Sam Smith gets a second week at the top of the singles chart. Foo Fighters have their fourth number one album, ahead of Gary Numan's first top ten album for over 30 years.
Sam Smith stays at the top of the singles chart. Foo Fighters get their fourth number one album.
Sam Smith gets a second week at the top of the singles chart with Too Good At Goodbyes providing further evidence that we are returning to the days when one-week number ones are relatively rare. This year has - so far - seen six (one of them purely due to the variable streaming ratio) whereas last year we had just one.
Dua Lipa’s New Rules was not far behind Sam Smith all week and has to settle for another week at number two. Pink’s What About Us climbs back up one place to number three swapping places with Taylor Swift’s Look What You Made Me Do.
Followers of the midweek updates this week may have had a moment of panic when they saw the arrival of a song called Rockstar in the top forty. Surely Post Malone - for it is he - hasn’t decided to do a cover of that awful Nickelback song they may have thought. No, he hasn’t so memories of that dirge can be banished once again. Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the song is any good. It’s just not as bad as that Nickelback thing although it does have more swearing. It is a new entry at number five. If it stays in the top forty for as long as Nickelback - 39 long weeks - my opinion of the song may change. The title of Malone’s previous top forty single, Congratulations, may also have triggered a sense of deja vu.
CNCO and Little Mix continue their upward trend, climbing one place to number six with Reggaeton. Unusually for a song involving Little Mix, it is actually not bad at all.
There seem to have been very few weeks this year when there hasn’t been a new entry from a former member of One Direction. This week there is yet another one, this time from Niall Horan. For his third solo hit single he has upped the word count of the title from two words to a massive four although two of them are homophones to make sure he doesn’t get too confused. Too Much To Ask (another song with added swearing) enters at number 24.
Last year saw a number of unexpected comebacks from artists many people had almost forgotten about. One of the most successful was Craig David who, in January, had his first top forty single for nine years. That was as a featured artist but he followed it up with two hits as the lead artist as well as another featured credit. On Heartline David has at least eschewed use of the f-word but it it has little else to commend it. It lands at number 35.
Some people might think that Jahseh Onfroy is a perfectly respectable name. Other people, for some bizarre reason, think that XXXTentacion is far better while others go further into the realms of idiocy by putting it all in upper case. He gets his first UK top forty hit this week with Jocelyn Flores, another song to make use of bad language, In this case the record company appears not to have provided a version that Radio 1 can play at teatime.
This week’s big climber is Avicii and Rita Ora’s Lonely Together which soars eleven places to number ten. The big victim of a change in the streaming ratio is Rudimental and James Arthur’s Sun Comes Up. After three weeks of declining sales it now takes 300 streams to equal one sale and the song slumps 18 places to number 32.
Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You remains in the top forty for a 37th week. This week the Official Charts Company published a revised list of the best-selling songs of all time. For the first time the list included streams as well as actual sales. This created almost 150 new “million sellers” now rebranded as “millionaires”. Shape Of You was one of the additions to the list and now appears at number three despite notching up only 3/4 million real sales. Sheeran also appears at number seven in the revised list with Thinking Out Loud which has at least managed over one million actual sales.
One of the most notable absentees from the new list of “millionaires” is still Madonna who, even with the addition of streaming, has still never had a million-selling single in the UK by any definition of the term. Somehow I suspect she will not need to look at her bank balance for long to alleviated any disappointment she may feel.
When a leading member dies some bands attempt to carry on under the same name while others re-group - perhaps with some other minor changes of personnel - under a different name. When Ian Curtis died the remaining members of Joy Division formed New Order and enjoyed far more commercial success than in their original guise. Following the death of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain in 1994 drummer Dave Grohl started Foo Fighters, initially as a solo project and eventually as a fully-fledged band.
For a band whose sound has always been very American it is perhaps surprising that Foo Fighters’ early albums performed better in the UK than in their homeland. However, since 2002’s One By One their albums have achieved major success on both sides of the Atlantic. That album topped the chart in the UK as did Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007) and Wasting Light (2011), the latter release giving them their first US number one.
This week their ninth studio album, Concrete and Gold, goes straight to number one in the UK and it is expected to do the same in the USA. The original plan was for the album to be recorded in the studio with an audience watching on but that idea was abandoned when they were told that P J Harvey got there first.
Foo Fighters’ Greatest Hits album, originally released in 2009, climbs eleven places to number eighteen. It has spent 59 weeks in the top forty (and 236 in the top 100) without getting any higher than number four.
Every once in a while a song that is very different from almost anything else around at the time surprises us all by getting to number one. One such example was Are “Friends” Electric in 1979. That song was credited to Tubeway Army. The follow-up and all subsequent singles releases were credited to Gary Numan, a pseudonym adopted by the man born Gary Webb.
Almost forty years on Numan is still making his brand of electronic music. Savage (Songs From A Broken World), the follow-up to Splinter (Songs From A Broken Mind), is his 21st studio album. Splinter reached number 20 to give him a first top twenty album since Warriors in 1983. Savage does even better, entering at number two and breaking a 35-year absence from the top ten.
The support act on Numan’s first major tour were Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark who themselves returned to the top ten after a long absence a couple weeks ago. With Sparks doing the same last week this is becoming a regular occurrence.
This week’s amusing fact - Gary Numan is a few days older than Gary Oldman.
Ed Sheeran’s ÷ stays in its all-time low position of number three. The Script move back up one place to number four, pushing Rag ‘n’ Bone Man’s Human down to number five. After topping the chart last week The National’s Sleep Well Beast falls to number nine.
Prophets Of Rage have been described as a rap rock supergroup. As it comprises members of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Cypress Hill and Public Enemy, that description makes some sort of sense. Their debut album called, with a stunning lack of imagination, Prophets Of Rage, enters at number six.
If the singles charts of 2017 can be said to have been marked by the arrival of a new entry by a former member of One Direction, the recurrent feature of the albums chart has been new releases by bands that have split up and then re-formed. This week is no exception. Arriving at number sixteen is Favourite Pleasures, the new album from Scottish rock band Gun who split up in 1997 before re-forming in 2008.
While the albums charts have seen many new releases from veteran acts (whether re-formed or not), entries from South Korean boybands have been less conspicuous, largely because there haven’t been any, That is, until now. BTS, which apparently stands for Beyond The Scene are at number fourteen. with Love Yourself Her.
The man born Steven Georgiou in post-war London originally found fame as Cat Stevens in the 1960s and ‘70s. When he converted to Islam in 1977 he changed his name to Yusuf Islam and, for a time, retired from the music industry. He eventually returned to making music in the 1990s, first as Yusuf Islam and then simply as Yusuf. His new album, The Laughing Apple, contains a mixture of new songs and reworkings of some of his early material and is, therefore, credited to Yusuf / Cat Stevens. It enters at number 23.
Post Malone’s debut album Stoney enters at number 33. Malone was born Austin Post. Fans of Stella Gibbons’ wonderfully bizarre novel Cold Comfort Farm may be left wondering whether his mother was called Flora.
Last week Sampha’s album Process was named as the winner of the 2017 Mercury Prize. As a result it returns to the chart this week at number seven, matching its position in its only other week in the top forty when it was released in February.
Bob Marley’s Legend returns to the top forty yet again at number 32. Fleetwood Mac’s Very Best Of collection is back at number 34, one place ahead of their 1977 album Rumours which is a non-mover this week. Pink’s Greatest Hits So Far album returns at number 37.
Published on: 2017-09-22 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 108768 Views
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