{"id":1847,"date":"2013-03-20T21:28:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T21:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1847"},"modified":"2013-03-20T21:28:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-20T21:28:36","slug":"charts-17-march-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=1847","title":{"rendered":"Charts &#8211; 17 March 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s get straight to it, shall we?<\/p>\n<p><strong>38. \u00a0Blake Lewis &#8211; &#8220;Your Touch&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WUPzSrKqQ-E?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Blake Lewis was the runner-up of\u00a0<em>American Idol<\/em> in 2007, since when he&#8217;s released a couple of albums in the States to sharply diminishing returns. \u00a0(If Wikipedia is to be believed, his debut album sold 309,000, and the follow-up managed just 10,000.) \u00a0With this, the lead track from his third album, Lewis hurls himself on top of the passing dubstep bandwagon and clings on for all his might. \u00a0It&#8217;s not horrible, actually, but it&#8217;s clearly the work of someone chasing trends.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s being used in an Internet Explorer advert, which presumably explains why it&#8217;s given him his first UK hit. \u00a0Judging from the midweeks, it won&#8217;t be around long.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ktvTqknDobU\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>36. \u00a0Imagine Dragons &#8211; &#8220;Radioactive&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s back again! \u00a0This is the third time this single has poked its head into the lower end of the top 40 since December, but the midweeks suggest that this time it&#8217;s actually going to go further.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/rtOvBOTyX00\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>27. \u00a0Christina Perri &#8211; &#8220;A Thousand Years&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another re-entry, and this one&#8217;s climbing in the midweeks too. \u00a0I honestly don&#8217;t know why it&#8217;s back this time. \u00a0In the UK, Perri is very much a two-hit wonder &#8211; this single (which peaked at 13 on its second chart run), &#8220;Jar of Hearts&#8221; (number 4 in 2011), and nothing else, at all. \u00a0Odd, really, considering that those two singles have been enough to make her a moderately well known name.<\/p>\n<p><strong>26. \u00a0Taylor Swift &#8211; &#8220;22&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AgFeZr5ptV8?rel=0\" height=\"300\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Taylor Swift is 23. \u00a0In this song &#8211; which is, as you may well have guessed, a Max Martin collaboration &#8211; she looks back on the dim, distant past when she was 22. \u00a0It naturally continues her highly successful repositioning as a pop artist. \u00a0It is, in fact, probably the best of this week&#8217;s new entries, but that&#8217;s not a high standard.<\/p>\n<p>Her previous single &#8220;I Knew You Were Trouble&#8221; is still up there at 14. \u00a0In days gone by it would have been deleted by now, to remove the competition, but that&#8217;s no longer possible.<\/p>\n<p><strong>18. \u00a0K Koke (featuring Rita Ora) &#8211; &#8220;Lay Down Your Weapons&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/x4DtV1jsiuU?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Bit of a dirge. \u00a0One of those very sincere rap tracks which plaintively exhorts us to give up gang membership and street crime &#8211; which is fine, but it&#8217;s a well trodden path and there&#8217;s not much else of note going on here. \u00a0It swandives in the midweeks, so I&#8217;m guessing this sold a few copies to devoted Rita Ora fans to get it this high.<\/p>\n<p><strong>17. \u00a0Nelly &#8211; &#8220;Hey Porsche&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Fh1ZFNoREjg?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Jesus, this is\u00a0<em>dreadful<\/em>. \u00a0I had my expectations set low &#8211; it&#8217;s a Nelly single called &#8220;Hey Porsche&#8221;, for god&#8217;s sake &#8211; but this is still bad enough to come as a surprise. \u00a0It&#8217;s an extended girl-as-car metaphor for people who thought Flo Rida&#8217;s &#8220;Whistle&#8221; was a bit too cryptic.<\/p>\n<p>Nelly was last in the chart with &#8220;Just A Dream&#8221; a number 8 hit in 2010, and has seen a further three singles miss the top 40 since then. \u00a0Shame this one didn&#8217;t join them.<\/p>\n<p><strong>6. \u00a0Nicole Scherzinger &#8211; &#8220;Boomerang&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xoRrGsgohYE?rel=0\" height=\"225\" width=\"400\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In what respect is Nicole Scherzinger like a boomerang? \u00a0In three respects!<\/p>\n<p>First respect! \u00a0If you put her down she keeps coming back. \u00a0That&#8217;s what the song is about. \u00a0She explains the point in a manner strident, perky and generic.<\/p>\n<p>Second respect! \u00a0If you hurl her to the top of the charts she comes straight back. \u00a0This was number one in the midweeks. \u00a0By the end of the week it lands at number 6. \u00a0That&#8217;s some mightily frontloaded sales there, something we don&#8217;t normally see outside the territory of particularly fan-driven boy bands.<\/p>\n<p>Third respect! \u00a0If you hurl her with sufficient force, she can fell a small marsupial.<\/p>\n<p>The big mystery, really, is how this ended up at number 1 in the midweeks. \u00a0It hasn&#8217;t had much radio support, on the eminently reasonable grounds that the radio stations don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s terribly good. \u00a0And Nicole Scherzinger isn&#8217;t an artist I associate with rabid first-day fan sales. \u00a0All a bit odd.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/youtu.be\/U41KPUfOSFk\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>1. \u00a0Justin Timberlake &#8211; &#8220;Mirrors&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I still think it&#8217;s miles too long, but what do I know. \u00a0Three weeks at the top is the longest run since &#8220;Spectrum&#8221; by Florence and the Machine last July. \u00a0Currently, it looks like he&#8217;s not going to make four &#8211; the Saturdays are leading in the midweeks and iTunes, which is nice for them, because they&#8217;ve never made number 1 before.<\/p>\n<p>On the album chart:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"line-height: 13px;\"><strong>&#8220;The Next Day&#8221; by David Bowie<\/strong> is, obviously, number one. \u00a0(And it&#8217;s holding up well in the midweeks, too &#8211; so there&#8217;s more staying power than the single had.)<br \/>\n<\/span><\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;What About Now&#8221; by Bon Jovi<\/strong> at 2. \u00a0Their fifth consecutive number two album in the UK. \u00a0Their greatest hits album re-enters at 31.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Exile&#8221; by Hurts<\/strong> at 8. \u00a0Second album from the alt-synthpop duo.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Pale Green Ghosts&#8221; by John Grant<\/strong> at 16. He&#8217;s an indie-folk type from Colorado. \u00a0Used to be in the Czars, if that helps.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Sound City: Real to Reel&#8221;<\/strong>\u00a0at 19. \u00a0This is the soundtrack to a documentary about Sound City Studios by Dave Grohl. \u00a0It&#8217;s original material from a range of artists, which is why it&#8217;s here and not on the compilations chart.<\/li>\n<li><strong>&#8220;Tales From Terra Firma&#8221; by Stornoway<\/strong> at 26. \u00a0More indie-folk. \u00a0They&#8217;re not from Stornoway, they&#8217;re from Oxford. \u00a0This is their second album. \u00a0The first one was called &#8220;Beachcomber&#8217;s Windowsill&#8221;, so you get the idea.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s get straight to it, shall we? 38. \u00a0Blake Lewis &#8211; &#8220;Your Touch&#8221; Blake Lewis was the runner-up of\u00a0American Idol in 2007, since when he&#8217;s released a couple of albums in the States to sharply diminishing returns. \u00a0(If Wikipedia is to be believed, his debut album sold 309,000, and the follow-up managed just 10,000.) \u00a0With [&hellip;]<\/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-1847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847","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=1847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1849,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1847\/revisions\/1849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}