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.

For those of you who actually come here for the stats: this is Rihanna’s 27th top 40 hit and her sixth number 1 (the others are “Umbrella”, “Take a Bow”, Jay-Z’s “Run This Town”, “Only Girl in the World” and “What’s My Name”).  Producer Calvin Harris gets a featured artist credit, for his third number 1 after “I’m Not Alone” and Dizzee Rascal’s “Dance Wiv Me”.

But let me digress.  If you regularly search YouTube for new singles – as I do – then you’ll have noticed that a lot of people have clearly been wrestling the question of what to do before the “proper” video has been made.  One approach is just to stick up a still photo, but that’s very dull.  Another common solution, popularised by Cee Lo Green, is the lyric video – though even that still requires a bit of effort, otherwise you end up with something like this.  With Rihanna, we get something that the ITV Chart Show might have slung together.

Extraordinarily cheap videos are nothing new, but in the days when music videos were seen mainly on television, the context was very different.  The joke, essentially, was the band’s gall in submitting them to the broadcaster (or the record label) at all.  I’ve seen “Bastards of Young” by the Replacements cited as an example of this sort of thing, but it’s positively eventful.  Here’s the, uh, minimal video for “Red Light Green Light” by the Wildhearts (number 30 in 1996).

Or “Everybody Needs a 303” by Fatboy Slim (number 34 in 1997). To be fair, this was a last minute replacement for a proper video which was deemed so bad it was unusable.

The point being: you can do something more interesting, or at least momentarily confusing, with those three minutes of dead space in the placeholder videos, and you don’t have to spend very much money on it.  Possibly not even any money at all.

Anyway.  There are three other new entries on this week’s chart:

Number 20 is “Wherever You Will Go” by Charlene Soraia (which climbs to 11 in the midweek charts).  It’s from a Twinings tea advert, and it’s the first time folk singer Soraia has got anywhere near the top 40.  The original reached number 3 for the Calling in 2003.

Number 25 is “Radioactive” by Marina & The Diamonds, who seems to have been listening to a lot of Calvin Harris since we last heard from her.  Not altogether sure it’s a smart direction.  She was more distinctive before.  In this song, she beats a metaphor into the ground for three minutes.  (And before you ask, yes, “Marina & The Diamonds” is one person – Marina Diamandis.)

And number 27 is “Shake it Out” by Florence & The Machine, the second single from her upcoming album.  The lead single “What the Water Gave Me” made number 24 last month – so another artist going for the rapid-fire pre-release singles approach there.

Seven climbers this week – most notably, “Sexy & I Know It” by LMFAO leaps 13 places to number 7; “Fly” by Nicki Minaj is into the top 20; and the slow-burning “You & I” by Lady Gaga is now into the top 30, with the midweeks showing it continuing to climb.

Next week… it’s the first proper single from 2010 X Factor winner Matt Cardle!  And he’s not going to be number one.  Or even close.  Don’t say the words “Joe McElderry…”