After last week’s hiatus, the march of the massive number one hits resumes…

32.  Kings of Leon – “Supersoaker”

YouTube is sparking some odd video clips these days.  That thing above is, obviously, not a video in the conventional sense – and it’s billed simply as an audio track – but by the same token it’s not a  lyric video, nor is it just a still.  It’s, well, over three and half minutes of various camera angles of a neon sign.

When the Wildhearts did this, it was a TV-baiting anti-video.  Here, it’s more a question of having something more interesting than a still photo to try and keep your attention on what’s basically an audio page for a little bit longer.

Anyway… this was a midweek release, hence the rather lowly chart position.  It’ll climb next week, but probably not by a huge amount.  It’s their first hit since “Radioactive” reached the top 10 three years ago.

28.  Calvin Harris featuring Ayah Marar – “Thinking About You”

(Caution: video NSFW.  Though come to think of it, if you’re in the sort of job that lets you watch Calvin Harris videos of any description during work, god knows what their standards are.)

Have you missed Calvin Harris’ favourite hook? Well, good news, because it’s back.  This is the eighth and, we are assured, final single to be taken from his “18 Months” album.  Ayah Marar is a Jordanian singer who moved to London when she was 18, and who’s been floating around the dance circuit for a while now.  It’s her first top 40 hit.  Here’s one of her own self-released singles, “Mind Controller” – it’s along pretty similar lines, to be honest.

26.  Lucy Spraggan – “Lighthouse”

Remember Lucy Spraggan?  She’s the X Factor contestant who charted last autumn when the public suddenly realised that the self-penned song she’d performed in the auditions, “Last Night”, was actually sitting on iTunes as part of her hitherto completely ignored album “Top Room at the Zoo”.  The track was hastily yanked from iTunes midweek, but she still got to number 11.

Given the inevitable difficulty of shoehorning Spraggan, a semi-jokey folkster, into the X Factor format, she went on to do the occasional original song and some odd semi-covers that blended existing choruses with original verses, and seemed to be doing quite well.  Part of that, of course, is the oddity of the format violation.  Her version of “Golddigger” (see below) kind of works on its own terms.  Her version of “Titanium”… well, yeah, that’s just a mess.

She ended up dropping out due to illness (X Factor will give you a bye for the first week, but not for two, for understandable reasons).

This is her first proper release since escaping the X Factor fold, and considering that it’s co-written by the bloke from the Ordinary Boys, it’s really quite decent.  It’s fairly obviously targeting the Mumford & Sons audience, and it’s rather less distinctive than her previous single, but it’s got a good strong chorus.

22.  Pink featuring Lily Allen – “True Love” 

Climbing 14 places as the promotion gathers pace.  It’s on course for the top 20 next week.

15.  JAY Z featuring Justin Timberlake – “Holy Grail” 

Climbing 9 places, and again, on course for the top 20.

14.  Avril Lavigne – “Here’s to Never Growing Up”

You remember Avril Lavigne, right?  Well, maybe you don’t, since this was at 10 in the midweeks, 14 on Sunday, and (at time of writing) has dropped to 31 on iTunes.  That still makes it her biggest hit since “When You’re Gone” in 2007, but that’s not saying much – her previous album only managed to place one single in the mid-teens.  It sounds like a typical generically-defiant Avril Lavigne single crossed with a bit of Taylor Swift.  Not a bad chorus, though.

9.  Breach – “Jack”

It’s been a while since we’ve had a house track this far up the chart.  Cute video, though, even if it does kind of run out of variations on the theme about a minute before the end.  Breach is DJ and sometime singer Ben Westbeech.  He’s British, but lives in Amsterdam these days.  This is his first hit, though he also co-wrote “Get Out My Head” by Redlight.

8.  Selena Gomez – “Come and Get It”

Yet another Disney Channel Princess working to reposition herself for a broader audience.  Gomez was in Wizards of Waverly Place, but more recently she’s been working hard on that all-important demographic shift.  She recently cropped up in Harmony Korine’s film Spring Breakers, which in career terms is more an exercise in loudly proclaiming that you aren’t on the Disney Channel any more, rather than making a film you expect many of your fans to actually see.

Gomez had a previous hit single in 2010 with “Naturally”, which made number 7, and actually wasn’t too bad.  But we haven’t heard from her since (and not for want of trying).  “Come and Get It” is a Stargate production, as if you couldn’t tell, and it’s a pretty solid one.

1.  Avicii – “Wake Me Up”

Officially there’s no proper video for this track, and that’s just the lyric video above.  Not that you could tell the difference.

The record company have been delaying the release of this one for weeks, which is why the dodgy cover by Spark Productions has been climbing from the lower reaches.  Naturally, it now vanishes without trace.  Meanwhile, “Wake Me Up” gets credited with the copies sold over two weeks of pre-sales (since the actual sale didn’t go through until last week), resulting in total sales of 267,000 copies.  That’s a staggering number – it beats Robin Thicke’s first week by over 70K.  It’s the highest single-week sale since the Hillsborough charity record last Christmas, and even that only beat it by a small margin.  In fact, to find a higher-selling record that was a regular release (i.e., not a charity record, an X Factor winner’s single, or part of a race for Christmas number one), you have to go back to Cheryl Cole’s “Fight for this Love” in 2009.

This is Avicii’s second number one, following “I Could Be The One” earlier in the year.  Like that track, it works his familiar rave hooks into a proper song, for which he’s got in a proper singer (an inexplicably uncredited Aloe Blacc) and sped him up a bit.  It’s probably going to be number one for a while.

Over on the album chart:

• “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke debuts at number 1, to nobody’s surprise.  His only previous album to chart in the UK was “The Evolution of Robin Thicke”, which made number 30 six years ago.
• “Electric” by The Pet Shop Boys at number 3.  They haven’t made it this far up the album chart since 1995, when the B-sides compilation “Alternative” reached 2.  General consensus seems to be that this album represents a return to form.  Here’s the lead single, “Axis” (which didn’t chart).

• And “Surfers Paradise” by Cody Simpson at number 30.  Teenage Australian pop singer who really ought to be aiming at the singles chart, but has yet to have any impact over there.  Lead single: “Pretty Brown Eyes”.