Charts – 14 December 2014
It’s the week before the Christmas chart, and so effectively the last regular chart of the year – though by this time the regular music industry has already gone into its festive shutdown. The result is, with one unusual exception, a week of comparatively niche releases that did well at the start of the week and tailed off badly, and the usual upward march of the Christmas classics.
39. Ed Sheeran – “Sing”
37. Ella Henderson – “Ghost”
A couple of long running records, both number 1s in June, re-entering at the bottom end due to lack of competition from new releases. “Sing” joins “Thinking Out Loud” and “Don’t” to give Sheeran three songs in this week’s chart. Henderson’s current single “Yours” drops to 20 this week.
35. Wizzard – “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday”
Charts – 7 December 2014
Charts – 23 November 2014
Charts – 16 November 2014
Well, welcome back. Let’s see if we can get this blog back on some sort of a schedule, and start by knocking off this week’s chart post before it becomes last week’s.
39. Brian Wilson & Various Artists – “God Only Knows”
The BBC’s much-hyped collaboration debuted at 20 last month and then plummeted out of the top 75 within three weeks. It rebounds here, because it’s a charity release for the Corporation’s annual Children In Need fundraising drive, and this is the sales week following the telethon. But only to 39. It’s basically flopped, considering its obvious ambitions to recapture “Perfect Day”.
Charts – 9 November 2014
A quiet week, mostly consisting of records that have flared out since the midweek and don’t have videos! But hey, it’s November – that means it’s time for Christmas!
26. Nicki Minaj featuring Drake, Lil Wayne & Chris Brown – “Only”
A promotional single from Minaj’s upcoming album (hence no video). After “Anaconda” – still hanging in at 24 – this is obviously the less commercial one for the hardcore audience.
26. The Script – “No Good In Goodbye”
This is going to be (?) the second single from the Script’s current album, though as yet it only has a lyric video. Their YouTube channel also helpfully has the entire lyric in the info field. Maybe they’ve missed the point of a lyric video. Or maybe they’re just so proud of the wordplay that they don’t want to risk you missing any of it.
21. Tom Odell – “Real Love”
Charts – 2 November 2014
Mostly a quiet chart this week – but the new number 1 sets an actual, proper chart record…
38. OneRepublic – “Love Runs Out”
A slightly surprising re-entry for a single that previously got to number 3 in August, particularly as the main focus of their current promotion is on the record we’ll come to shortly.
37. Idina Menzel – “Let It Go”
Climbing 18 places to re-enter the chart, which I can only figure is the result of Robbie Williams’ rather odd decision to release a video of himself singing the song to his wife in labour. (The general consensus is that he doesn’t come out of it very well, but hey, Idina Menzel sold a few more records.)
29. OneRepublic – “I Lived”
Charts – 26 October 2014
With no fewer than four records appearing on the midweeks but vanishing by Sunday, this is an unusually volatile week. It’s unlikely that many readers will be that bothered about Bondax’s “All I See”, Hudson Taylor’s “Chasing Rubies”, or Alex Clare’s “War Rages On”, but I suspect more of you would be disappointed if I skipped the other one, so let’s take a rare meander outside the top 40…
44. The Independents – “UKIP Calypso”
This is a truly bizarre recording by any stretch of the imagination. UKIP – the UK Independence Party – is a populist anti-EU, anti-immigration policy currently enjoying a surge in the polls. The actual record consists of former Radio 1 DJ Mike Read, accompanying himself on the acoustic guitar, singing the party’s praises in what he optimistically conceives to be a calypso style. This entails a somewhat half-hearted attempt at a generically Caribbean accent.
Charts – 20 October 2014
Let’s start with some on-balance good news. Last week I pointed out that the downloads of X Factor live performances are registering in the iTunes chart this year, and wondered whether this might mean they were going to register for the official chart as well. Which would obviously be a bit of a slog for us.
Well, evidently the decision is that they’re still opting out of the chart – which makes matters rather more amenable for these posts. It also, of course, puts a bit of an asterisk next to the chart, since we know there’s at least one of these things that would have made the top 20. But so be it. It’s a kind of parallel musical world anyway…
35. Charli XCX – “Break The Rules”
Charts – 12 October 2014
An unusually top-heavy chart this week – basically dead from 40 through to 21, which must have been a delight for the Radio 1 chart show producers. It picks up after that. Well, kind of.
20. Brian Wilson & Various Artists – “God Only Knows”
