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Feb 19

Charts – 15 February 2015

Posted on Thursday, February 19, 2015 by Paul in Music

Alright, then.  We’ll get back to a reviewing schedule at the weekend, when we’ll start catching up on Wolverines vol 1, the final X-Force arc, All-New‘s trip to the Ultimate Universe, and Uncanny‘s curious decision to whack the reset button only a handful of months away from the universe-wide whacking of the reset button.

But in the meantime, let’s run through this week’s chart while it’s still vaguely topical.

27.  Imagine Dragons – “I Bet My Life”

Somewhat against my better judgment, this is growing on me after a few listens.  It’s aiming to be a little bit folky, though since it’s Imagine Dragons, the end result is somewhere between Mumford & Sons and recent Avicii – and it’s not hard to see how it ended up being used in a Jeep advert in the US.  But the chorus has got something.

23.  Sam Smith – “Stay With Me”

Rebounding ten places, presumably on the back of his success at the Grammys – not a ceremony the UK normally cares a great deal about.  “I’m Not The Only One” also rebounds to 26, while “Like I Can” drops to 20.    The album “In The Lonely Hour” predictably returns to number 1, being one of the increasingly rare perennial sellers in the dilapidated album market.

22.  Bakermat – “Teach Me”

You remember this guy – he’s the Dutch DJ who sampled Martin Luther King for the vaguely uncomfortable “One Day (Vandaag)”, which got to 15 last year.  This time, the vocals are sampled from a rather more conventional source – “Teach Me Master”, a 1972 album track by gospel singer Shirley Caesar.  The original is basically a cappella, so it’s a very sample-friendly track.  It’ll probably be gone next week.

14.  Ne-Yo – “Coming With You”

The lead single (in Britain, at least) from his upcoming album “Non-Fiction”.  It’s very late eighties, down to the looped breakbeat.  But it’s not very memorable.  Ne-Yo’s last two albums each had a number one single on them, so this is a definite comedown.

8.  Charli XCX featuring Rita Ora – “Doing It”

The third single from Charli XCX’s album “Sucker”, though now with added Rita Ora.  The last single, “Break The Rules”, stalled at 35, so I’d guess it’s Rita Ora who’s the bigger sales draw here.  Charli XCX is an odd case, a pop songwriter who’s still around on a major label after a debut album that stiffed completely, partly because so many people are convinced she ought to be a star, and partly because she wrote Icona Pop’s international hit “I Love It”.  For all that, the blunt reality is that she sells singles more like Union J.

Ora, on the other hand, has four number ones to her credit, and is currently a judge on the UK version of The Voice – a show which may be spectacularly unsuccessful at actually launching any careers, but still positions her as a peer of Tom Jones and will.i.am, and arguably gives her more opportunity to show her actual personality than most of her records do.

6.  Chris Brown & Tyga – “Ayo”

The disappointingly continuing career of Chris Brown seems to be one of those unfortunate things we just have to accept.  This is the lead single from “Fan of a Fan”, a collaboration album with Tyga, who, shall we say, at least seems to be on Chris’s wavelength.  I am not on Chris’s wavelength.  Pretty grim, really.

It’s Brown’s highest chart placing since “Don’t Wake Me Up” made 2 in 2012, and the highest Tyga has ever been.  Another track from the album, “Bitches N Marijuana”, was released as a “promotional single” (i.e., an unpromoted single), and lands at 60.

4.  DJ Fresh featuring Ella Eyre – “Gravity”

Oh hey, there’s the Amen break.  It never gets old.

Eyre gets her second top 10 hit, after guesting on Rudimental’s number 1 “Waiting All Night” in her debut back in 2013; she’s had some minor hits since then.  This is… along very similar lines to Rudimental, though not quite as good.  But then if you take a fairly straightforward song with a decent chorus, give it to a decent singer and whack the Amen break behind it, that’ll happen.

This was number 2 in pure sales terms, but it’s dragged down by some pretty dreadful streaming figures.

1.  Ellie Goulding – “Love Me Like You Do”

Two weeks!  And that’s the first time we’ve had two multi-week number ones in a row since “Rather Be” and “Happy” at the start of last year.  There are no major new releases out this week, and Ellie looks to be on course for a third week.

Over on the album chart, the big news is that the Official Chart Company has finally resigned itself to the fact that album sales are a dead market, and will be counting streams from the start of March – the chart after next.  This results in some rather fiddly formulae to work out what exactly counts as streaming an album and how to weight it.  Basically, they’re trying to measure streams across the album as a whole, but down-weighting the most popular tracks on the assumption that they’re going to be the singles.  (Billboard didn’t do this when they added streaming, and apparently the results were messy.)  We’ll see how it goes, but there’s little doubt that the current album chart is measuring a dying market, and it can’t go on.

This week’s shambling corpses:

  • “In The Lonely Hour” by Sam Smith returns to 1.
  • “If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late” by Drake at 3.  He apparently considers it a mixtape rather than an album.
  • “Coming Up For Air” by Kodaline at 4.  Their second album; the first got to 3 two years ago.  The single “Honest” made 39 last week.
  • “Happy People” by Peace at 12.  Indie band from Worcester.  Their previous album “In Love” got to 16 two years ago.  Single: “Money”.
  • “Written in Scars” by Jack Savoretti at 11.  His second album, his first to chart.  It was Radio 2’s album of the week.  Single: “Home”.
  • “I Love You, Honeybear” by Father John Misty at 14.  His eleventh solo album and the first to chart in this country; he was the drummer in Fleet Foxes for a while.  Single: “Chateau Lobby #4 (In C For Two Virgins)”.
  • “Holding All The Roses” by Blackberry Smoke at 17.  Southern rock.  Fourth album, and first time they’ve made the top 20 in this country.  Single: “Living in the Song”.
  • “Mount the Air” by The Unthanks at 26.  Notionally a folk band, though their influences go rather wider than that.  This is their eighth album, and the second to chart (the fourth one got to number 40 in 2011).  The single “Flutter” is really good.
  • “Black Rivers” by Black Rivers at 35.  Black Rivers are two thirds of Doves, but nobody much seems to have noticed them releasing this album.  Single: “The Ship”.
  • “Blackbirds” by Gretchen Peters at 39.  Nashville singer, finally charting in this country with her 11th album.  As much a symptom of the state of the album market as anything else, though.  Single: “When All You Got Is A Hammer”.

Bring on the comments

  1. kingderella says:

    A more flattering perspective on XCX would be that between I Love It, Fancy, Boom Clap, and this, she’s actually doing alright.

    Btw, does anybody know what “Mixtape” even means these days?

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