{"id":1054,"date":"2011-09-21T18:36:57","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T17:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1054"},"modified":"2011-09-21T21:20:16","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T20:20:16","slug":"charts-18-september-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1054","title":{"rendered":"Charts – 18 September 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is time once again to bow before our overlord Simon Cowell. \u00a0Yes, just in time for the new series of X Factor<\/em>… One Direction<\/strong>\u00a0are back. \u00a0And this time they’re McFly! \u00a0Well, kind of, anyway.<\/p>\n

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With X Factor<\/em>\u00a0about to launch in America, a whole new nation is, one suspects, about to be exposed to the dubious charms of the\u00a0ad hoc<\/em>\u00a0group.<\/p>\n

You see, the X Factor<\/em>\u00a0has four categories – boys, girls, over-whatever-age-it-is-this-year, and groups. \u00a0One judge mentors each category. \u00a0This sounds like a vaguely sensible idea, except for one thing: it’s a lot harder to find decent groups than decent individual singers, for fairly obvious reasons. \u00a0The groups are almost invariably the weakest division, and in Britain the show has pretty much given up pretending otherwise. \u00a0JLS, who actually did audition as a fully-formed group, were a notable exception. \u00a0But for the last few years, the show has resorted to padding out the group category by assembling its own boy- and girl-bands from auditionees rejected from their own categories. \u00a0Each year this is routinely presented as a sudden and surprising decision by the judges. \u00a0The editors of the X Factor<\/em>\u00a0are nothing if not easily surprised.<\/p>\n

One Direction were the makeweight boy band for 2010, and they had at least one advantage over their forerunners: at least they looked<\/em>\u00a0like a group. \u00a0David Arnold branded them “Five Guys Named Bieber”, which is a fair description of how they were presented on the show. \u00a0And for a change, the all-important teenage girl audience actually liked this bunch – even if Twitter was faintly bemused by the group’s assigned name. \u00a0(“Wand Erection…”?) \u00a0They made it to the finals, and came third. \u00a0Their female counterparts Belle Amie got knocked out in week four.<\/p>\n

Now, in time to promote their album on the live shows, One Direction are back, and they dutifully go straight to number one with a single that’s actually quite decent in a Disney Channel sort of way. \u00a0There is in fact a gap in the market for a boy band right now; the Wanted could do with some competition. \u00a0Cowell might be on to something here.<\/p>\n

This is the eighth straight week in which we’ve had a new number one (and the midweeks say we’ll make it nine on Sunday). \u00a0Technically it breaks an unusually long run of nine consecutive number one singles by UK artists, since one member is Irish, though I suspect 80% British will be good enough for most people who care about such things.<\/p>\n

This week’s two notable climbers are “Cheers” by Rihanna<\/a> at 15 (up from 26) and “Fly” by Nicki Minaj ft Rihanna<\/a> at 26 (up from 38). \u00a0Both are still climbing in the midweeks, so evidently having two singles out at once is doing Rihanna no harm.<\/p>\n

The other new entries are quite some way down, and mostly logjammed at the bottom end of the chart. \u00a0Number 20 is “AKA… What A Life!” by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which is officially the second single from his solo album, but doesn’t actually have a video yet. \u00a0What it does<\/em>\u00a0have is a fairly terrible Vauxhall advert<\/a> which the company rather astoundingly describes as “celebrating our proud sponsorship of the home nations football teams”, despite being entirely about England. \u00a0Strangely enough, this sort of thing tends not to go down very well in Scotland, Ireland or Wales.<\/p>\n

Number 28 is “Days Are Forgotten” by Kasabian<\/strong><\/em>, who haven’t been around for a couple of years. \u00a0Not much has changed; they still write a decent hook, they still get a bit plodding at time, but they do seem to have eased off on the earnestness a bit. \u00a0The album “Velociraptor” is number one in the midweek charts.<\/p>\n

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Number 31 is “Without You” by David Guetta featuring Usher<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, one of the preview tracks for Guetta’s album that went largely unnoticed in its first week, but is now starting to take off. \u00a0Probably because they released an incomplete lyric video last week. \u00a0It’s going to climb.<\/p>\n

At 33, “Go” by Delilah<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is the solo debut for a woman who did guest vocals on a Chase & Status single, “Time”<\/a>, back in April. \u00a0Loosely based on “Ain’t Nobody” by Chaka Khan<\/a> (number 8 in 1984). \u00a0Odd choice of single – it’s not exactly a dancefloor anthem, more of a gentle shimmery number.<\/p>\n

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Number 38 is a slow start for “You and I” by Lady Gaga<\/em><\/strong>, though it is<\/em>\u00a0the fourth single from her album. \u00a0It’s another of her eighties-soft-rock songs, which she doesn’t normally release as singles. \u00a0It’s going up in the midweeks, but not by much<\/em>, and I’m not sure it’s necessarily what the public expects from her. \u00a0Though the video is, well, more what you’d imagine.<\/p>\n

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Number 39 is a re-entry for “Cannonball” by Damien Rice<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, which scraped the top 20 back in 2004. \u00a0It’s an X Factor<\/em>\u00a0audition piece, needless to say, and it’s going to shoot up the chart on Sunday, so I’ll come back to it then. \u00a0And number 40 is a surprisingly muted entry for “Body & Soul” by Tony Bennett & Amy Winehouse<\/strong><\/em>, the posthumous single which was recorded for Bennett’s duets album. \u00a0Admittedly, it was a midweek release (timed to coincide with Amy’s birthday), but still.<\/p>\n

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This may not be the last we hear of her. \u00a0There was<\/em>\u00a0an uncompleted new album, which the record company had apparently knocked back; one suspects they might revisit that decision, no doubt in a wholly sincere newfound appreciation of its merits. \u00a0As for Tony Bennett, this (just) returns him to the top 40 for the first time in over 45 years. \u00a0His biggest UK hit was “Stranger in Paradise”<\/a>, a number 1 hit in 1955. \u00a0Few would have bet on his career continuing beyond Amy Winehouse’s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is time once again to bow before our overlord Simon Cowell. \u00a0Yes, just in time for the new series of X Factor… One Direction\u00a0are back. \u00a0And this time they’re McFly! \u00a0Well, kind of, anyway. With X Factor\u00a0about to launch in America, a whole new nation is, one suspects, about to be exposed to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1054"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1058,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1054\/revisions\/1058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}