Charts – 2 March 2014
A quiet week for new releases, coupled with a surprise number 1 that breaks a few records…
35. Kid Ink featuring Chris Brown – “Show Me”
Rebounding from last week’s number 75 to get a third run in the top 40. Not sure what’s going on here. It’s certainly hung around a while for a song that never made it above 23.
26. Starship – “We Built This City”
It’s being used in an advert. A number 1 hit in America, it only made number 12 in the UK on its release in 1985. Their only other UK hit, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, made number 1 in 1987.
I’m tempted to say that video has not aged very well, but honestly, I doubt some of it ever looked good in the first place.
17. American Authors – “Best Day of My Life”
Up 20 places as the British finally start paying attention to it. Adverts make wonderful adverts.
16. Ellie Goulding – “Goodness Gracious”
This has now moved 36-26-16, so it’s doing better than I feared it might. It also finally overtakes her other two current hits, “How Long Will I Love You” (which drops to 28 this week) and “Burn” (down to 38).
10. Paloma Faith – “Can’t Rely on You”
Do you need me to tell you it’s a Pharrell Williams collaboration? This is the lead single from Faith’s upcoming third album. She’s more of an album artist – and this is an unusually chart-friendly single release by her standards. Her only previous top 10 hit was “Picking Up The Pieces”, which made number 7 in 2012. She’s got a great voice, but I’m not completely convinced about it as a song.
Unusual. This has moved 28-29-9, and now gives him his second top 10 hit. The first was “Ordinary People”, which made number 4 in 2012 after being performed on The Voice. This is the first time he’s been this far up the chart with a regular release.
7. Foxes – “Let Go for Tonight”
Slow but steady career progress – after guest appearances for Zedd and Rudimental that her took her to 29 and 14, and a debut single that got to 12, Foxes now gets into the top 10. It’s a bit School Of Florence Welch, this, isn’t it…? It’s co-written by Tom Hull, who was one of the people behind “Can’t Remember To Forget You”.
6. Tiesto – “Red Lights”
Not the subtlest video. Tiesto is a Dutch producer, and astonishingly this is his first top 10 in a chart career that stretches back over a decade. (His first UK hit was “Urban Train”, which just missed the top 20 in 2001.) Or perhaps it’s not so surprising, since Tiesto has hitherto stuck doggedly to trance music, and this track marks a pretty blatant tack towards pop airplay. It’s ironic, then, that the version being pushed on Radio 1 is actually the drum and bass remix.
The uncredited singer is co-writer Michael Zitron.
1. Pharrell Williams – “Happy”
It. Will. Not. Die.
“Happy” entered the chart in early December and now has a chart record of 71-30-4-2-1-2-1-1-2-3-2-3-2-1. By returning to number 1 here, it does some remarkable things.
First, it returns to number 1 for a third time in a single chart run. Only two other singles have ever done that. One is “I Believe” by Frankie Laine, a juggernaut that topped the charts for a total of 18 weeks in 1953. The other is the rather obscure “Singing the Blues” by Guy Mitchell from 1957, though its final run was a single week where it was tied at the top. (“Singing the Blues” also has the unique distinction of seeing its run at number 1 interrupted by another version of the same song, by Tommy Steele. It’s quite the chart oddity.)
Second, it returns to number 1 after a five week gap – four weeks of Clean Bandit and one of Sam Smith. That’s the longest interruption to a number 1 reign since 1963, when the Beatles’ “She Loves You” returned to the top after a seven week interruption at the hands of “Do You Love Me” by the Tremeloes and “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Gerry & The Pacemakers.
Third, this is also the week it sold its millionth copy. That means Pharrell Williams has been credited on three million-selling singles within a year. That hasn’t happened since the Beatles. In fact, the only other artist who has had three singles sell a million in the UK within any time scale is Rihanna. And she only notched up a third when “We Found Love” finally notched up its millionth sale last July, almost two years after release.
Over on the album chart:
- “Bad Blood” by Bastille spends a second week at number one, continuing to reap the benefits of the Brit Awards. (So does “AM” by the Arctic Monkeys at 2.)
- “Morning Phase” by Beck is the highest new entry at 4. This is his first album since 2008. Apparently it’s a companion piece to his 2002 album “Sea Change”. The album market being an ageing one that favours ageing artists, this is actually his highest chart placing to date – the likes of “O-De-lay” and “Midnite Vultures”, from his late 90s peak, only made the lower end of the top 20. Sample track: “Blue Moon”.
