RSS Feed
Mar 17

Charts – 16 March 2018

Posted on Saturday, March 17, 2018 by Paul in Music

Well.  At least it was close.

1.  Drake – “God’s Plan”

That’s eight weeks, but Drake only beat Rudimental by 937 sales (or sales-equivalents, what with streaming and all), which is nothing, really.  The end is probably nigh.  Though poor Rudimental have been stuck at number 2 for six weeks now, so they’ll be hoping it comes soon.  Further down the top 40, it’s a quiet week – four new entries, and two of them on a technicality.

22.  Ziv Zaifman, Hugh Jackman & Michelle Williams – “A Million Dreams”
24.  Loren Allred – “Never Enough”

Two more tracks from the Greatest Showman soundtrack, and if you’ve been paying attention when I’ve been talking about the chart rules, you can probably figure out what’s going on here.  Put short, after Ed Sheeran and Drake demonstrated that major album releases were going to swamp the singles chart, because every track would get enough individual plays to make the top 40, the rules were changed to stop that from happening again.  And the chosen solution was to limit each artist to three singles (not counting featured artist credits).

Now, the Greatest Showman songs are listed on the singles chart with their individual artist credits.  But despite that, for the purposes of the three-song cap, it’s being treated as a single artist.  (If the cast weren’t being treated as a single artist for chart purposes, then the soundtrack album wouldn’t be eligible for the artist album charts; it would be off on the compilation chart.)  So last week there were three Greatest Showman tracks: “This is Me” at 7, “Rewrite the Stars” at 22, and “The Greatest Show” at 23.  This week, “This Is Me” is at 6, but the other two have vanished from the top 100 to be replaced by “A Million Dreams” and “Never Enough”.

What’s happened here, of course, is that “Rewrite the Stars” and “Greatest Show” have dropped down below “Million Dreams” and “Never Enough”, so they’re now excluded by the cap, and the other two songs have taken their place.  But wait, it gets more complicated!  The chart compilers were also nervous about the ultra-slow movement of the top 40 last year, so they decided to help things along by introducing a rule that downweighted the streams of tracks that had been on the chart for a while and had been losing sales/streams (faster than the market average) for three weeks running.  This was designed to gently ease overstayers out of the chart.  And apparently, the reason why “Rewrite” and “Greatest” have dropped out this week is because they’ve been hit by that rule.  Which makes the appearance of “Million” and “Never” on the chart a weird artefact of the interaction of two different technicalities.  This is what happens when you start making artificial rules to try and jazz up the chart.

Anyway, this is an improbable second hit single for Hugh Jackman.  It’s the first chart appearance for the others.  Ziv Zaifman provides the singing voice of the young Barnum.   Michelle Williams is the actress who plays Barnum’s wife (and not the former member of Destiny’s Child).  And Loren Allred is the singing voice for Jenny Lind (played on screen by Rebecca Ferguson); she was in the third season of The Voice.

25.  Years & Years – “Sanctify”

We haven’t seen these guys since 2015, when they had a number 1 with “King”.  They’ve been working on that Difficult Second Album ever since, and this is the lead single.  It’s a strong comeback – Years & Years were always an eighties synthpop throwback, and they sort of still are, but they’re broadening their horizons here.  Entering at 26 is a pretty strong debut these days.  Looks like we’re getting one of those series of concept videos that are going to tell a story over the course of the album.

27.  M.O., Lotto Boyzz & Mr Eazi – “Bad Vibe”

I’d forgotten about this lot.  M.O (as in “modus operandi”, and not to be confused with MØ) are a girl group formed by ex-members of Duchess and Mini Viva.  They released a few singles a while back on an indie label, with “Who Do You Think Of” reaching number 18 in summer 2016 – at which point they signed to Polydor and dropped off the face of the earth.  They’ve traded in a member since then, and evidently they’re about to be relaunched with an eye on the Afrobeat-influenced grime genre.  Mr Eazi gets his third chart credit of the year – he was a guest on Raye’s “Decline” and Steel Banglez’ “Bad”.  Lotto Boyzz are a duo, and this is their first hit, though they just missed the top 40 with “No Don” last year.

