{"id":276,"date":"2010-04-05T20:29:41","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T19:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=276"},"modified":"2010-04-06T19:01:33","modified_gmt":"2010-04-06T18:01:33","slug":"number-1s-of-2010-4-april-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.housetoastonish.com\/?p=276","title":{"rendered":"Number 1s of 2010 – 4 April 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every so often, the charts throw up a number 1 single that genuinely surprises me, because I simply didn’t think the band had that much support.\u00a0 Or because I’d forgotten they existed.\u00a0 This is such a week, for both reasons.<\/p>\n

“Telephone” managed two weeks at the top for Lady Gaga, although it has to be said that there wasn’t exactly much competition from new releases – the turnover of new hits has declined to a level rarely seen outside the Christmas break.\u00a0 But this week it’s shouldered aside by a two-way race for the Easter number one.\u00a0 (Actually, it’s sort of a three-way race… but I’ll come back to that.)<\/p>\n

And the winners are… Scouting for Girls<\/strong>, with “This Ain’t a Love Song”<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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Really? Scouting for Girls? Really?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It’s not that I can’t see the appeal.\u00a0 Scouting for Girls are a London band who are sometimes misclassified as indie, presumably on the basis that they play instruments.\u00a0 In fact, they’re really more of a throwback to the days when pop bands were actual bands<\/em>; musically, they exist somewhere in a hinterland between indie pop and James Blunt or Take That.\u00a0 And that’s a market which isn’t exactly oversaturated, so you can see why there’s a place for them. But their natural habitat isn’t the NME so much as the soundtrack to a Richard Curtis film. Nothing wrong with that.<\/p>\n

“This Ain’t A Love Song” – and by the way, if the title sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking of either the classic “This Is Not A Love Song” by Public Image Limited<\/a> (number 5 in 1983) or the decidedly less classic “This Ain’t A Love Song” by Bon Jovi<\/a> (number 6 in 1995) – is the lead single from Scouting for Girls’ second album. The first one came out back in 2007 and spawned five top 40 hits, the biggest and best known being “She’s So Lovely”, which reached number 7. (The non-embeddable YouTube version is here.)<\/a><\/p>\n

The others, if you’re wondering, are “It’s Not About You”<\/a> (number 31), “Elvis Ain’t Dead”<\/a> (number 8), “Heartbeat”<\/a> (number 10) and “I Wish I Was James Bond”<\/a> (number 40, but then it came out over a year after the album). Nonetheless, we’re dealing here with a band who haven’t released a record in ages, who haven’t troubled the top 10 in over two years, and who haven’t previously made the top 5, so their sudden appearance at number 1 is a bit unexpected.\u00a0 That said, while they’ve been away, “She’s So Lovely” and “Heartbeat” have both become established staples of compilation albums, so they’ve cemented their reputation.<\/p>\n

Coming in behind them at number 2 is Plan B with “She Said”, the second single from his “Defamation of Strickland Banks” concept album.\u00a0 Formerly a rapper (who never made the top 40 in those days), Plan B has reinvented himself as a soul act of sorts.<\/p>\n

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This is his third single, following “Stay Too Long”<\/a> earlier in the year, and his guest vocal on the excellent “End Credits”<\/a> by Chase and Status from 2009. Both of those reached number 9, so this seemingly eccentric new direction is evidently paying dividends. Great video, too.<\/p>\n

The other top 10 new entry this week is a highly unusual one – “History Makers” by Delirious?, entering at number 4.\u00a0 Delirious? are something we don’t see very often in the top 40 – Christian worship music.<\/p>\n

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Why don’t we see more Christian music in the charts?\u00a0 Well, Britain’s not a very religious market.\u00a0 But that’s not really it, because secular audiences have never had a problem with gospel choirs or the Hallelujah Chorus.\u00a0 It’s probably more significant that the market for Christian music is fairly insular; it tends to get sold through specialist outlets and it’s not frequently promoted to a mainstream audience.\u00a0 To be honest, I’m not quite sure how comprehensively the Official Chart Company covers Christian record stores.\u00a0 There’s also the fact that a lot of Christian music tends to be evangelical in character; it doesn’t quite have the universality of some religious music.\u00a0 And of course, a lot of it really isn’t very good (but then plenty of mediocre records make the charts, so let’s not overstate that as a factor).<\/p>\n

Delirious? are something of an exception to the rule.\u00a0 They recently disbanded after a decade-long career which saw occasional attempts to market them to mainstream audiences, with moderate success.\u00a0 “History Maker”, a 13-year-old album track and a staple of their live set, is actually their eighth top 40 hit.\u00a0 Until now, their biggest hit was See the Star”<\/a>, which reached number 16 in 1999.\u00a0 Now, that said… while they’ve charted fairly often, they never stick around for very long.\u00a0 In fact, all but one of their singles dropped out of the top 40 after a single week, and out of the top 75 after two.\u00a0 So it’s very much a niche audience – but a significantly bigger one than most British Christian bands manage.<\/p>\n

Why are they here? Because of a Christian Facebook campaign to try and get a Christian single to number 1 for Easter.\u00a0 Historically, nobody has attributed any particular significance to the Easter number 1; this is something of a parody of the Rage Against The Machine campaign over Christmas, and fair enough, really.\u00a0 Obviously they didn’t make it to number 1, but it has to be said that number 4 isn’t bad.\u00a0 Plenty of people try to organise this sort of campaign and get nowhere.\u00a0 Of course, the campaign was asking people to download all three available versions of the song, so there are probably a lot of repeat purchases in here (as with RATM), but it’s still a surprisingly good showing.<\/p>\n

Also charting over the last two incredibly quiet weeks…<\/p>\n