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Jul 30

Charts – 27 July 2014

Posted on Wednesday, July 30, 2014 by Paul in Music

A very top-heavy chart this week, with all the new entries landing in the top 20.  Of mild note, Cher Lloyd’s comeback single “Sirens” – you know, her from X Factor – lands at 41, which I guess is actually marginally better than landing at 39, in as much as fewer people will notice it happened.

19.  Jamie N Commons & X Ambassadors – “Jungle”

Hey, it’s the theme song for the “Battleground” PPV!  But it’s probably more significant that it’s being used in a Beats ad, and also in the trailers for Orange is the New Black.  X Ambassadors are an alt rock band from Ithaca, Jamie N Commons is an English blues singer.  The version in the Beats ad is probably the one that’s really driving sales here, since it’s got Jay Z in it – but since the label haven’t officially nominated it as the lead version of the track, he doesn’t technically get a credit here.  The Jay Z version is weirdly untimely, since it attempts to re-cast the song into one about Rio, so as to tie in to the now-completed World Cup.

14.  Neon Jungle – “Louder”

With four singles now having peaked at 12, 4, 7 and 14, Neon Jungle are settling into a role as a B-list girl band who don’t quite seem to have the impetus to get to the next level.  That’s a bit of a marginal position for a long-term career.  This is meant to be the ballad, by their standards, although since they’re meant to be the clubland girl band, that still means “Make everything louder / Do it till my skin vibrates”.

12.  MK featuring Alana – “Always” 

This is the first time MK (producer Marc Kinchen) has had an artist credit on a UK hit, but as a remixer, he’s been responsible for the successful versions of two other big hits – “Push the Feeling On” by the Nightcrawlers, which made  number 3 in 1995, and “Look Right Through” by Storm Queen, which was a number 1 last year.  Perversely, however, this record is itself charting on the strength of a remix – by Route 94, whose had a number 1 in March with “My Love”.  That’s the version should in the video above.

The original “Always” is over twenty years old – it dates back to 1992, and never made the top 40 in this country (though it did scrape to 69 in 1995).  Singer Alana Simon appeared on several MK records around that time, and her name doesn’t really crop up in connection with much else that I can find.

8.  Rixton – “Me and my Broken Heart”

Last week’s number 1 confirms my suspicions that it sold entirely to a fan base audience in the first few days of release.  This is the sort of thing that used to happen with McFly.

6.  Charli XCX – “Boom Clap”

Charli XCX finally gets a hit single in her own right, six years after she started releasing records.  She’s been on the “next big thing” list for long after most acts get given up on.  An album came out last year and failed to chart, as did all of its singles.  In July, she was credited as a featured artist on the UK release of Icona Pop’s “I Love It”, apparently on the grounds that she wrote it.  That got to number 1, but did nothing for the album.  A new single, “Superlove” – presumably intended to be from her next album – came out in December, and got to 62.  Then in the spring she cropped up on Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy”, which at least got her some exposure in the video.

This is quite a wait for a pop act to make the chart in her own right, but here she is.  “Boom Clap” is officially not being promoted as a track from her second album, but rather as a song from the soundtrack of the romantic comedy The Fault in our Stars, though the film itself came out over a month ago.

2.  Magic! – “Rude”

Ah, Canadian reggae.  Notionally a song about a man asking his girlfriend’s father her hand in marriage and proceeding without his blessing, this ends up as a weirdly charmingly affair in which the dominant tone is not so much defiance as wounded befuddlement at such unfathomable impoliteness.  It certainly plays nicely to the national image.  And it looks to have a reasonable shot at climbing to number 1 on Sunday.  (Which is pretty welcome when you see the alternative.  But more on Simon Cowell’s latest proteges next time…)

Frontman Nasri Atweh has had some success in Canada as a solo artist, and is also a member of the Messengers, a songwriting and production duo who’ve worked with the likes of Chris Brown and Justin Bieber.

1.  Cheryl Cole featuring Tinie Tempah – “Crazy Stupid Love”

A discreet interval after her unfortunate attempt to break America, Cheryl Cole has a new album to promote in the UK.  In fact, she was last in the chart in 2012, so it’s been a quite a wait.  The British evidently still care – though since this had dropped off the top of the iTunes chart some time before the end of the week, they maybe don’t care quite as much as they used to.  It’s at 4 on the midweeks, so we can be pretty sure it’s not hanging around.  Basically, it’s got a half-decent hook and not much else of a song to go around it.

