Charts – 7 July 2013
Charts – 30 June 2013
So Robin Thicke doesn’t manage a fifth week at number one – but to be honest, he was unlucky. He still sold over 100,000 copies, and he was only dethroned by a track that had its release date brought forward when the record company finally started panicking about cover versions.
40. Evanescence – “My Immortal”
As covered on The Voice UK by Andrea Begley – of whom more in a bit. This is probably the best known Evanescence song that isn’t “Bring Me To Life”, and it made number 7 in 2003 before going on to an afterlife soundtracking TV shows and being used in, well, singing contests. The band’s biggest UK hit was, obviously, “Bring Me To Life”, which made number 1 the same year.
39. Kanye West – “Black Skinhead”
Charts – 23 June 2013
Charts – 16 June 2013
Whoops. Nearly forgot about this one.
From the look of it, virtually everyone decided to steer clear of releasing new material this week. That could be because last weekend saw the final of Britain’s Got Talent; perhaps nobody wanted to risk going head to head with some viral sensation. If so, they needn’t have worried, because there is no viral sensation. The result is an almost totally dead chart, to the point where the lower end is propped up by a string of back catalogue material from the iTunes 59p sale.
Such as this…
40. Pras Michel featuring Ol’ Dirty Bastard introducing Mya – “Ghetto Supastar (That Is What You Are)”
Charts – 2 June 2013
In which the run of high-selling number one singles continues. Plus – back catalogue debris washed up on the shores of reality TV!
39. Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen”
37. The Script – “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved”
Back catalogue downloads sparked by Britain’s Got Talent, I believe.
35. Bruno Mars – “Treasure”
Charts – 26 May 2013
After four weeks (and with their album now available to buy instead), Daft Punk’s reign at the top comes to an end. We can now return to our regularly scheduled business of records entering at number 1!
40. Evanescence – “Bring Me To Life”
Performed on Britain’s Got Talent, as if you couldn’t guess.
30. The 1975 – “The City”
Charts – 19 May 2013
It wasn’t just Eurovision this week! There’s also a batch of new entries, none of which is troubling Daft Punk in the slightest!
38. Gabrielle Aplin – “Please Don’t Say You Love Me”
This was a number 6 hit in February. It’ll be back because of a spillover effect from the release of her album this week.
36. Birdy – “People Help The People”
This was on The Voice… er, two weeks ago. Delayed effect? Or was it just listed as a discount track on Amazon?
27. Mariah Carey (featuring Miguel) – “#Beautiful”
Climbing from last week’s 39, and it’s still climbing on iTunes – so perhaps this isn’t quite the dud it first appeared. But the midweek chart doesn’t show it going much further.
23. Tich – “Dumb”
Eurovision 2013
There is truly nothing quite like the Eurovision Song Contest. For those of you reading this outside Europe, a brief bit of context: it’s a contest in which countries from across a very broadly defined Europe each enter a song, and then there’s a Europe-wide phone vote (combined with scores from national judges) to determine a winner. Long regarded in the west as a piece of amusing kitsch, the contest is taken rather more seriously by the newer entrants from the east. The result is a baffling mixture of legitimate pop, sentimental ballads about love and/or global unity, odd novelty records, inexplicable misfires, and genuinely interesting curios that would never get an international audience anywhere else.
The show is hosted each year by the winner of the previous contest, a prize widely regarded as something of a curse, since it costs a fortune even with the contribution from the big five. Consequently, there was some relief when Sweden won last year, since they can actually afford to host it. Even so, the wise Scandinavians have tried to rein things in a bit this year, sending the show to Malmo rather than Stockholm, and dialling back the crazy displays of excess that have characterised some recent years. (When the Russians hosted, they claimed to have one third of the world’s LCD televisions on the stage, or something insane like that.)
Charts – 12 May 2013
Would have had this up earlier, but as you may have noticed, the hosting company has been down for the better part of two days. Anyhow, the reign of Daft Punk continues, as does the comparative dearth of new entries.
40. The Black Eyed Peas – “Where Is The Love”
Er… yes. A number 1 hit from 2003, I’m not entirely sure why this is back in the chart. It’s supposedly because a bunch of Black Eyed Peas fans had a brief spurt of buying the track after the British news media started reporting Fergie’s retirement (referring to the football manager Alex Ferguson), but, uh, that can’t be true, can it?
For whatever reason, it gives will.i.am three singles on this week’s chart, plus a fourth that he wrote. We’ll come to that one.
39. Mariah Carey featuring Miguel – “Beautiful”
