At long, long last, the weekly turnover of number one singles comes to an end, as Rihanna’s “We Found Love” stays at the top for a second week – the first record to do so since “Glad You Came” by the Wanted in July.

Instead, this week’s highest new entry comes in at 3 – “Stereo Hearts” by Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine.

This equals the peak of their 2007 (or 2006, if you’re American) breakthrough single “Cupid’s Chokehold”.  You know, the one that sampled Supertramp.  They had three top ten hits from that album, and they haven’t released anything since, though frontman Travie McCoy also had a number 3 hit last year with “Billionaire”.

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So near, Maroon 5!  So near, but yet so far.

In a summer where the number 1 spot has changed hands weekly, “Moves Like Jagger” by Maroon 5 ft Christina Aguilera has been plugging away steadily just behind – with an excruciating chart run of 3-3-2-2-2-2-2.  In terms of actually sustaining its sales, it is arguably the uncrowned number 1 single of the last two months.  But on last week’s midweek chart, it looked like “Moves Like Jagger” was finally going to make it to the top for real.

And then, in the middle of the week, Rihanna suddenly released “We Found Love” and squashed them like a bug.

There is, as yet, no video for “We Found Love”, so please enjoy this placeholder graphic from Rihanna’s YouTube channel.

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We’ve had eleven straight number ones by British artists, but this week that run comes to a screeching halt thanks to what can only be described as a Spanish novelty record.  Oddly enough, the last Spanish number one single (“Asereje” by Las Ketchup from 2002) was also a novelty record.  But at least it wasn’t “Loca People” by Sak Noel.  Caution: what follows is an irritating record with an extraordinarily bad video.

Sak Noel is a Spanish DJ who’s done pretty much nothing else of note (in terms of releases, anyway – apparently he also runs a music festival).  The uncredited vocalist is Esthera Sarita, who’s pretty much a blank slate too.

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Undiscriminating patriots rejoice!  The weekly turnover of number one singles continues, and it has apparently been decreed that a new chart record has been set: eleven consecutive number ones by British acts.  That would be DJ Fresh, the Wanted, JLS, Cher Lloyd, Nero, Wretch 32, Olly Murs, Example, Pixie Lott, One Direction (who have an Irish member, but it seems the Official Charts Company determines nationality by majority vote) and now…

…the one with the stupid hats from N-Dubz.

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It is time once again to bow before our overlord Simon Cowell.  Yes, just in time for the new series of X Factor… One Direction are back.  And this time they’re McFly!  Well, kind of, anyway.

With X Factor about to launch in America, a whole new nation is, one suspects, about to be exposed to the dubious charms of the ad hoc group.

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For the seventh consecutive week, we have another new number one.  And since it drops to 3 in the midweeks, it’s a pretty safe bet that there’ll be an eighth on Sunday.

Yes, Pixie Lott is back, to start promoting her second album.  The single is “All About Tonight”, and it’s her seventh hit (they squeezed a lot of singles out of that debut album).  Pixie Lott is a classic example of the age-old promotional technique of insisting very loudly that somebody is a star until everybody gives up and believes you.  She had two number 1 hits in 2009, “Mama Do” and “Boys And Girls”, both of which had a sort of pseudo-retro-but-way-too-polished thing about them.  Passable enough songs, but produced into the ground.

This time round she has apparently decided that she’s the Saturdays, and reinvented herself as an electropop act.  This is a very formulaic piece of songwriting – people in the music industry seem to spend an awful lot of time waiting for the weekend considering they don’t work 9 to 5 jobs in the first place – but it’s a decent chorus and they’ve got the production right this time.

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For the sixth straight week, there’s a new entry at number 1.  (And according to the midweeks, there’ll be a seventh on Sunday.)  The main thing this tells us, to be honest, is that quite a few record labels have given up on the “On Air On Sale” thing and have gone back to promoting their singles in advance of release.  And frankly, they seem to be getting better results that way, at least in terms of getting a high chart placing in their first week.  And to be fair, nine out of the last ten number 1s are still on the chart, so it’s not like they’re all crashing straight out.

Oh, and if these things interest you, the last eight number one singles have all been by British acts.  Which is actually quite uncommon.

Olly Murs drops to 2 in his second week, and his replacement at number 1 is…

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The phone-voting juggernaut that is X Factor is upon us once again.  Of course, we’ll be in the audition shows for a while yet (and so far, they haven’t generated any surprise hits from the back catalogue).  But this is always a good time of year to have an album out, if you’re connected with the show.

Last year’s winner, Matt Cardle, will presumably have his first “proper” single out in time for the first live show, that being the way these things usually work.  So it falls to 2009 runner-up Olly Murs to land this week’s number 1, with the unexpectedly acceptable “Heart Skips A Beat”.

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Somebody must have liked Cher Lloyd’s “Swagger Jagger”.  It did get to number one, after all.  But it drops to number 3 on its second week, and judging from the midweeks, it’ll be out of the top 10 on Sunday.  Given that it had plenty of pre-release hype, the obvious conclusion is that it had little crossover appeal beyond her fanbase.  Which might be because it was terrible.

The new number one looks like another one-week wonder.  It’s the lowest-selling number one in almost two years, and it’s down to four on the midweeks.  But at least this one is an overachiever.

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(If you’re looking for the podcast, it’s one post down…)

These are bleak times.  Looters stalk the streets of England.  The global economy teeters on the brink of collapse.  And 2010 X-Factor fourth-placed finalist Cher Lloyd has released a very bad single.

I think this may be the first time I’ve seen a number 1 single where the YouTube “dislikes” outnumber the “likes” by two to one.

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