{"id":1229,"date":"2012-01-16T21:15:20","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T21:15:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2012-01-16T21:15:20","modified_gmt":"2012-01-16T21:15:20","slug":"charts-15-january-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1229","title":{"rendered":"Charts – 15 January 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

An odd week. The midweek charts were practically dead, with a scattering of new entries right at the bottom. All of them have picked up pace significantly in the second half of the week, presumably because radio is now returning to normal, and listeners are slowly picking up on the new songs that are entering rotation.<\/p>\n

We also have a new number 1, as “Domino” by Jessie J<\/strong>\u00a0climbs to the top on its third week. \u00a0Regular readers will have picked up that I’m rather underwhelmed by it. It’s catchy enough, I guess, but there’s something about Jessie J herself that I find rather unconvincing. \u00a0I feel like I’m watching a string of tried-and-tested ideas that she’s picked up from studying other artists, with no real soul holding it together. \u00a0If you fed a load of pop songs to a computer and told it to make more based on the patterns it could discern, it’d come up with something like Jessie J. \u00a0This month’s template: the complete works of Katy Perry.<\/p>\n

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At any rate, this is Jessie J’s second number one, following “Price Tag”<\/a> last February. \u00a0Apparently she’s going to be a judge on the UK version of The Voice<\/em>\u00a0when it starts in March, so maybe that’ll help her shake off her vaguely stage-school persona. \u00a0(The other judges, according to Wikipedia: Tom Jones, will.i.am, and Danny O’Donoghue from the Script. \u00a0Now there’s a weird panel.)<\/p>\n

Further down the chart:<\/p>\n

Number 8 is a re-entry for “Titanium” by David Guetta<\/strong>. \u00a0This was one of the numerous tracks released in advance of Guetta’s album, and it reached number 16 in August; it’s now being promoted as a proper single, which is to say that it’s got a video. \u00a0Which… is basically X-Men on a budget, isn’t it? It was at 25 in the midweeks, so it’s clearly gathering steam. \u00a0At time of writing, iTunes has it mounting a challenge for next week’s number one.<\/p>\n

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Number 14 is “Kiss the Stars” by Pixie Lott<\/strong>, continuing her off the peg electropop direction. \u00a0The video is… well, I’m sure it looked exciting on the storyboard. \u00a0It’s climbed 20 places since the midweeks, so again, it may have legs. \u00a0Again, iTunes says it’s now in the top five.<\/p>\n

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Number 21 is Kelly Clarkson<\/strong>\u00a0with “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)”<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0Her track record with UK singles has always been a bit patchy. \u00a022 is a re-entry for\u00a0“Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People<\/a><\/strong>, which was just outside the top 40 last week. \u00a0This seems to be a spillover effect from a discount campaign on the album – having been reminded of Foster the People’s existence, a fair few customers have apparently also remembered that they’ve only had one hit. \u00a0And at\u00a023 is “International Love” by Pitbull ft Chris Brown<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0More of his usual routine, basically.<\/p>\n

Number 25 is a surprise re-entry for Birdy<\/strong>‘s version of “Skinny Love”<\/strong>, beating its number 17 peak from last spring. \u00a0This seems to be a rare instance of a song being propelled back into the chart after it was used in the first episode of ITV’s Dancing on Ice<\/em>\u00a0last weekend. \u00a0It was the backing track for Hollyoaks actress Jorgie Porter who, unexpectedly, turned out to be genuinely very good straight off the blocks – hence a lot of people sitting up and paying attention to the routine, and then wondering what that song was. \u00a0The routine isn’t on YouTube (well, it is, but not in a form that’s likely to stay around for very long), so here’s the alternative video for the Birdy song.<\/p>\n

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The last new entry is perhaps the most interesting. \u00a0“Somebody I Used To Know” by Gotye featuring Kimbra<\/strong>\u00a0enters at 36 – but since it was at 97 last week, that’s a big jump, and iTunes suggests it’s going to climb further. \u00a0Gotye is an Australian songwriter who’s been releasing records down there for almost a decade, both as a solo artist and as a member of the Basics. \u00a0In neither guise has he previously troubled international markets. \u00a0But this single was a massive hit in Australia last year, where it spent eight weeks at number one. \u00a0The international licensees have sat up and taken notice, and this track has already been number one in Germany, Austria, Belgium and Holland.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, it’s really very good. \u00a0Give it time, it builds.<\/p>\n

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Kimbra Johnson is from New Zealand and I assume they’ll try to launch her internationally on the back of this single. \u00a0Her solo material is rather interesting too; here’s her 2010 single “Settle Down.”<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An odd week. The midweek charts were practically dead, with a scattering of new entries right at the bottom. All of them have picked up pace significantly in the second half of the week, presumably because radio is now returning to normal, and listeners are slowly picking up on the new songs that are entering […]<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","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=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1240,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions\/1240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}