It’s her fourth number 1 as a solo artist, to follow “Fight for This Love” (2009), “Promise This” (2010) and “Call My Name” (2012).    She also had four number 1s with Girls Aloud  – “Sound of the Underground” (2002), “I’ll Stand By You” (2004), the Comic Relief single “Walk This Way” (2007), and “The Promise” (2008).

On the album chart:

  • “X” by Ed Sheeran spends its fifth week at number 1.
  • “Trouble in Paradise” by La Roux enters at 6.  The singles from their second album have done nothing, but the album initially appears to have done okay.  Except it drops to 27 in today midweeks – which makes this a serious case of first week fan sales.  Mind you, it’s the only one of Sunday’s new entries to feature on the midweeks at all.  Single: “Let Me Down Gently”.
  • “Acoustic Classics” by Richard Thompson at 16.  A collection of acoustic covers of his own greatest hits.
  • “Heaven & Earth” by Yes at 20.  Still going after 21 albums.  Single: “In a World of Our Own”.
  • “From Scotland With Love” by King Creosote at 21.  This is the soundtrack to a documentary released to tie in with the Commonwealth Games.  It gives songwriter Kenny Anderson one of his higher profile releases and his first chart appearance.  Anderson is astonishingly prolific – his Wikipedia discography lists over 40 albums since 1998.  Single: “For One Night Only”.
  • “Similarities” by Biffy Clyro at 28.  A compilation of B-sides from the singles from their last album, for any people out there completist enough to want all the Biffy Clyro B-sides, but not completist enough to just buy the singles.

 

Bring on the comments

  1. andrew says:

    Didn’t Cheryl’s 2012 album produce a #1 song?

  2. Liam Tait says:

    Yeah, as much as I like to bash Cheryl’s pop career ‘Call my Name’ was out in 2012 and that did pretty well in the charts to my knowledge.

    I’m glad to see Charli XCX getting some recognition from the charts finally, she’s one of the UK’s best pop prospects and Superlove deserved so much better.

  3. Joe S. Walker says:

    “Still going after 21 albums.”

    Albeit with several break-ups, bizarre mutations and a decade-long gap between albums along the way. Yes are a curious case – they made a disastrous creative error with one album (“Tales From Topographic Oceans” in case you couldn’t guess) and never recovered from it.

  4. Paul says:

    Ah, “Call My Name” was indeed 2012. It didn’t show up on the database I checked because it was credited just as “Cheryl” and I searched for her full name. I’ll correct the post.

  5. Jefferson says:

    So, Weird Al’s “Mandatory Fun” doesn’t really register in the UK charts…figures…

  6. Jefferson says:

    Admittedly, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” did make number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, but today’s Yes isn’t really the same as before…

  7. Joe S. Walker says:

    “Owner of a Lonely Heart” was written by Trevor Rabin, who wasn’t a member of the classic Yes line-up. In fact it wasn’t a Yes song until a fairly late stage – Rabin, Chris Squire and Alan White had formed a new band called Cinema, then Jon Anderson was willing to join up and they started calling themselves Yes again. One of those mutations I mentioned.

    It also sounds more dated than “Close To The Edge” etc ever will. That production is as early-Eighties as it gets.

  8. Paul says:

    @Jefferson: The Weird Al Yankovic album is at number 71 this week, marking the only time he’s ever even registered on the album chart. His only UK hit single was “Eat It'”, which got to number 36. I remember “White and Nerdy” getting a bit of notice over here, but nobody actually bought it.

    Part of the issue is that the British just don’t buy comedy albums, but there’s also a broader issue that certain types of US comedy just don’t seem to travel. Sitcoms or comedy films do fine; but the British pay pretty much no attention to most American stand-up comedy. (If you see an American comedian on British TV, he’s probably an ex-pat living in London. He’s also probably Rich Hall or Reginald D Hunter.)

  9. Paul says:

    (Yes, the British did pay attention to Bill Hicks, but he was an exception even at the time.)

  10. Taibak says:

    I’m still amazed Weird Al hit number one in the US. For that matter, by all accounts Weird Al is still amazed he pulled that off.

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