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Jess Glynne holds on at number one
Jess Glynne gets a second week at number one with Hold My Hand. The Prodigy get a sixth number one from seven studio albums.

Jess Glynne holds off a strong challenge from Ed Sheeran to stay at number one in the singles chart. The Prodigy have their sixth number one album.

There was a good old-fashioned battle for supremacy in the singles chart this week. Unusually, it was between two songs that were in last week’s chart, although one of them benefited from a new version. To add to the uncertainty, the Easter break meant that there was no update on Friday.

Although Ed Sheeran was ahead in Wednesday’s update, the race to the top was won by Jess Glynne. She gets a second week at number one with Hold My Hand. In a marked contrast with recent years, we have now reached April and are only on our fifth number one single of the year. By this time last year, we had had nine.

Ed Sheeran’s Bloodstream has been in the lower half of the top forty since he performed the song at the Brit Awards ceremony in February. This week, a new version of the song, featuring Rudimental, was released. Under the current chart rules, the two versions are combined and, as a result, it leaps 24 places to number two.

James Bay’s Hold Back The River is down one place at number three, Years & Years are also down one place, at number four, with King. Mark Ronson an dBruno Mars are back up three places to number five. Uptown Funk has now spent 13 weeks at number one in the USA, the longest run of the 2010s. It is only the tenth song to spend at least 13 weeks at number one in US chart history.

When men (Daft Punk, for example) hide their identity, it is somehow considered to be part of the act’s appeal. When a woman does the same thing, it is described as weird or attention-seeking. Some of the comments on Twitter when Sia appeared on The Voice last weekend with her face covered by her hair were far from complimentary. The performance gave a boost to sales of Elastic Heart and it climbs thirteen places to number ten. After spending three weeks at number eleven (and two at number twelve) earlier in its run, the song makes the top ten for the first time in its twelfth week in the top forty. Belatedly, it becomes her seventh top ten hit in fifteen years. Having waited eleven years between the first and second, she has now had six top ten hits in under four years.

Despite a list of misdemeanours that might have been expected to kill his career, former N-Dubz member Dappy is still releasing what might loosely be described as music. Furthermore, people are still buying it. He has even got away with releasing a song called No Regrets with no apparent irony. His new single, Beautiful Me (in your eyes maybe, Dappy) is a new entry at number nineteen.

Olly Murs’ new single, Seasons, narrowly missed the top forty last week, falling one place short. This week, he climbs to number 34 to score his fourteenth top forty single in just over four-and-a-half years.

Jamaican singer Omar Pasley, known as OMI, enters at number 37 with Cheerleader. It has already topped the charts in a number of countries including Australia, Austria, France, Denmark and Germany. It is only the second song to reach the top forty on streams alone, following Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass.

Major Lazer is a project comprising American DJ Diplo (a featured artist on Sia’s Elastic Heart) and English DJ Switch. They are joined by Frenchman DJ Shake and Danish singer MØ (pronounced a bit like Moo) on Lean On, a new entry at number 38.

Luke Friend was a contestant in the 2013 series of X Factor having, apparently, already won something called TeenStar 2013. His debut single, Hole In My Heart, is a new entry at number 40. It is the second song of that name to be a hit this decade, following Alphabeat in 2010. Before then, the title had been entirely absent from the chart. I’m sure I’m not the only one who is reminded of There’s A Hole In My Bucket when listening to this song.

Alesso and Tove Lo re-enter at number 39 with Heroes (We Could Be).

Three long-running songs have left the top forty this week, two of them by Sam Smith.
I’m Not The Only One leaves after a run of 33 weeks. It therefore fails to reach the all-time top ten list. Stay With Me also drops out after 46 weeks, to remain in joint second place with Mr “Acker” Bilk’s Stranger On The Shore. George Ezra’s Budapest - which only became a hit at the third time of asking - departs after 41 weeks, leaving it in fifth place.

Budapest is joined in fifth place by Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud. Sia’s Chandelier is in seventh place on 40 weeks. Until last year, only one song - Stranger On The Shore in 1961/2 - had clocked up a run of 40 or more consecutive weeks in the top forty. Now there have been seven.

Last week, two of the new entries in the albums chart were from some of the most prolific artists of our time. This week’s number one album, by contrast, is by a band who take rather longer between releases. It is a little over six years since The Prodigy released their last studio album. In that time, Seasick Steve has released five albums and Joe Bonamassa seven (plus two as part of Black Country Communion). Prodigy fans are a patient lot, though, and their new album, The Day Is My Enemy, goes straight to number one. Of their six studio albums, only their debut set Experience (1992) has not topped the chart. They also scored a number one with a Singles collection in 2005.

