Listen, what’s that sound?  Why, it’s the sound of tumbleweed, as virtually nothing happens on the top 40 for the second week running!  The result is a chart with no new entries whatsoever, and four re-entries.

40.  Rudimental featuring John Newman & Alex Clare – “Not Giving In”
36.  Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen”
35.  Florence + The Machine – “Spectrum”

These are all just records that were still floating around outside the top 40, and thus move up to fill the space left by the Christmas singles.  Nothing more to be said.

15.  Calvin Harris featuring Tinie Tempah – “Drinking From The Bottle”

This, on the other hand, is very nearly a new single.  “Drinking From The Bottle” is the seventh (!) single from Harris’ album “18 Months”, and it made number 17 as an album track download when the album was released in November.  That’s presumably because of Tinie Tempah’s fans – since he hasn’t released a single of his own since mid-2011, they’re rather starved for material, I guess.

Now it’s been promoted to a proper single complete with pretentious video (caution: video NSFW) that seems to think it’s exposing the dark underbelly of what is in fact just a straightforward party record.  A case can be made that the lyric video is actually better.  At any rate, you’ve heard it before, and Harris is not exactly displaying a huge amount of range these days, but if he’s taken to making endless iterations of the same hook, at least it’s a good one.

Harris’ album also returns to number one this week for some reason, climbing from number 7.  Perhaps it’s being discounted by one of the major stores.

1.  James Arthur – “Impossible”

With nothing much in the way of competition to worry about, X Factor winner James Arthur gets a third week at number one.  (He won’t get a fourth).  A three week stint at number one would normally be a pretty good sign, but it’s actually not that uncommon for X Factor winners, given that their coronation records tend to come out just before the industry goes to sleep.  It matches the coronation singles of Matt Cardle, Alexandra Burke, and, um, Leon Jackson.  (Leona Lewis and Shayne Ward’s singles managed four.)