If you were expecting Cilla Black to show up in this week’s singles chart, then let’s get your disappointment out of the way now.  “Anyone Who Had A Heart” did sell for a few days following her death at the start of the week, but it lands at 41, just outside our remit here.  Instead…

36.  Shaggy featuring Mohombi, Faydee & Costi – “I Need Your Love”

Shaggy has four number 1s to his credit (the earliest being “Oh Carolina” from 1993), but he hasn’t been seen in the top 40 since 2002.   So this is a name we haven’t heard in a while.  Not that we’re hearing too much of him on this track either, to be honest – as that catalogue of “featuring” credits hints, there’s not actually a lot of Shaggy on this track.

That’s because this isn’t a Shaggy record; the original version, “Habibi”, is in a mixture of English, Spanish and Arabic, and gives equal credit to all four artists.  Shaggy gets the lead credit on the English language version for marketing purposes.  This is just one of numerous localised versions.  Here’s the Russian version, which is completely free of Shaggy.

As for the other three credited artists, Mohombi is a Swedish-based singer who had a hit across Europe (but not in the UK) with “Bumpy Ride” in 2010.  Faydee is an Australian singer, but his family are Lebanese, which is why he’s singing in Arabic on the original version.  And Costi is a Romanian producer who’s had hits in various eastern European countries; he’s also associated with the Romanian girl band Blaxy Girls.  Faydee and Costi actually wrote the track, making Shaggy’s lead credit even weirder.

28.  Joe Weller featuring Emil – “Wanna Do”

This is an oddity.  Joe Weller is a YouTuber with two million plus subscribers, he’s mainly a comedian, and the video is as  excruciating as you’d expect from that background.  Despite that, and despite the fact that he’s released some novelty songs before, this is not one; it’s a completely straightforward dance track, and not out of place on the chart.

19.  Silento – “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)”

Along similar lines, here’s a viral hit that’s done well abroad but isn’t yet catching fire over here.  Silento is a 17-year-old from Georgia and according to Wikipedia, he’s still at school.  This was number 1 in the Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium.

17.  Joe Stone & Montell Jordan – “The Party (This Is How We Do It)”

Essentially a bootleg remix of Montell Jordan’s biggest hit “This Is How We Do It”, which got to number 11 in 1995.  Obviously, licensing that much of the vocal track requires a co-credit.  Jordan’s last UK hit was in 2000, after which he left the Def Soul label and his career pretty much fell off a cliff.  He retired from music in 2010 after becoming a born-again Christian, and he’s now a worship leader with the Victory World Church.

1.  One Direction – “Drag Me Down”

Released with no prior promotion, this is the first single by One Direction since Zayn Malik left the group in March.  History shows that the big boy bands usually have another album in them beyond this point, but this is still often the turning point at which people start to get the nagging feeling that the imperial phase is over and the peak is in the past.

When Malik left One Direction, he said he wanted to live as a normal 22 year old and spend some time out of the spotlight. Less than six months later, he’s signed to RCA.  It seems unlikely that One Direction just happen to release a new single out of nowhere, two days after Malik announced his solo career, but since they’re both still in the Sony empire, co-ordination seems as likely as any attempt at spoilerdom.

This most likely won’t manage a second week at number 1 – at time of writing, it’s at 7 on iTunes.  That could be taken as a sign that the record is selling exclusively to their fans, but bear in mind that it was a surprise release, so it wouldn’t be completely surprising if the broader audience took a while to hear the thing.  As boy bands go, One Direction have a pretty decent track record for releasing records which hang around on the chart long after their fans will all have bought a copy.

On the album chart:

• “Marks to Prove It” by the Maccabees at 1.  Their fourth album, and their first number 1.  Title track.
• “Blood” by Lianne La Havas at 2.  Her second album; the first, back in 2012, was nominated for the Mercury.  Single (which really deserved to be a hit): “Unstoppable”.
• “Coda,”, “Presence”, and “In Through The Out Door” by Led Zeppelin at 9, 10 and 12 respectively, all as “Deluxe Edition” reissues.
• “Water for your Soul” by Joss Stone at 13.  That’s her highest position for an album of original material since 2007.  Single: “The Answer”.  (The video is… very middle class.)
• “The Very Best of Cilla Black” at 14.  The inevitable surge of commemorative sales.  So here are her two number 1s, both from 1964: “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, and the less well remembered “You’re My World”.