The World Cup is here, which means a batch of football-related singles make the chart.  Strangely, one of the isn’t really here because of the World Cup at all.  Meawhile, at the bottom end of the chart, basically random stuff!

36.  Lil Wayne featuring Drake – “Believe Me”

The lead single from Lil Wayne’s upcoming album “Tha Carter V”.  Strangely, it has no video yet and isn’t officially on YouTube (not that it’s hard to find unofficially).  Wayne has appeared as a guest on tons of tracks dating back to 2005, but he’s had very little UK success in his own right; this is only the third time one of his own singles has charted.  And one of the other two had Bruno Mars on it.

31.  Zedd featuring Foxes – “Clarity”

Originally a number 29 hit last spring, this has been hanging around outside the top 40 for a few weeks; I can only guess somebody’s been repromoting it in the wake of Foxes’ solo album.

30.  Raleigh Ritchie – “Stronger Than Ever”

Raleigh Ritchie is a pseudonym used by actor Jacob Anderson for his music career; he’s actually best known for playing Grey Worm in Game of Thrones.  This track has charted because ITV is using it in trailers.

29.  Pitbull featuring Jennifer Lopez and Claudia Leitte – “We Are One (Ole Ola)”

The official single of the World Cup, brought to you by the same sort of vaguely grandiose pro-human sentiments normally confined to the Eurovision Song Contest.  Pitbull doesn’t really lend himself to wistful proclamations of global one-ness, but he’s perfectly happy to stand next to some Brazilian women in the video and take the money.  Pretty mediocre, but it’s the official single of an entire tournament, what did you expect?

If this doesn’t go further – and it probably will, since it only started selling in the latter part of the week –  it’ll be Pitbull’s lowest chart placing as a lead artist since “Hey Baby (Drop It To The Floor)” got to number 2011 in 38.  If that doesn’t sound like so long ago, then bear in mind he’s released nine singles since then, and guested on a further eight.  The man is a veritable conveyer belt.

This is the third consecutive Jennifer Lopez single to be a collaboration with Pitbull.  Claudia Leitte, making her first UK chart appearance, is a Brazilian pop star lending some local authenticity to the proceedings, or as much local authenticity as a Pitbull soccer single is ever going to have.

27.  David Baddiel, Frank Skinner & The Lightning Seeds – “Three Lions”

A number 1 for Euro 96 and the 1998 World Cup, and a hit on re-issue in 2002 and 2006, this is the England football single that actually has something going for it as a proper song.  A song about the experience of being an England fan, admittedly, but it’s got more going on then basic rooting for the team.  There isn’t an official England single this year.  Reportedly the plan was to release a cover of Take That’s “Greatest Day”, which got as far as being recorded before being discreetly shelved in an act of audio mercy.

21.  Skepta featuring JME  – “That’s Not Me”

Now, see, I actually like this, but there’s something a bit odd about lyrics proclaiming the remarkable financial success engendered by your recording career (“Now I’m in a new whip counting the big stack”), on a video that looks like it’s escaped from the ITV Chart Show Indie chart.  Then again, maybe it’s precisely his frugal approach to production values that has made him so profitable.

It’s Skepta’s seventh hit; technically his biggest was as a guest on Wiley’s number 3 hit “Can You Hear Me? (Ayayaya)” in November 2012, which was the last time we heard from him.  In his own right, his biggest hit was “Rescue Me”, which got to number 14 in 2010.  JME, who also appeared on the Wiley single, and showed up recently on “German Whip”, is Skepta’s brother.

There’s also a remix featuring a ton of UK rappers, which has its own video, not that it’s much more elaborate.

7.  Rik Mayall – “Noble England”

Rik Mayall died on Monday.  As an actor, you wouldn’t expect him to have left any records that could be sent into the chart by commemorative purchases. We could very easily have been left with people buying the Comic Relief cover version of “Living Doll” that reached number 1 in 1986 (where he appeared as one of the cast of The Young Ones).

But by a weird coincidence, Mayall also made an unofficial World Cup single.  Consisting of a football chant with Mayall delivering a modified Shakespeare speech over the top, it sank without trace on its release in 2010 because, well, it’s not particularly good.  But people have been reminded that it exists by an online campaign, prompted by relentless self-publicist Jon Morter, who began the Rage Against The Machine campaign back in 2009 and seems to have nothing better to do with his time than to repeat the exercise annually with diminishing returns.

3.  Tiesto featuring Matthew Koma – “Wasted”

The soft launch of Matthew Koma’s career continues, with his third guest appearance of the year.  The first was on Hardwell’s “Dare You” in January (number 18), and the second was on Showtek & Justin Prime’s “Cannonball” in April (29).  The track continues Tiesto’s detour from clubs into straightforward pop, and gives him his highest chart place to date, beating the number 6 peak of his previous single “Red Lights”.  For someone who had his first hit in 2001, and had never made the top 10 before this year, it’s a pretty striking improvement in his fortunes.

1.  Ella Henderson – “Ghost”

Ella Henderson came sixth in the 2012 series of X Factor, but got signed anyway; Simon Cowell is smart enough to know that the voting on his show bears very little resemblance to what can actually be sold to music buyers in the real world.  They’ve taken some time to prepare Henderson before releasing a debut single, so she’s clearly a major project.  It’s a Ryan Tedder song, in the radio-friendly anthem territory that he seems to have staked out for himself.

Since 2012 was the first year in which we were spared an X Factor finalists charity single, this is her chart debut.  And judging from the iTunes chart, this could be the one that finally breaks the streak by hanging on for a second week.  Watch this space!

On the album chart, a busy week.  Leaving aside some back catalogue re-entries that are presumably being marked down somewhere…

• “48:13” by Kasabian at number 1.  The name is the running time, of course. The single “eez-eh” is at 23.
• “Lazaretto” by Jack White at 4.  His second solo album, following 2012’s “Blunderbuss” (which was a number 1).  Video for the title track.
• “Whispers” by Passenger at 5.  His fifth album, and the second to chart, after his breakthrough hit “Let Her Go” (which was on the last album).  Single: “Scare Away the Dark”.
• “Blue Smoke” by Dolly Parton at 6.  That’s surprisingly high for a Dolly Parton album; country is not a big genre in the UK, and while her previous album made the top 10, that was unusual for her.  She did have a couple of top 10 hits back in the mid-70s (“Jolene” and “Islands in the Stream”), but for the most part she’s better known in this country than actually bought.  Even the karaoke standard “9 to 5” only got to 47.  Single: “Home”.
• “Stay Gold” by First Aid Kit at 11.  A Swedish folk-country duo, big in their home country, whose previous album got to number 35 here.  Single: “My Silver Lining”.
• “Great Western Valkyrie” by Rival Sons at 14.  An American rock band, again previously found at the lower end of the album chart.  Single: “Open My Eyes”.
• “Stockholm” by Chrissie Hynde at 22.  Debut solo album from the Pretenders singer.  Single: “You or No One”.
• “Quadrophenia – Live in London” by The Who at 28.  Live album recorded last summer.
• “Distant Satellites” by Anathema at 33.  Long-serving band finally charting on their tenth studio album.  Wikipedia describes them as a prog/gothic rock band, but the title track actually sounds more like Radiohead in electronica mode.
• “Solitaire” by Charlotte Jaconelli at 40.  Erk.  This is one half of Jonathan & Charlotte, the Britain’s Got Talent alumni who had a couple of easy listening albums go top ten.  Splitting them into two solo acts was presumably supposed to result in two mass market sellers; a number 40 placement suggests something has gone horrendously wrong in the calculation.