As you might have gathered, I was a bit behind on these even before going on holiday.  Since then, there’s been quite the turnover of number one singles – we’ve had a run of new releases going in at the top and then promptly dropping down the top ten, in a rather unwelcome return to the bad old days of pre-digital charts.  So, rather than try and plough through all these singles in one go, I’ll take them a week at a time.

We start with Sunday 15 August 2010, when the number 1 single was in fact a climber…

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A quiet summer for new singles seems to be leaving the way clear for a number of tracks with pre-release hype to trade the number 1 slot before rapidly flaring out.  “All Time Low” by the Wanted, with first week sales bolstered by the obligatory promotional tour targetting teenage girls, dropped to number 5 in its second week – not exactly a ringing endorsement of its broad appeal.

This week’s number 1 looks to be in a similar vein.  As the lead single from an album, it has the advantage of pre-release hype on its side (something that doesn’t work once the album is out, and the track is available for download while it’s being promoted).  And according to the midweek charts, it will be dropping to number four tomorrow.  Perhaps lower.

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Last week’s chart had almost no activity in the top 20, other than a new number 1 thanks to some reshuffling among the established singles.  This week is quite the opposite.  Five new entries, and they’re all in the top ten.  Pretty much nothing of interest is going on further down.

And the winner this week… is “All Time Low” by the Wanted.

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Well, this is going to be easy.

In a week with virtually no significant new releases – as in, the highest new entry was at number 20 – the number 1 slot is once again traded between records that have been on the chart a while.  This week, it’s “We No Speak Americano” by Yolanda Be Cool & D-Cup.

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Just as I predicted last week, the JLS single “The Club Is Alive” flared out embarrassingly quickly.  After entering at number 1 on 11 July, it crashed to number 7 the following week. To be fair, the midweek charts show it hanging on in the bottom end of the top 10, so it’s not going to plummet straight out of the charts.  Even so, it’s an anomaly in the current charts – not many number one singles still get there solely on the strength of hardcore fans who bought the record in the first few days.  Despite the turnover of number 1 singles, which has been fairly high this year, most of them stick around for a reasonable time.

As it happens, it’s a fairly quiet period for new releases.  That means the collapse in JLS’s sales has benefitted a single which has been on the chart for 7 weeks.

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(Aside: I normally try to avoid posting these things on the same day as a podcast, but the record won’t be number one this time tomorrow, so I’d better get it out of the way.  Look one post below for this week’s show.)

So, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” lasted a fortnight at the top.  It was replaced last Sunday by something we don’t see that often in the download era – a record that got to number one largely on the strength of fans buying it in the first few days.  The ability to download album tracks has largely blunted that sort of sales pattern, but it can still happen with the first single from a new album.

If you haven’t heard this before, prepare to ask yourself “What were they thinking?” in the first ten seconds.

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In England, they take the World Cup very seriously.  Those of you on the other side of the Atlantic may not fully grasp quite how excited they get down there.  The English operate on a strict schedule.  Whenever the World Cup or the European Championships come around (every second year, basically), they proudly declare that this will be their year, and that they will finally win a major tournament for the first time since 1966.  They get terribly wound up about it.  And then, when they invariably get knocked out in the quarter finals, they go into an enormous national sulk.

Here in Scotland, it works slightly differently.  The national team – for arcane historical reasons, the four components of the United Kingdom all enter separately – probably struggles to qualify at all, and if it does, the Scots are pretty much delighted to win a match.  I’m not kidding – just look at the official team song from 1998, Del Amitri’s “Don’t Come Home Too Soon”, a wistful ode to the distant dream of getting past the group stages.

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When the Official Charts Company started publishing the midweek charts, some people understandably wondered whether it might actually do more harm than good, by making it too easy to guess what would be number one on Sunday.  Fortunately, the British record buyers have turned out to be a little more erratic than that.

For example, last week, the midweeks had “Nothin’ On You” by B.o.B. returning to number 1; “Dirtee Disco” by Dizzee Rascal dropping to 2; and “Ridin’ Solo” by Jason Derulo climbing to 3.  But they’ve all been overtake by the record that placed at number 4 on the midweeks – “Gettin’ Over You” by David Guetta.

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It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these.  Partly that’s because the Roll Deep single managed three weeks at number one.  Partly it’s because I’ve been busy.  And partly it’s because the last couple of number one singles weren’t especially interesting. But never mind, some of the other new entries have more going for them.

We’ll kick off with the number 1 single of 23 May, which is…

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Having been exposed to some of the records that got knocked out in the semis, readers outside Europe might be vaguely interested to see what actually did well.

It certainly wasn’t the UK’s entry, “That Sounds Good To Me” by Josh Dubovie, which came last.  And bear in mind that the UK (like France, Germany and Spain) gets an automatic bye to the final because it puts up so much money towards the show’s production costs.  Belarus were only eight points ahead of us.  But if they’d come last, at least they would have had the consolation of knowing that they made it past the semis.  The UK entry almost certainly wouldn’t have.

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