I’ll be honest – “The Lazy Song” by Bruno Mars has been out for four weeks now and I’ve never actually sat through the whole thing.  But it climbs to number 1 this week, so I’ve dutifully watched it.

And, you know, it’s fine.  It’s catchy enough.  It’s got a decent video.  (The guys under the masks are Poreotics, the winners of season 5 of America’s Best Dance Crew.)  It’s a little bit different.  It’s kind of summery.  Personally, I find it a touch on the bland side.  But each to their own.

More remarkably, this is Bruno Mars’ fourth number one hit in less than a year, following “Nothin’ On You” with B.o.B., “Just The Way You Are”, and “Grenade.” There’s a decent amount of range there.  More to the point, four number one singles in a year is rare.  You might have thought it would happen more frequently in these days of serial collaborators notching up strings of “featuring” credits, but in fact, it hasn’t happened since 2000.

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Well, that was one I didn’t see coming.  The 2011 contest winner is an 80s-style duet from Azerbaijan – admittedly one with a decent chorus.  I wouldn’t have picked this as a standout, but I suppose it didn’t have much competition in its genre, which is always a help.

The contest actually credits the act as “Ell & Nikki”, but their names are Eldar Gasimov and Nigar Jamal.  Ms Jamal is an ex-pat living in London.  Azerbaijan only started entering in 2008, but they’ve made the top 10 every year since, so perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised by this.

Countries like Azerbaijan take winning the Eurovision seriously, and not without good reason.  They’re well aware that the rest of Europe doesn’t pay them much attention, couldn’t place them on a map, and vaguely suspects they’d be a poor choice of holiday destination.  But as winners of Eurovision 2011, they get to host the 2012 show.  That’s great publicity.  (For an illustration of this attitude, see the excellent documentary Sounds Like Teen Spirit about the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, and the segments about the girl from Georgia.  It’s on Netflix.)

Technically, they’ll put on a perfectly decent show.  The real question is whether they’ll screw it up with bad publicity from their human rights record.  This is, after all, a country where people are still jailed for mocking the President.  There is certainly a risk that they won’t get on well with the travelling retinue of Eurovision fans.  Of course, there’s also the possibility that a bit of international attention will encourage the authorities to get their act together; they’ll certainly have to relax their visa rules, which would currently prevent the Armenian entry from showing up at all.

Saturday is Eurovision Song Contest day, when people from around the continent of Europe gather around the television to wonder what on earth people in other countries were thinking when they submitted this stuff!

I won’t be following the show live, but having seen the semis, here’s a few quick pointers for the show.

The consensus seems to be that there isn’t a stand-out obvious winner this year.  My bet, though, would be on Sweden’s Eric Saade, the Scandinavian Zac Efron, which is a big electropop stomper, looked great at the semifinals, would actually sell in the real world, but manages to be Extremely Eurovision at the same time.

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This won’t take long – it’s another dead week on the chart.

LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” is number 1 for the fourth week, but it’s dodged a bullet.  The highest new entry, at number 3, is “Where Them Girls At” by David Guetta featuring Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj.  It could very easily have been number 1, but there was a screw-up with iTunes that cost it a couple of days sales there.

This is a rush-release after a bootleg remix of the song was leaked, so there isn’t a video yet.  Supposedly somebody obtained the vocal track illegally and put out a dodgy version with a rubbish backing track that Guetta wanted to distance himself from.  Whether this is true or not, the record company has certainly used it as the promotional hook for the track.  There doesn’t seem to be an audio version on YouTube (of decent quality), but let’s be honest, it sounds like a lot of other recent David Guetta records, so you’re not missing much.  Here’s the official trailer from Guetta’s YouTube channel, which gives you the general idea.

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After last week’s deluge of new entries, it’s a relatively quiet week this time round.  Lots of climbers, not much in the way of new songs.

LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem” stays at number 1 for a third week, making it the second single of the year to do so.  The biggest challenge comes from Bruno Mars’ “The Lazy Song”, which climbs from 15 to 2 in its second week.  But as of right now, LMFAO are still number 1 on iTunes (with no new releases anywhere in sight), so they could well manage a fourth week to match Adele.  Also climbing in the top ten, albeit only by one place, are Chris Brown at 4, Snoop Dogg at 5 and Katy Perry at 6.

