Owl City replaces Iyaz at the top of the singles chart while Florence + The Machine have a second week on top of the albums chart.

Owl City climbs to the top of the singles charts while Florence + The Machine have the number one album for a second week.

After leading all week in the midweek updates, Iyaz finishes the week at number two making way for the far superior Owl City as Fireflies becomes the year’s first great number one. Thus the UK finally catches up with much of the rest of the English speaking world, the song having topped the charts in the US, Australia and Ireland. Canadians seem to have been slightly less impressed as it stalled at number tow there. This is the first time there have been two successive number ones without any association with Simon Cowell since last October when Chipmunk replaced Taio Cruz. The Glee Cast’s version of Don’t Stop Believin’ climbs two places to number three. The karaoke club also have a new entry at number 36 with their excruciating version of Rihanna’s Take A Bow.

Example watched the sun come up in October last year. Now he has announced that he Won’t Go Quietly and he enters the top ten for the first time at number six. Now that he’s done that perhaps he can be persuaded to change his mind and go quietly. Please.

Continuing with the sound theme, Girls Can’t Catch have their second top 40 hit with Echo at number 19. The song has nothing to do with Ian McCulloch’s drum machine or Martha’s beach. It is also inferior to Echo Beach and anything by Echo and the Bunnymen.

The first time a song called Do You Remember entered the charts was in 1968 - it spent three weeks in the lower reaches of the top 40 between their big top ten hits, Thank U Very Much and Lily The Pink. Now Jay Sean has recorded a song of the same name in collaboration with Sean Paul and Lil Jon which is a new entry at number 23. Can’t we have The Scaffold back instead?

Pitbull and Akon enter at number 40 with Shut It Down. Even by the previous standards of these two, this is dreadful. Can someone shut them down?

Two songs make big moves up the top 40. JLS climb 22 places to number ten with One Shot while Biffy Clyro’s bizarrely titled Many Of Horror (When We Collide) climbs 18 places to 20. At a time when so many similar bands are struggling to have more than one hit single from an album, Biffy Clyro have done very well to have their third top twenty hit since last September. Jay-Z’s version of Empire State Of Mind with Alicia Keys has dropped out of the top 20 (at 21) but Alicia Key’s version without Mr Z has replaced it, moving up to number 15.

The organisers of the French equivalent of the Brit Awards seem to have added a new twist to the ceremony. Each year, one of the announcements of the winner of an award will be wrong. They did it last year and they did it again this year when Black Eyed Peas were proclaimed Best International Group. It only became apparent later that the winners were actually German band Tokio Hotel. Oops. In better news for the Peas, they still have the longest-running single in the chart this week as I Gotta Feeling reaches 30 weeks, 30 more than Tokio Hotel’s biggest hit managed. Among the departures, Michael Buble finally seems to have met whoever it was he was looking for. Most European kings and queens are cousins of each other. Both songs have dropped out.

After waiting six months for their debut album to get to number one in the albums chart, Florence + The Machine stay at the top for a second week with Lungs. As happened last week, Paolo Nutini is at number two and the album which led the way at the start of the week enters at number three. Last week it was Vampire Weekend (who entered the US albums chart at number one this week - hurrah!), this week it’s Lostprophets. The rockers from Pontypridd made it all the way to the top with their last album, Liberation Transmission 3 1/2 years ago but they have fallen just short with The Betrayed. The aforementioned Vampire Weekend drop to number nine in the week when it was confirmed that they will be appearing at Glastonbury this year.

Now it’s don’t shoot the messenger time. Two weeks after One Time entered the singles chart, there’s now a whole album of the stuff as Justin Bieber’s debut offering, My World, enters at number four.

The two albums leaving the top ten have dropped like a stone after entering the chart last week. Delphic plummet 20 places to number 28 but they are outdone by You Me At Six who drop right out of the top 40 from last week’s number five.

After a four year wait for their last studio album, Eels fans have had to wait a mere seven months for the follow-up End Times. It enters at number 21, three places below End Times. One Republic’s debut album, Dreaming Out Loud, entered at number two and spent six weeks in the top ten. As can happen in life Dreaming Out Loud is followed up by Waking Up which enters at number 29.

If you thought that last joke was a bit contrived, it’s got nothing on the makers of the sequel to the first Alvin and the Chipmunks film. Some alleged wit decided to call it The Squeakquel. Ouch. The soundtrack album of the same name is a new entry at number 22. It contains versions of various pop songs by the animated cast, a tradition which goes back at least as far as Pinky and Perky in the 1960s. I hope you’ll forgive me for not taking the trouble to listen to any of them.

For people who would rather listen to popular songs on the bagpipes rather than being sung by animated chipmunks, there’s a treat this week. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards have released their Ultimate Collection just in time for Burns Night tomorrow (25 Jan). It’s fair to assume that a good proportion of the sales (enough to get it to number 33) were north of the border.