First things first: there is no Amy Winehouse on this week’s chart.  The chart week runs from Sunday through to Saturday, and so the inevitable posthumous sales rush won’t make its presence felt until next week.  As of right now, it looks like she could well top the album charts, and land “Back to Black” inside the top 10.

But there is no Amy Winehouse on this week’s chart.  Nor is there much else.

The Wanted spend a second week at number one with “Glad You Came”, heading up a completely static top five.  There are several climbers, but it’s mostly rebounds from songs that have been around forever; the only vaguely notable one is Enrique Iglesias’ “Dirty Dancer” climbing eleven places to number 21.  And there are three new entries, all outside the top twenty.

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Founded on the principle that there simply must be a gap in the market for another boy band, the Wanted were created by the same person who assembled the Saturdays.  Heavily marketed to the core boy band demographic, they’ve got the sort of fanbase that rushes out to buy things in the first week if you hype it enough in advance.  “Glad You Came” was hyped well in advance of its release, which is why it’s the new number one.

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A brace of new entries right at the top of this week’s chart help to disguise the fact that it’s otherwise pretty much moribund – there are three new entries total, and only a couple of climbers of any significance.

The new number 1 is “Louder” by DJ Fresh featuring Sian Evans, which is currently being used in a Lucozade advert.  For the benefit of overseas readers, Lucozade is an energy drink.  That means it’s full of sugar but does a lot of branding work to associate itself with sports.

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This week’s chart is dominated by the effects of the Glastonbury Festival, that much loved annual event in which London media types get to tell us how they went to a field and saw some mud.  Personally, I’ve never been that keen on festivals – I went to T in the Park a few times back when I did student radio, but even then I kind of saw it as a massively inconvenient trek to see bands who’d usually have been better in a proper venue.

But the festival circuit is an established part of the UK calendar, and Glastonbury is the established top festival, which means it gets tons of radio and TV coverage from the BBC (particularly today when there are acres of space to fill on the digital channels).

Jason Derulo’s “Don’t Wanna Go Home” is still at number 1.  But the highest new entry at number 3 is “Best Thing I Never Had” by Beyonce, who was one of this year’s headline acts.

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We have a new number one!  And it’s crap.

That’s “Don’t Wanna Go Home” by Jason Derulo, a track which has almost nothing to recommend it beyond the bits it lifted from other, better records.  Imaginatively, the video features Derulo dancing in a warehouse.  Never seen that before.

It’s the lead single from Derulo’s second album, and his second number one following “In My Head” last March, which was just the right side of forgettable.  I assume everyone knows the source material here, but the hook comes from “The Banana Boat Song” by Harry Belafonte (number 2 in 1957).

Here he is performing it with the Muppets.

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“Changed The Way You Kiss Me” by Example is still number one – though it was behind in the midweeks, so it was clearly a close run thing.  It probably won’t manage a third, but stranger things have happened.

The thwarted single that topped the midweek charts, only to find itself at number 2 on Sunday, is “Bounce” by Calvin Harris featuring Kelis.

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After last week’s bout of suspended animation, this week’s chart is rather more interesting.  There’s a new entry at number one – “Changed The Way You Kiss Me” by Example, the lead single from his third album.

Elliot Gleave (E.G., hence Example) started off as a rapper before dramatically shifting tack on his previous album to reinvent himself as an electro act.  This is his seventh hit – all of which followed the change of direction – but his first number one.  It’s certainly his best single to date, and it feels to me like a more successful version of what he was trying to do on the last album.  Leaving aside guest appearances, his biggest hit until now was “Kickstarts”, a perfectly good record which made number 3 a year ago, but doesn’t quite click in the same way the new track does.  Looks like he’s found himself a niche.  This has a tough fight to stay at number 1 for a second week (Calvin Harris is ahead on the midweeks), but it’s going to be up there.

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Don’t get too comfortable, there’s nothing much to say.  The charts really don’t get much less eventful than this.

Number 1 for a third week is “Give Me Everything” by Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack and Nayer.  It looks like it won’t manage a fourth.  Still, three weeks at the top is much longer than I’d have expected for this single, and for some reason that remains unfathomable to me, it’s one of the bigger hits of the year.

There are only two new entries this week, neither of them especially memorable.

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Looks like we’re heading into another fallow period on the singles chart.  There are only three new entries on the current chart, and judging from the midweeks, it’ll be the same on Sunday.

In fact, the big event this week is on the album chart, where Lady Gaga is unsurprisingly number one with “Born This Way.”  Perhaps nobody else feels like releasing records in the face of that juggernaut.  And with the release of the album, sales on the four singles have also tailed off a bit; “Hair” surprisingly crashes straight out of the top 40 after just one week.