A lot of climbers this week, but only a handful with significant moves…

  • “Feel It Still” by Portugal. The Man edges up 4-3.
  • “Friends” by Marshmello & Anne-Marie moves 5-4.
  • “This Is Me” by Keala Settle & The Greatest Showman Ensemble moves 7-6.
  • “The Middle” by Zedd, Maren Morris & Grey moves 18-10.
  • “Paradise” by George Ezra moves 19-12 – that seems unusually high for this sort of track these days.
  • “Jumanji” by B Young moves 15-14.
  • “Lullaby” by Sigala & Paloma Faith moves 21-19.
  • “Meant To Be” by Bebe Rexha featuring Florida George Line is this week’s highest climber, jumping 33-20.
  • “Mine” by Bazzi moves 24-21.
  • “Check” by Kojo Funds featuring Raye moves 31-26.
  • “Love Lies” by Khalid & Normani moves 38-30.
  • “What I Wanna” by Mostack moves 37-36

On the album chart, The Greatest Showman soundtrack album gets a tenth straight week at number one, at which point we start glancing at the record books.  Ed Sheeran’s ÷ spent twenty weeks at number one, but that was over multiple runs – it only managed nine weeks at a time.  The next target in sight is Adele’s “21”, which managed 11 straight weeks in 2011.  After that, you’re looking at the Bob Marley greatest hits album which managed 12 weeks in 1984…

4.  Calum Scott – “Only Human”

Singer from Britain’s Got Talent back in 2016 who reached number 2 that year with a rather maudlin cover of “Dancing On My Own” – which is on this belated album.  Still, number four’s not bad after such a long delay.

5.  Judas Priest – “Firepower”

Sounds exactly the way you’d expect – Judas Priest are comfortable in their niche.  This is another example of how the declining album market favours legacy acts who still albums to older audiences – though they never stopped charting, they haven’t been this high since 1980, when “British Steel” reached 4.

6.  The Editors – “Violence”

Their sixth album, and number 6 is pretty much where the last two wound up as well.

8.  Jimi Hendrix – “Both Sides of the Sky”

A compilation of unreleased Jimi Hendrix – which means you’re talking about stuff that not only didn’t pass muster during his lifetime, but also didn’t pass muster for the two other compilations that the Hendrix estate has released in the last few years.  A lot of it’s actually alternate takes, too.  But it is still unreleased Hendrix, and sub-par Hendrix is still good.

12.  Myles Kennedy – “Year of the Tiger”

Solo album by the lead singer of Alter Bridge, though this is more bluesy.  It’s an album about the death of his father in 1974, which was indeed the Year of the Tiger.  (Well, most of it, because of course the Chinese New Year doesn’t fall on our January 1 and… well, never mind.)

13.  Logic – “Bobby Tarantino II”

The follow-up to the 2016 mixtape “Bobby Tarantino” which, um, didn’t chart in the UK.  The 2017 album “Everybody” did, but this is Logic’s biggest album to date in this country.  Reviews are middling, but the single above is fun enough.

16.  David Byrne – “American Utopia”

Officially his first solo album in 14 years, though he has been active in collaborations since then.  But – proving my point above – this is the highest a David Byrne solo album has ever been.  (The previous best was 26 for “Uh-Oh”, and that was in 1992.  Talking Heads did better, of course.)  The single is good, but the album is said to be patchy.

28.  Young Fathers – “Cocoa Sugar”

The winners of the 2014 Mercury Prize.  For some reason the Official Charts news section claims this is their first top 40 album, but it’s not; “Dead” managed a week at number 35 in their year of victory.  It’s their first time back in the chart since then, though – the 2015 album “White Men Are Black Men Too” landed at 41.  Another of the videos worth your time this week.

32.  Moose Blood – “I Don’t Think I Can Do This Any More”

Pop-emo, and the appeal seems to be fading, since the previous album got to 10.

33.  Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats – “Tearing At The Seams”

Rock and soul.  It’s their second album, and the first got to 27, so little change.  Surprisingly good, this.  I must listen to the whole thing.

Be the first to comment.

Leave a Reply