James Bay’s Chaos And The Calm slips to number two after a week at the summit. Sam Smith’s In The Lonely Hour falls one place to number three in its 45th week in the chart. Ed Sheeran’s × is also down one place, to number four, in its 41st week. Sia’s album 1000 Forms Of Fear also benefits from her appearance on The Voice. It leaps 19 places to number five.

Singer / songwriter / instrumentalist Sufjan Stevens has, for many years, had to endure the label of an artist appreciated more by the critics than by the music-buying public. His first four albums failed to make the chart in the UK or his native USA. His fifth album, Illinois (2005), did a little better, reaching the dizzy heights of number 84 in the UK. Five years later, he finally had an album he could call a hit. The Age Of Adz reached number 30 in the UK and made the top ten in the USA. After another five-year gap, he has finally released album number seven, Carrie & Lowell. It gives him his biggest UK hit to date, as a new entry at number six. The album’s title is a reference to his mother, Carrie who died in 2012, and his stepfather, Lowell Brams.

The very long list of Liverpool bands with a hit album to their name increases by one this week as Circa Waves enter at number ten with their debut album, Young Chasers. Among the band’s cited influences are The Libertines and The Strokes.

If asked to name a Finnish musical act, some people may mention the classical composer Jean Sibelius while others might remember Eurovision winners Lordi. For most people, that would probably be it. Perhaps some chart geeks would be able to name Nightwish, whose sixth studio album, Dark Passion Play, reached number 25 in 2007. They might also be named by biologist Richard Dawkins, who appears on their eighth album, Endless Forms Most Beautiful. The band, whose style is described as symphonic metal, grab themselves a second hit as it lands at number twelve. Whether the album hangs around for long enough to be remembered remains to be seen. Regardless, one of Britain’s best-known atheists can now claim to have appeared on a hit album on Easter Sunday.

Dublin duo Hudson Taylor (brothers Alfie and Harry Hudson-Taylor) make their well-deserved chart debut with their first album, Singing For Strangers, at number 24. Their style is a little like a mixture of Simon & Garfunkel and Jake Bugg. The album even includes a song called Trouble Town, but it is not a cover of the song on Bugg’s debut.

After their first five albums all failed to reach the charts in the UK, American band Death Cab For Cutie’s next two releases both reached number 24. Album number eight, Kintsugi, is a new entry at number 28. The band are named after a song by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, best known for their song Urban Spaceman. Viv Stanshall of the Bonzos provided the drunken ramblings on Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells album.

French producer Hugo Pierre Leclercq, recording as Madeon had two top forty singles in 2012 with Icarus (not the Bastille song) and Finale. The latter song looked as if it might have been aptly named as he hasn’t been anywhere near the top forty since then. He puts that right this week as his debut album, Adventure, enters at number 30. Coincidentally, one of the songs on the album was co-written by - and features vocals by - Dan Smith of the aforementioned Bastille, a band who were, of course, named after Madeon’s home country’s national day. Other co-writers include James Napier (co-writer of Sam Smith’s Stay With Me) and Mark Foster of Foster The People.

Steve Hackett’s limited chart success in recent years has been confined to albums of reworkings of songs by his former band, Genesis. This week, he has his first top forty album with original material for over thirty years as Wolflight enters at number 31.

American rappers Hollywood Undead get their first top forty entry, at number 34, with their fourth album, Day Of The Dead.

Canadian band Godspeed You! Black Emperor narrowly failed to break into the top forty for the first time in 2012, when their fourth album Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! stalled at number 41. The follow-up, Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress, finally breaks their duck. It enters at number 37.

London Grammar’s If You Wait re-enters at number 36 and Kodaline’s Coming Up For Air is back at number 29.

Two weeks ago, I mentioned the death of Andy Fraser who co-wrote Free’s All Right Now, a song that charted several times in a short period. Another such song, and coincidentally also with a free connection, was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird. In another link with the Free song, it also charted as a song on an EP. The Free Bird EP charted in 1976, 1979 and 1982. Their original drummer, Bob Burns, died in a car crash on Friday (3 April). He had left the band by the time Free Bird became a hit in the UK, but was a member at the time it was recorded. The band have suffered from transport accidents in the past. In 1977, three members were killed in a plane crash.

Thanks to the Official Charts Company website for many of the statistics used in this commentary.
Published on: 2015-04-05 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 5993 Views
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