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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