If you haven’t heard our five-year anniversary podcast yet, with special guests Graeme McMillan and Jeff Lester from “Wait, What?”, then it’s one post down – and check out their latest episode over at Savage Critic.  Many thanks to both of them – I think it’s a really good episode.

And now… stuff!

39.  Rudimental (featuring Emeli Sande) – “Free”

The next Rudimental single, starting to pick up sales as the promotion takes off.   This is surely bound to go further, even though it doesn’t exactly have an instant chorus.  Sounds more like a typical Emeli Sande single than a Rudimental one.  Not sure about the video – I get they’re going for a big build up to the wing suit flying, but boy, there’s not much going on that first three minutes.

34.  Justin Bieber – “All Bad”

Another “Music Mondays” track.  This one’s doped up to the gills on valium, from the sound of it.

26.  Keane – “Somewhere Only We Know”

Their debut hit, which made number 3 in 2004.  We’ll come to the reason why it’s reappeared in a bit.

25.  Passenger – “Let Her Go” 

Re-entry, only a week after it finally dropped out of the top 40.  I’m honestly not sure why – it doesn’t seem to match up with any X Factor covers.

23.  The Killers – “Shot at the Night”

This is one of the two token new songs on the Killers’ greatest hits compilation, which enters the album chart at 6.  It’s produced by M83, which might lead you to expect something rather odder than this – it’s essentially a mid-80s mid-paced AOR track.  Still, it’s a different kind of 80s retro from what we usually see on the chart.

14.  Celine Dion – “Loved Me Back to Life”

We haven’t seen many tracks charting on the strength of X Factor results show performances this year, but here’s one that probably falls into that category.  Admittedly, the title track from Dion’s new album is her most straightforward bid for the singles chart in quite some time, and its her biggest hit in 11 years (though admittedly she’s been largely dormant in singles terms since 2003).  The lead songwriting credit goes to Sia Furler, best known these days the vocalist from David Guetta’s “Titanium”, and the track drags Dion some way in her direction in a somewhat successful attempt to broaden her audience.

13.  The Poppy Girls – “The Call (No Need to Say Goodbye)”

This is a Royal British Legion charity single for Remembrance Day.  The Poppy Girls are five daughters of British servicemen – apparently they auditioned tons of UK army kids, and there’s going to be an entire album of this.  (For the benefit of those overseas, the poppy is the long-established symbol of Remembrance Day, the idea being that poppies were the first flowers to re-establish themselves on the graves of World War I soldiers.)

It’s hugely sentimental, obviously, but then if you can’t do sentiment on something like this, when can you?  Given the parameters for this sort of single, it’s at the upper end of the quality range.  Once it gets going, I actually kind of like it – it’s got enough evident sincerity to carry off a lot of things that on paper shouldn’t work.  Or maybe I’m just particularly susceptible to adoring children right now.

The RBL have released charity singles before, the most striking probably being their self-explanatory 2010 effort “2 Minutes Silence”, still the only record to make the top 40 while containing no music whatsoever.  The idea was that and you got the video as part of the download bundle – the “single” was simply the soundtrack to the video (i.e., two minutes of ambient noise), but Radio 1 dutifully played the whole thing on the chart show anyway.  The sheer oddness of the thing, on every level (the Saturdays?!?), makes it surprisingly effective.  

10.  Robbie Williams – “Go Gentle”

Hey, this one was on the X Factor results show too!  This is the lead single from his upcoming (i.e., Christmas-targeted) album “Swings Both Ways”, notionally a follow-up to his earlier album of swing covers “Swing When Your Winning”.  This time it’s a mixture of covers and original songs, of which this is one – though whether it really counts as swing, so much as a Robbie Williams song with a classy MOR arrangement, is open to debate.

9.  Lady Gaga featuring R Kelly – “Do What U Want”

This has been out for weeks, but was previously ineligible for the chart because it was part of a package of instant gratification tracks for people pre-ordering the album “ARTPOP”.  Now that the album is out, it’s able to belatedly take its place on the singles chart.  (Judging from the iTunes chart, we may be returning to this topic next week, as One Direction are also now releasing tracks that are ineligible to chart.)