- “Present Tense” by Wild Beasts at 10. An indie band who were nominated for the Mercury Prize back in 2009. Again, their highest charting album to date. Single: “Wanderlust”.
- “Thirtytwo” by Reverend and the Makers at 13. Their fourth album; they’ve done okay in the album market, but we haven’t heard from them in the singles chart since 2007. Single: “The Only One”. (The video looks like something from the Chart Show Indie Chart in 1992.)
- “St Vincent” by St Vincent at 21. Singer-songwriter who used to be in the Polyphonic Spree. This is her fourth album but the first to chart in the UK. Single: “Digital Witness”.
- “Oxymoron” by Schoolboy Q at 23. Rap. His third album, the first to chart. Showing up on a Macklemore single recently probably helped in terms of raising his profile. Single: “Man of the Year”.
I’m amazed that anything about We Built this City was ever seen as good.
Fortunately, so is Grace Slick….
Paloma Faith was on Danny Baker’s radio show this morning. Never heard of her before, but i did remember her when they mentioned she played Tom wait’s wife in Dr. parnassus.
I remember one of the regular commenters here once noting that, for all their commercial success in the 1960s and 1970s, Jefferson Airplane/Starship ended up with a shockingly insubstantial musical legacy. They were sort of every stereotype of the pop-culture take on the counterculture without too much more to recommend them. And yeah, even Grace Slick’s voice — the thing that does arguably distinguish the band in its various incarnations — can’t redeem Starship’s corporate rock schlock.
As to Paloma Faith, she has a fantastic voice and stage presence, and it’s interesting that her stage and interview persona aims for a kind of sunny eccentricity (despite the lovelorn song stylings of a lot of her singles). I suppose that’s why she hasn’t had much success outside the UK and RoI. (Is there a reason she does especially well on the Scottish charts?)
Paloma Faith has a good voice, but she keeps coming across as 2nd rate. Initially 2nd rate Winehouse, then 2nd rate Del Rey, now female 2nd rate Williams/Thicke. At least this latest incarnation has the gender-swap twist. But it’s really high-time for her to establish her own artistic voice.
I once downloaded a Grace Slick Best Of compilation, which collected songs from her solo career as well as the various Jefferson/Airplane/Starship bands she sang in. I was a little shocked at how insubstancial it all seemed. “Need Somebody To Love” is great, and I have a weak spot for “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”, but otherwise…
Huh…I always felt that Slick’s most influential, or at least most memorable vocal is “White Rabbit.”
And even “second-rate Del Ray” is better than “live Del Ray.”
The thing is, there’s more to classic Jefferson Airplane than just Grace Slick. As songwriters, Marty Balin, Paul Kantner, and Jorma Kaukonen were at least as good as she was. Problem is, it gave the band four very distinct styles that the group dynamics never really allowed to blend (they tended to vote on everything and the biggest voting bloc was usually Grace and whoever she was sleeping with at the time).
And while I’m a huge fan of them (something I attribute to ignoring everything they did after 1970) and while I think their albums hold up very well, I’m not sure they have any individual songs other than White Rabbit and Somebody to Love that I’d single out as great on their own, with the possible exception of Good Shepherd. I’d gladly listen to Surrealistic Pillow, Crown of Creation, or Volunteers in their entirety, I’m not sure I’d pick out any individual tracks that stand out outside the album context.
I was eight when Starship released “We Built this City.” I remember singing it and playing air guitar in the playground at school. We thought it was pretty rad.
Never saw the video though. Now that I see it, it has all of the best parts of the ’80’s in all of the worst possible ways. Mullets and hairspray, synth-pop and android-esque facial makeup. It’s all there at it’s awesome worst.
@Taibak: That’s also why Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady started theirt side project, Hot Tuna, kind of an electro-blues bit. My sense was always that Grace Slick and Paul Kantner pretty much hijacked Marty Balin’s band after Surrealistic Pillow came out, to the point that he eventually left the band entirely for a time.
I’ll bet this is the most anyone’s talked about Jefferson Aerospace on the Internet in years.
Omar: That’s my sense as well. If memory serves, Grace Slick and Paul Kantner were in a long term relationship (by Grace Slick standards) by the time they were working on Crown of Creation, so they pretty much took over. And where Marty Balin is slightly autistic, he didn’t stand a chance against their personalities. Then again, most of their best work in the 60’s was when Paul, Grace, and Jorma were getting more influential and they moved away from Marty’s blues influences into heavier psychedelia.
And Hot Tuna is completely awesome. 🙂