With nothing much in the way of competition, it’s a second week at number 1 for “Give Me Everything” by (deep breath) Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, Afrojack & Nayer.  In fact, the midweeks have it hanging on for three.  I’d kind of figured this for a middling single making it to number 1 in a quiet week, but maybe I’m missing something.

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Every so often a record gets to number 1 that I don’t get at all.  It’s not so much the really bad ones – at least they stand out.  It’s more the ones where I can’t quite figure out how they ever broke from the pack and got noticed.

That’s “Give Me Everything” by Pitbull featuring Ne-Yo, AfroJack & Nayer – a veritable horde of guest stars even by modern standards.  And people must like it – it’s been a slow burner, climbing 35-25-12-4-1.  The midweeks have it staying at the top for a second week.  I’m just kind of struggling to see what marks it out from a hundred other songs of its type.  And indeed, I see from Wikipedia that while it’s made the top 10 in plenty of countries, it’s only reached number 1 here.

But the people have spoken.  It’s Pitbull’s tenth hit (not bad considering that he first charted in 2007), and his first number one as a lead artist.  Technically, it’s his second number one, because of his co-credit on Jennifer Lopez’s “On The Floor” last month.  As a comics fan, I find that I derive much more enjoyment from his videos simply by pretending that he’s Grant Morrison.

Ne-Yo gets his fourth number one, following “So Sick” (2006), “Closer” (2008) and “Beautiful Monster” (2010) – he’s had a pretty impressive career for somebody who doesn’t have a huge media profile in the UK.  Nayer is apparently a singer and model, and this is her debut.  The internet seems to know virtually nothing about her, though I see she’s cropped up on at least one other Pitbull single before.  And Afrojack is a Dutch producer; his only previous chart credit was for his slightly (but only slightly) quirky single “Take Over Control”, which reached number 24 last year.

The highest new entry is “Save The World” by the Swedish House Mafia at 11.  It’s something of a change of direction for them – this is more of a straightforward song, compared to their previous hits “One” and “Miami 2 Ibiza”.   It doesn’t feel like it was intended principally for the clubs.  The video’s a cute idea, but it kind of promises more than it can deliver

More interesting, though, is “Hair” by Lady Gaga at number 13.  This was the fourth and final track to be released in advance of her new album, and once again it came out with no advance warning.  The result is to give her four singles in the top 20 – “Edge of Glory” at 6, “Judas” at 8, and “Born This Way” at 16.

That’s highly unusual.  Michael Jackson and John Lennon both managed it, but only by dying.  The last person to do it while continuing to breathe was Elvis Presley in 1957.  What this really tells you, though, is just how odd Lady Gaga’s promotional strategy for this album as been.  Plenty of acts could have achieved four concurrent singles if they’d released them in this short a period, but the conventional wisdom for decades has been to do precisely the opposite – wait for one single to fade and then stick out another one.  If the first single won’t fade of its own accord, delete it.

Lady Gaga’s approach is obviously attention-grabbing, but I suspect it works mainly on the novelty value – I’ll be surprised if we get other acts copying this.  You never know, though.  Interestingly, “Hair” doesn’t feature on the midweek charts at all.

Number 27 is “Right There” by Nicole Scherzinger, which ought to be in the dictionary next to “sub-Rihanna”.  It’s going to climb on Sunday, though.  There’s also a version with 50 Cent, for those who find the original just too darned subtle.

This week’s surprise hit is number 29 – “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off” by Jermaine Stewart.  It’s being used in a Cadburys advert. The original release was a number 2 hit in 1986.  Stewart had two lesser hits in 1988 (“Say It Again”, which has the most 80s video imaginable, and “Get Lucky”, which is slightly less 80s but does have some remarkable hairstyling) before dropping off the UK’s radar.  He died in 1997.

Number 34, but set to climb much further, is “California King Bed” by Rihanna, the token ballad from her current album.  The charitable view would be that she’s displaying her range, but more realistically, this is a glaring case of a record which exists solely to get her airplay on different American radio stations.  What the hell is it doing on the same album as “What’s My Name?”, “Only Girl In The World” or “S&M”?  It’s got a dad-rock guitar solo!

Finally, at a strangely appropriate number 40, there’s the Irish Eurovision entry, “Lipstick” by Jedward.  It’s actually not that bad a record – ignore the fact that it’s Jedward and you could see somebody else having a hit with it.  And it now has a second, vastly inferior video.  But they’re Jedward, they’re a national joke, and it’s hard to see them ever being successfully repackaged as anything else, no matter how effectively their limitations can be disguised in the studio.

Notable climbers this week: “I Need a Dollar” by Aloe Blacc is now at 4.  “Mr Saxobeat” by Alexandra Stan reaches 14, and is set to make the top 10 on Sunday.  “Bass Down Low” by Dev is at 18 and looks to be going further.  (It’s growing on me the more I hear it.)  And “I’m Into You” by Jennifer Lopez, which still isn’t officially a single, climbs ten places to 21.