I’m two weeks behind on this, so let’s race through the current week’s charts (albeit late) before it turns into three when tomorrow’s chart comes out.  Fortunately, they’ve been pretty quiet weeks.

The previous week’s number 1 was (as expected) “Payphone” by Maroon 5 featuring Wiz Khalifa, evidently not suffering too badly from the sales of spoiler cover versions.  Perhaps it even benefitted.  I still think it’s a pretty uninspiring song, though Samuel Bayer’s video cheerfully ignores it entirely in favour of blowing things up.

It dropped to number 2 in its second week out, but the midweeks show it rebounding.  The iTunes chart, presently, doesn’t.  Should be a close race, then.

“Payphone” is Maroon 5’s first UK number 1, though most would agree that their biggest hit remains “Moves Like Jagger”, which had the misfortune to be stuck at number 2 behind seven different songs last year, and spent four months in the top 10.

On to this week’s chart.

1.  will.i.am featuring Eva Simons – “This Is Love”

Hey, will.i.am’s made a record that’s kind of alright here.  It’s been a while since that happened.  Lyrically it’s the usual stuff, but it’s one of his better productions, and it segues rather well from the piano bits to the dance anthem territory.  It’s (probably) not going to have a second week at the top, but it’s a nice enough track.

The Voice UK may have failed to launch the careers of any contestants, but it hasn’t done the judges any harm.  Will.i.am in particular seems to be on something of a crusade to raise his profile in the UK.  Even though he’s been around for years, this is his first solo number one as the lead artist.  He also guests on “OMG” by Usher, which was number 1 in 2010, and he’s had five number ones as a member of the Black Eyed Peas – “Where is the Love” from 2003, “Boom Boom Pow”, “I Gotta Feeling” and “Meet Me Halfway” in 2009, and inexplicably “The Time (Dirty Bit)” in 2010.

Eva Simons is a Dutch singer-songwriter who does quite a bit of guest vocal work.  Her only previous UK hit was as the guest vocalist on “Take Over Control” by Afrojack, which made number 24 in 2010.

3.  Chris Brown – “Don’t Wake Me Up”

America’s most popular practitioner of domestic violence returns with another tiresome slab of autotune.  It is, however, currently at the top of the iTunes chart, which means it could well climb.

8.  Stooshe – “Black Heart”

This debuted at 4 last week, and rebounds on the midweeks, so it might be gathering momentum after all.  Stooshe are the cartoonish R&B girl group who had their debut hit with “Love Me” earlier in the year.  This one’s more of a Motown throwback ballad, and it’s really very good.  I’m not sure the public have quite figured Stooshe out yet – and I get the sense there’s a bit of image tweaking going on already, with this being a much more serious second single – but they’ve certainly got something, and there’s little or no competition in their genre right now.

12.  Taio Cruz featuring Pitbull – “There She Goes”

Taio Cruz has a stab at being a bit Spanish.  The sort of record they’ll be hammering in the tourist resorts, I imagine.  The video would appear to be brought to you in association with Tuborg; there’s some garishly obvious product placement around the 2:20-2:40 mark.

18.  Jay-Z & Kanye West – “Niggas in Paris”

An unexpected re-entry for a track that peaked at number 10 back in March.  They’re actually promoting a new single at the moment – I’ll come to it shortly – but the practical effect seems to have been to remind people about this one instead.  Still, it’s a good excuse to run the video again, which is a truly excellent piece of editing.  (Though they’re not joking about the strobe warning at the start.  This thing kills epileptics at twenty paces.)

25.  Muse – “Survival”

The lead single from Muse’s new album and, rather weirdly, the official song of the 2010 Olympics.  It has all the gentle, understated subtlety you would expect from Muse writing an anthem for the Olympic Games.  Which is to say that it’s an extraordinary slab of melodrama with tongue firmly in cheek that sounds as though it’s taking the piss out of the remit more than actually trying to fulfil it.  It drops 11 places in the midweeks, but no doubt the BBC will hammer the thing once their Olympic coverage starts, which will expose it to more people.

34.  Nicki Minaj – “Pound the Alarm”

That’s supposedly the official lyric video, though it’s a bit intermittent about actually including the lyrics. This is going to be the next single from her album, though previous single “Starships” is still in there at 19. It’s another of the Euro dance singles that make up roughly half of her utterly schizophrenic album, and it’s going to climb massively on Sunday.

37.  Jay-Z & Kanye West (featuring Frank Ocean) – “No Church in the Wild”

The one you’re meant to be buying right now, but evidently aren’t.  The video’s been out for a month and it’s taken this long for it to reach the top 40.  It’s the chart debut for Frank Ocean, though he’s probably got more attention of late for announcing his bisexuality, not traditionally an easy route where the rap audience is concerned.