This week’s highest new entry is “Guilt” by Nero at number 8, which is another dubstep crossover record.  This is at the more commercial end of the spectrum, given the radio-friendly vocal – many purists apparently prefer their dubstep completely instrumental, I hear – but it’s a great piece of production, with the slow build to a ridiculously overpowered bassline about a minute in.

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Late in the week, I know, but at least I’m still in time to get this post done before the new chart on Sunday.

“Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO spends its second week at number one, and looks set for a third.  But even so, it’s a busy week, with ten new entries.  The turnover of hits has slowed down a lot in the last couple of years; swapping out a quarter of the chart used to be fairly routine, but we don’t see it as much in the digital era.

That’s the highest new entry – “Unorthodox” by Wretch 32 featuring Example, at number 2.  Does the video really need a definition of the word “unorthodox” in the first few seconds?  I have more faith in the viewers than that.  Anyway, this is the second hit for Wretch 32, who reached number 5 in January with “Traktor”.  It’s also the biggest hit for guest rapper Example, beating the number 3 peak of “Kickstarts” last year.

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Now these, I’m really behind with…

When we left off, it was 20 March, and Adele’s “Someone Like You” had just been knocked off number one by Nicole Scherzinger’s “Don’t Hold Your Breath”.  That was four charts ago.  So what’s happened since?

Well, Nicole Scherzinger’s first week sales didn’t hold up, so on 27 March, “Someone Like You” returned to number one for a fifth week.  After that, for the two weeks I was out of the country, we had “On The Floor” by Jennifer Lopez featuring Pitbull.

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Ah well, nothing stays at number one forever.  After four weeks, “Someone Like You” by Adele finally slips to number two.  (Mind you, it’s  number one again in the iTunes chart as I write.  So you never know.  It could be back.)

And the new number one is…

…“Don’t Hold Your Breath” by Nicole Scherzinger.  Wikipedia describes this as “an empowering mid-tempo pop song”, which pretty much tells you what to expect.  It’s one of those post-break-up declaration-of-independence dance records; all pretty familiar, let’s be honest, but it’s done well enough.  The song has been doing the rounds for a while; there’s a demo version out there with vocals by Timbaland and Keri Hilson, though quite why somebody thought it was good material for him, I’ve no idea.

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Nearly the end of the week, best get this done while it’s still vaguely up to date…

If you’ve enjoyed reading the words “Adele is still number one” over the last couple of weeks, then good news – Adele is still number one.  “Someone Like You” spends its fourth week at the top, though to judge from the midweeks, commercial gravity is finally going to catch up with it on Sunday.

The turnover of number 1 singles has been pretty high for the last couple of years; the last single to stay at the top for this long was “The Fear” by Lily Allen in February 2009.  (Admittedly, six different singles managed it in 2008.)

Further down, it’s a relatively busy week.  The highest new entry is at number 5 for “Black & Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa.  He’s been releasing albums since 2006, but this is the first time he’s made the UK charts.  It’s an odd song to be a crossover hit, since it’s basically a mixture of standard rap lyrics and tributes to his home town of Pittsburgh.  But it does stand out from the crowd musically. To some extent it’s been the victim of a record label who still insist on hyping records for ages before releasing them – which resulted in a dodgy cover version by Hype Squad scraping the lower end of the chart last week.

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This won’t take long.

You might remember that a few weeks ago, some of the major UK record labels announced their new “on air, on sale” policy, where records would be made available to download as soon as they were released to radio.  There was some speculation that this might result in records slowly climbing from the bottom of the charts.  And what happened?  A string of records went straight in at number 1 with no prior promotion.

But things seem to be changing.  Once again, the top end of the chart is eerily becalmed.  There are only four new entries on this week’s chart, none of which make the top 20.  This is about as quiet as the charts get.

“Someone Like You” by Adele is number one, for the third week.  And to judge from the iTunes chart, it’s got a decent shot of holding on for a fourth.

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