a fourth UK hit – the other three being “Hello, I Love You” (number 15 in 1968), “Riders on the Storm” (number 22 in 1971), and “Light My Fire” (number 7 on its re-release in 1991).

After ten years and six albums, France’s M83 finally get a hit single with “Midnight City” at number 35.  Aside from being uncharacteristically commercial by their standards, it’s also apparently being used as the theme tune to reality show Made in Chelsea.

Finally, following her death on Friday, Etta James re-enters the chart at number 39 with “At Last”.   Her only previous UK hit was “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, which made number 5 in 1996 when it was reissued to tie in with an advert (and which started life as this song’s B-side).  By a curious coincidence of timing, she appears on three singles in this week’s chart, since the same sample from her song “Something’s Got A Hold On Me” also appears on Flo Rida’s “Good Feeling” and Avicii’s “Levels”, both of which are still in the top 10.

Bring on the comments

  1. kelvingreen says:

    Do you think that Swedish House Mafia video might be an oblique homage to “Smack My Bitch Up”?

  2. Nick says:

    You know, I have to thank you for listening to music so I don’t have to. This is the only way I actually find out about pop music these days. And it just confirms to me that it is pretty much as bad as it ever was.

  3. Joe S. Walker says:

    More proof that the Doors really should have packed it in after Jim died.

  4. While a lot of this stuff is pretty terrible, the occasional gem (like that Gotye track), makes this something I look forward to reading every week.

  5. Shannon S says:

    you know that Gotye track can really grow on you. I heard this last week and didn’t care for it at all. Now I just listened to it like three times in a row.

  6. AJ says:

    That M83 single: not as good as “Graveyard Girl”.

Leave a Reply