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Jan 6

Charts – 5 January 2014

Posted on Monday, January 6, 2014 by Paul in Music

Not exactly a regular chart week – this chart still covers the holidays between Christmas and New Year.  But this time there are a scattering of singles trying to sneak a hit in the dead period.

39.  Daft Punk featuring Pharrell Williams – “Get Lucky”
35.  Chase & Status featuring Jacob – “Alive”
34.  Wilkinson – “Afterglow”

A handful of re-entries at the lower end of the chart, where things are sort of swirling around in the absence of anything better to do.

18.  Matrix & Futurebound featuring Max Marshall – “Control”

So, the first actual new hit of 2014!  Matrix and Futurebound are a drum and bass production duo who’ve had two previous hits, “All I Know” (2012) and “Magnetic Eyes” (2013).  This is their highest chart placing to date, though Matrix was a member of Goldtrix, who had a top ten hit with “It’s Love (Trippin’)” way back in 2002.  It’s a pretty conventional drum and bass track with a better than average chorus, and a power-of-love-ish video.  Kind of.

It’s the debut hit for singer Max Marshall, who has plenty of her own material on YouTube.

14.  Fuse ODG – “Million Pound Girl (Badder Than Bad)”

Third hit for this guy, who’s Ghanaian by birth, based in London, and actually hovers closer to Afrobeat than to UK rap.  He made the top ten last year with “Antenna”, and scored a minor hit with follow-up “Azonto”.  The video is one of the more cheerfully amateur efforts the top 40 has seen in a while.

1.  Pitbull featuring Ke$ha – “Timber”

What better way to start the list of 2014 number ones than with a tiresome journeyman releasing a single in a quiet week?

As tends to be the case, the worst bits of this Pitbull record are the bits with Pitbull on it, which characteristically fail to advance the record much beyond filling a gap labelled “insert rapper here”.   Ke$ha’s part isn’t too bad, at least in comparison.  It’s pretty obvious that the thinking here is “well, if it worked for Avicii…” – and so we have another dance/country hybrid exercise.  And it’s got a decent hook, on loan from “San Francisco Bay” by Lee Oskar, though it’s a re-creation rather than a sample.  That song wasn’t a hit in this country, though Oskar did have some minor UK hits in the late 70s as a member of War.

This thing has eleven credited writers, and even after allowing for the inclusion of all the members of War, you still have to wonder what they were all doing.  There are also four credited producers, but they still can’t make Pitbull sound interesting.

Mind you, it’s Pitbull’s third number one, so somebody must like him.  The other two were both in 2011 – “Give Me Everything”, and his guest appearance on Jennifer Lopez’s “On The Floor”.  It’s also the third number one for Ke$ha, following 2011’s “We R Who We R” and her debut on Flo Rida’s 2009 single “Right Round” (and yes, they got a completely different woman to lip synch her part in the video – as I recall, there was a last-minute decision that it didn’t fit with the image for the upcoming launch of her career, so she didn’t want to promote it).  Ke$ha’s last two singles didn’t do brilliantly, so a big hit, even as a guest star, will be welcome.  Mind you, she’s just gone into rehab, so I imagine she’s got other things on her mind than her sales in the UK.

On the album chart, “Halcyon” by Ellie Goulding is number 1, heading up an erratic chart of rebounding albums that evidently did well in the gift token purchases, and albums that are heavily discounted on iTunes.  No new entries at all this week.

Bring on the comments

  1. kingderella says:

    I have some respect for Kesha, but Pitbull is the worst. This song sounds like “Cotton Eyed Joe”, a song that just cannot be enjoyed, no matter how much irony, nostalgia, or alcohol you add.

  2. Brendan says:

    Loved the timber analysis. I found this single to be a particularly unpleasant one. It’s worse than cynical pop. It’s worse than cynical country. It takes a pretty genuine song and makes it pretty trashy. Ke$ha sure likes singing about it going down. I don’t buy her timber country stylings either.

    Funny you don’t like the Pitbull in particular. I normally find that Pitbull elevates an otherwise uninteresting song with his own fun persona. With country harmonica squeaking in the background Pitbull’s party time raps are very out of place.

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