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Mar 20

Charts – 17 March 2013

Posted on Wednesday, March 20, 2013 by Paul in Music

Let’s get straight to it, shall we?

38.  Blake Lewis – “Your Touch”

Blake Lewis was the runner-up of American Idol in 2007, since when he’s released a couple of albums in the States to sharply diminishing returns.  (If Wikipedia is to be believed, his debut album sold 309,000, and the follow-up managed just 10,000.)  With this, the lead track from his third album, Lewis hurls himself on top of the passing dubstep bandwagon and clings on for all his might.  It’s not horrible, actually, but it’s clearly the work of someone chasing trends.

It’s being used in an Internet Explorer advert, which presumably explains why it’s given him his first UK hit.  Judging from the midweeks, it won’t be around long.

36.  Imagine Dragons – “Radioactive” 

It’s back again!  This is the third time this single has poked its head into the lower end of the top 40 since December, but the midweeks suggest that this time it’s actually going to go further.

27.  Christina Perri – “A Thousand Years” 

Another re-entry, and this one’s climbing in the midweeks too.  I honestly don’t know why it’s back this time.  In the UK, Perri is very much a two-hit wonder – this single (which peaked at 13 on its second chart run), “Jar of Hearts” (number 4 in 2011), and nothing else, at all.  Odd, really, considering that those two singles have been enough to make her a moderately well known name.

26.  Taylor Swift – “22”

Taylor Swift is 23.  In this song – which is, as you may well have guessed, a Max Martin collaboration – she looks back on the dim, distant past when she was 22.  It naturally continues her highly successful repositioning as a pop artist.  It is, in fact, probably the best of this week’s new entries, but that’s not a high standard.

Her previous single “I Knew You Were Trouble” is still up there at 14.  In days gone by it would have been deleted by now, to remove the competition, but that’s no longer possible.

18.  K Koke (featuring Rita Ora) – “Lay Down Your Weapons”

Bit of a dirge.  One of those very sincere rap tracks which plaintively exhorts us to give up gang membership and street crime – which is fine, but it’s a well trodden path and there’s not much else of note going on here.  It swandives in the midweeks, so I’m guessing this sold a few copies to devoted Rita Ora fans to get it this high.

17.  Nelly – “Hey Porsche”

Jesus, this is dreadful.  I had my expectations set low – it’s a Nelly single called “Hey Porsche”, for god’s sake – but this is still bad enough to come as a surprise.  It’s an extended girl-as-car metaphor for people who thought Flo Rida’s “Whistle” was a bit too cryptic.

Nelly was last in the chart with “Just A Dream” a number 8 hit in 2010, and has seen a further three singles miss the top 40 since then.  Shame this one didn’t join them.

6.  Nicole Scherzinger – “Boomerang”

In what respect is Nicole Scherzinger like a boomerang?  In three respects!

First respect!  If you put her down she keeps coming back.  That’s what the song is about.  She explains the point in a manner strident, perky and generic.

Second respect!  If you hurl her to the top of the charts she comes straight back.  This was number one in the midweeks.  By the end of the week it lands at number 6.  That’s some mightily frontloaded sales there, something we don’t normally see outside the territory of particularly fan-driven boy bands.

Third respect!  If you hurl her with sufficient force, she can fell a small marsupial.

The big mystery, really, is how this ended up at number 1 in the midweeks.  It hasn’t had much radio support, on the eminently reasonable grounds that the radio stations don’t think it’s terribly good.  And Nicole Scherzinger isn’t an artist I associate with rabid first-day fan sales.  All a bit odd.

1.  Justin Timberlake – “Mirrors” 

I still think it’s miles too long, but what do I know.  Three weeks at the top is the longest run since “Spectrum” by Florence and the Machine last July.  Currently, it looks like he’s not going to make four – the Saturdays are leading in the midweeks and iTunes, which is nice for them, because they’ve never made number 1 before.

On the album chart:

  • “The Next Day” by David Bowie is, obviously, number one.  (And it’s holding up well in the midweeks, too – so there’s more staying power than the single had.)
  • “What About Now” by Bon Jovi at 2.  Their fifth consecutive number two album in the UK.  Their greatest hits album re-enters at 31.
  • “Exile” by Hurts at 8.  Second album from the alt-synthpop duo.
  • “Pale Green Ghosts” by John Grant at 16. He’s an indie-folk type from Colorado.  Used to be in the Czars, if that helps.
  • “Sound City: Real to Reel” at 19.  This is the soundtrack to a documentary about Sound City Studios by Dave Grohl.  It’s original material from a range of artists, which is why it’s here and not on the compilations chart.
  • “Tales From Terra Firma” by Stornoway at 26.  More indie-folk.  They’re not from Stornoway, they’re from Oxford.  This is their second album.  The first one was called “Beachcomber’s Windowsill”, so you get the idea.

 

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