Another quiet week for new releases, this time for very good reason.  This chart covers the week of the Brit Awards, the UK’s equivalent of the Grammies, which was always going to dominate the news cycle, and always spawns a few unlikely midweek hits thanks to re-entries from winners and people who performed on the show.  Plus, the only genuine major release of the week is a high profile charity single, and nobody wants to go up against that.  So, not much going on.

But here’s what there is.

39.  Robbie Williams – “Candy” 

A re-entry because he performed it at the Brits.  Originally a number one last year.

38.  Tyler James (featuring Kano) – “Worry About You”

Tyler James is the closest The Voice UK came to discovering a star, which is to say that his previously comatose career has at least begun to stir again.  These things are relative, though – “Worry About You” only just makes the top 40, even with the support of Radio 1 (who are kind of obliged).  All that said, it’s an okay record and really did deserve to go higher.

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After a few exceptionally quiet weeks, we’ve suddenly got a real flurry of activity, with almost a quarter of the chart made up of new entries.

37.  Zedd (featuring Foxes) – “Clarity”

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Don’t get too comfortable.  We won’t be here long.  The singles market remains weirdly moribund as we head into February, with only a single new entry on this week’s chart.  We do have some big climbers, but in terms of actual new records, you’ll have Fall Out Boy or you’ll have nothing.

40.  Jake Bugg – “Lightning Bolt”
38.  Nickelback – “How You Remind Me”
36.  One Direction – “Little Things”
30.  The Fray – “How To Save A Life”

Since something’s got to replace the records dropping out of the charts, we have a few re-entries down at the bottom.  Jake Bugg was still floating around just outside the top 40.  “Little Things” is probably here because it was used on Dancing on Ice last weekend.  I’ve no clue what the others are doing here.  The Fray made number 4 with this single six years ago; Nickleback’s “How You Remind Me” dates back to 2002.  Something has suddenly made them pick up sales again but I honestly don’t know what.  Any suggestions, let us know in the comments thread.

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This week: basically nothing comes out, but some other records do climb!  Exciting, I know!

33.  Justin Bieber (featuring Nicki Minaj) – “Beauty and a Beat” 

Re-entry – this dropped out of the top 40 last week.  I’m going to hazard a guess that it’s picked up a few downloads from the version available on his “Believe Acoustic” album.

30.  Amelia Lily – “Shut Up (And Give Me Whatever You’ve Got)” 

I don’t normally mention fallers, but it’s worth flagging up that this drops 19 places on its second week – not a promising sign for  Xenomania’s latest attempt to find a new vehicle.

29.  Droideka – “Get Hyper”

Droideka is Ellis Carter, a teenager from Cambridge named after a relatively obscure Star Wars concept, and this is a dubstep track that (as best I can figure out) he initially put out as a copyright-free track a year or so back.  This is a rather more polished version, though.  Bouncy little number, kind of sounds like something that might turn up on a Flash game soundtrack.  It’s been climbing from the lower reaches for a couple of weeks now but I’m not entirely sure why, to be honest.

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A slightly odd week as we ease back into the regular chart schedule.  There are a couple of full scale new releases at the top, but mostly it’s album tracks that are soon to be promoted to single status, starting their climb into the top 40.

37.  Little Mix – “Change Your Life”

A vague and non-specific self-affirmation song about believing in yourself and such forth, with added references to sticking together and ignoring the critics?  Why, it must be randomly assembled X Factor girl band Little Mix, doing what such bands do!  (And – “Become what you’ve always known”?  Really?)

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After a long, long run of weird Christmassy charts and dead weeks, we’re finally back to something approaching normal.  Except with a singing actress, a lot of underachievers at the lower end, and an upset at number one.

38.  Dizzee Rascal – “Bassline Junkie”

This is actually the lead track from a mixtape EP from Dizzee’s personal record label, and it’s been out since January 1st, but for some reason the public didn’t seem to notice until the middle of this week, when it suddenly started climbing the iTunes chart.  It’s a bit of a return to his underground roots, even though it’s still emphatically a dancefloor track.  But it’s got the best video we’ve had in ages.  That first minute is fantastic.  (The other guy is a comedian called Eric Lampaert, if you’re wondering.)  I expect this to go further, now that people have finally noticed it’s out.

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We’ll get to the rest of last week’s comics in due course; for now, let’s get up to speed on the chart.  The music industry’s festive season shutdown is finally over, and normal service is resumed!  Well, kind of.

And the first new entry of 2013 is, appropriately enough…

39.  Matrix & Futurebound (featuring Baby Blue) – “Magnetic Eyes”

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Listen, what’s that sound?  Why, it’s the sound of tumbleweed, as virtually nothing happens on the top 40 for the second week running!  The result is a chart with no new entries whatsoever, and four re-entries.

40.  Rudimental featuring John Newman & Alex Clare – “Not Giving In”
36.  Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen”
35.  Florence + The Machine – “Spectrum”

These are all just records that were still floating around outside the top 40, and thus move up to fill the space left by the Christmas singles.  Nothing more to be said.

15.  Calvin Harris featuring Tinie Tempah – “Drinking From The Bottle”

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Welcome to 2013!  This is the dead week of the charts, when nothing came out and virtually nothing happened.  There’s one re-entry at the bottom end, but that’s just existing material filling the space left by the sales of Christmas songs coming to their habitually abrupt halt.  And with the big push for the Christmas number one out of the way, the Justice Collective single also drops to 5, leaving James Arthur to return to number one with “Impossible”, thus also making himself the first number one artist of 2013.

So, since I can hardly fill a whole post with that, let’s take this opportunity to look back over the number one singles of 2012, some of which you have quite probably already forgotten about, due in no small part to a resurgence of the phenomenon of well-timed new releases with weeks of advance promotion taking turns to have a single week at number one.  Most of these records, it should be said, proceeded to hang around the chart for a good long while afterwards.  But records with a dominant run at the top have been rare, and the year has seen a total of 36 number one singles.  Here they all are.

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