It’s another exceptionally quiet week, with a bare handful of new releases, and some older records making a resurgence further down the chart.  Mercifully, Chris Brown’s sales flare out after a single week, and he drops to number five.  He is replaced by a much better pop single.

1.  Carly Rae Jepsen – “Call Me Maybe”

No less than two “tribute” cover versions of this song were floating around outside the top 40 last week, which should have been a tip-off that it was going to sell rather well. It takes thirty seconds or so to get going, but then it launches into the chorus and pretty much stays there for the rest of the track.  Well, okay, there’s a second verse.  But it’s not very long.  It’s a very good pop single, and it looks like it’s got a decent shot of staying on top for a second week.

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I never did get around to doing last week’s chart.  So I’ll catch up now.  We’ll run through this week’s new entries, and the tracks from last week that are still around.  Last week’s number 1 was a one-week-wonder new entry, which we’ll come to in a bit.  But first…

1.  Chris Brown, “Turn Up The Music”

Oh, Britain.  Oh, really.

Chris Brown has been around since 2006, but this is his first UK number one.  His previous best was debut single “Run It!” back in 2006.  His success in the UK is decidedly patchy – his last single, “She Ain’t You”, failed to make the top 50 last year.  But this is the start of the campaign for his new album, so inevitably it’s doing better.

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Goodness, we really are behind here, aren’t we?

So – let’s cover last week’s chart, and then we’ll do two weeks of comics tomorrow.  Then all will be right with the world.

1.  Gotye ft Kimbra – “Somebody That I Used To Know”

Yes, it’s still there.  That’s a total of five weeks, but with several major releases this week, it seems pretty much certain that this will be the end of the line – the midweeks have a trio of new entries shouldering it down to 4.  Five weeks is a very good run, mind you.

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I know, I know.  I’m running very late.

Last week’s delayed podcast will be up tomorrow (with the rest of this week’s reviews most likely following early in the week), but in the meantime…

1.  Gotye ft Kimbra – “Somebody That I Used To Know”

That’s four weeks total at number one, and the midweeks show him staying for a fifth.  Gotye is now closing on the six week combined run of Rihanna’s “We Found Love” last October/November.

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For the first time this year, we have a proper slate of new entries!  Not just one at the top and a few stragglers outside the top 30!  And with a couple of exceptions, they’re a fairly interesting bunch.

But despite facing a proper challenge for once, the number 1 single is, for the third week, “Somebody That I Used To Know” by Gotye ft Kimbra.

It’s still selling 85,000 copies a week, after nine weeks out, and it’s comfortably the biggest single of the year so far.  And as of right now, it’s still at the top of the iTunes chart, with no real challenge from this week’s new releases.  Could be around a while.

On to this week’s seven new entries, almost all of which are worth a bit of attention.

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This is the annual post-Brit Awards chart, in which, as is by now traditional, the general non-music-buying public are suddenly alerted to some records that have been out for ages, and they stumble zombie-like up the chart for a week.  Naturally, very few acts release major new singles in such a week, so once again, we’ve got the now familiar pattern of a moderately big release at the low end of the top 10, and some scattered new entries way down at the bottom of the chart.

But first, look who’s back at number one.

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If you were expecting the top ten to be full of Whitney Houston songs – well, think again.  The thing about artists like Whitney Houston is that they’ve made an awful lot of records.  In her case, she’s had 32 hits in a 24-year chart career.  And that means the posthumous downloads tend to be scattered among the big songs, so that they swamp the lower reaches rather than dominating top ten of the chart.

There are, of course, quite a few Whitney Houston songs on this week’s chart.  But right at the top, it’s business as usual, with regular new singles entering at 1 and 2.

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First things first: no, there aren’t any Whitney Houston songs on this chart.  The chart week runs from Sunday to Saturday, so all of the memorial sales will count towards the next chart.  In fact, judging from iTunes, it looks like the major impact will be sales of her greatest hits albums; I’m not expecting a deluge on the singles chart, though things could always change during the week.

The midweek chart showed “Titanium” by David Guetta staying at number one, but as it turns out, it didn’t quite hold on.  Instead, it slips to number two, and gets replaced by this:

“Somebody I Used to Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra entered at number 36 four weeks ago and has been climbing steadily since.  I already covered it in the 15 January post, so go and read that if you want more on the artists.

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Don’t get too comfortable, this probably won’t take long.  It’s a week of almost total inactivity on the singles chart, at least where new entries are concerned.

We do, however, have a new number one, because “Twilight” by Cover Drive has dropped to 6 in its second week.  That should have left the way clear for the week’s only major chart-eligible new release, which was indeed at the top of the midweek chart – but as it turns out, sales tailed off in the second half.  (Madonna also released a new single last week, but because it’s being offered as an advance download for people pre-ordering her new album, and the chart compilers can’t tell the two types of purchase part, it’s not eligible to chart.)

The somewhat unexpected result is that our new number 1 is “Titanium” by David Guetta ft Sia.

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Time for another new number 1 single – and to judge from the iTunes chart, another one that’s likely to spend a single week at the top.  This time, it’s “Twilight” by Cover Drive, a Bajan group who like to style their music as “Cari-pop”.

Hey, guys, you couldn’t work some really incongruous product placement for the Mini into your video, could you?

Thanks.

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