There isn’t an official video for this; the clip above is from Saturday Night Live.  It’s R Kelly’s first appearance on the chart since 2007, and his highest chart place since 2004.  I’m not entirely convinced he’s adding anything – honestly, he rather seems to have missed the point of the song.

3.  Ellie Goulding – “How Long Will I Love You”

According to the opening caption, this is part of a short film “shot entirely on a Nokia Lumia.”  Do you think by “short film” they mean “mobile phone advert”, maybe?

It’s also a charity single, this time for the annual “Children in Need” telethon.  Oh, and it’s on the soundtrack to the new Richard Curtis film.  And it’s on the reissue of her album “Halcyon”.

As you can probably guess just by listening to it, it’s a cover.  It’s an odd choice, though – the original is a Waterboys single from 1990 that didn’t even make the top 75 on original release, even though they had their biggest hit (“Whole of the Moon”) the very next year.  Actually, I kind of prefer Goulding’s version.

2.  Lily Allen – “Somewhere Only We Know”

Yes, folks, it’s this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert!  And it marks the return of Lily Allen, who hasn’t had a single out since 2010 – even her featured artist credits since then have been for people sampling her.  Basically, she’s taken an extended career break while having two kids.  Her proper comeback single, “Hard Out Here”, will be charting next week, so we’ll come back to her then.

The original was by Keane, and it re-enters at 26.  It remains their biggest UK hit, jointly with “Is It Any Wonder?” from 2006.

If you are particularly enthralled by the advert, John Lewis would like to remind you that an interactive ebook of “The Bear Who Never Saw Christmas” is also available, narrated by Lauren Laverne.  You can also follow the bear and the hare on Twitter, where no doubt they have many heartwarming shopping recommendations to share with you.

1.  Martin Garrix – “Animals”

Two semi-anonymous dance singles topping the charts in as many weeks?  That’s interesting.  We haven’t had that in years.

Martin Garrix is a Dutch DJ and this is his first UK hit under any name.  It’s been doing the rounds since June and has been a hit around Europe, though the UK is only the third country to send it to number one (after Belgium and Hungary).  Some British record labels still subscribe to the idea that you should hang on to records for ages to build up demand before releasing them – and it works on some level.   Of course, the flip side of pent-up demand is that the track plunges next week, and judging from the iTunes chart, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.

On the album chart, the Christmas releases are in full swing.  Might any of your relatives be interested in the following?

• “ARTPOP” by Lady Gaga at 1, to nobody’s surprise.  “Do What U Want” is on the singles chart at 9; none of the other pre-release tracks are still in the top 40.
• “Loved Me Back To Life” by Celine Dion at 3.  Her highest album placing since 2002 (and she has been releasing albums).
• “Salute” by Little Mix at 4.  Only one place below their debut album “DNA”, and it is a tough week for competition.  The single “Move” drops to 5 this week.
• “Direct Hits” by the Killers at 6.  Greatest hits album.  The single is at 23.
• “The Fabulous Rock ‘n’ Roll Songbook” by Cliff Richard at 7.  His website says this is his 100th album.  Only 65 charted, but that’s still pretty impressive.  As best as I can figure, the remaining 35 are coming from budget compilations (not eligible for the album chart due to price point), high-end box sets, and a handful of specialist releases for the Christian market.
• “Trust” by Alfie Boe at 8.  A fourth top ten album for the pop-classical tenor.
• “The Best of Keane” at number 10.  That’s happy timing.
• “On Air – Live at the BBC – Vol 2” by the Beatles at 12.  Self-explanatory archive compilation.
• “A Picture of You” by Daniel O’Donnell at 16.  Laugh if you want, but the grannies’ favourite has had 30 hit albums, and he doesn’t appear to have peaked.
• “Only One Man” by Russell Watson at 17.  Another pop classics perennial.