It's Groundhog Day in both charts as Drake is still at number one in the singles chart with God's Plan and the Greatest Showman soundtrack holds on for a fourth week at the top of the albums chart.
Drake stays at the top of the singles chart and the Greatest Showman soundtrack spends a fourth week as the number one album.
Drake’s dreary God’s Plan spends a second week at number one. As is standard for Drake, it is nowhere near the best-selling single of the week.
The remainder of the top four is also unchanged from last week. Ramz is still Barking at number two, Eminem and Eh Sheeran’s River has stopped flowing at number three and Dua Lipa is still indifferent at number four with IDGAF.
Craig David has been doing the rounds of television and radio studios to promote his new album. He even appeared on the first how in the new series of The Last Leg where he managed to sing both his and Dan Smith’s parts of I Know You flawlessly. However did he manage that?
Since his comeback in 2015 David has spent four weeks at number ten in the singles chart without managing to reach the top nine. Three of those weeks are accounted for by I Know You which this week breaks into previously uncharted territory by climbing to number five. It is David’s highest chart position since Don’t Love You No More reached number four in 2005 and Bastille’s best since Of The Night went to number two in 2013.
Last week Sigrid’s Strangers was the best-selling single of the week but could only make it to number eleven in the overall chart. If all streams were equal, it would have been even lower. In any event, it became the first song to be number one in the sales chart but outside the top ten in the overall chart since streaming was first included. Even though the early charts were of questionable accuracy - particularly when they were compiled from just 30 shops - it seems unlikely that there was a week when the best-selling record wasn’t even in the top ten of the official chart. This week it may still be the best-selling song of the week. It has at least broken into the top ten of the Official Chart at number ten.
For a time last year it seemed that every other new entry featured either Quavo or his Trio Migos. Far too many of those that didn’t featured Drake instead. It seemed almost inevitable that Migos and Drake would record together one day and, sadly, that day has now come. They enter the chart together at number 31 with Walk It, Talk It, an expletive-laden load of rubbish.
Following the relative failure of Filthy last month, Justin Timberlake looks like doing even less well with Say something, the second track to be made available from his new album. It enters at number 32. The song features country singer Chris Stapleton who makes his UK chart debut a couple months short of his 40th birthday. While the song itself is an improvement on Filthy (not that that is particularly difficult) it is not a patch on James’ 1994 hit Say Something.
Birmingham-based Mist had a minor (non-top forty) hit last year with the single Fisherman alongside J Hus. This week he lands his debut top forty hit with Game Changer at number 35.
To the delight of chart geeks everywhere MK’s 17 finally gets to spend a week at number seventeen. If it can stay there for another couple weeks, it will get to spend its seventeenth week in the chart in its most appropriate position.
Portugal. The Man continue to climb the chart with Feel It Still. It is up seven places to number thirteen this week, a full six months after it first entered the top 100. Rudimental and all those other people climb 22 places to number eleven with These Days.
The Greatest Showman soundtrack gets a fourth week at the top of the albums chart. The last album to spend exactly four weeks at number one was Richard and Adam’s The Impossible Dream back in August 2013. I wonder how many of those copies have been played since September 2013.
As noted above Craig David has been putting the hours in over the last week to promote his new album, The Time Is Now. When the album’s release date was set for late January his record company must have been reasonably confident that he would get his third number one album, following his 2000 debut, Born To Do It, and his 2016 comeback album, Following My Intuition. The enduring success of The Greatest Showman put the kibosh on that plan, but it still enters at a very respectable number two.
Ed Sheeran’s ÷ moves back up one place to number three. Eminem’s Revival stays at number five.
While Migos and Quavo enjoyed significant success in the singles chart last year, Migos did rather less well in the albums chart. Their debut set Culture entered at number sixteen before dropping straight out of the top forty, never to be seen again. It would appear that the only discussions over the title of their second album were about whether to call it Culture 2 or Culture II before settling on the latter.
Any time saved on worrying about the title of the album does not seem to have been spent on writing decent songs but, nevertheless, it enters at number four. If anyone needs a justification for our continued adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights, its existence may be our only protection against being subjected to all 105 minutes of it.
Blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa’s career seemed to hit a crisis point last year as, for the first time since 2010, he only had one charting album. Indeed, he came perilously close to going for a full twelve months without spending any time in the UK albums chart. However, he has apparently got the creative juices flowing again and he has already scored his first chart hit of 2018 as he enters at number seven with Black Coffee, another collaboration with Beth Hart. It is his thirteenth top forty album in a eight-and-a-half years. In that time he has also recorded four top forty albums with his band Black Country Communion.
While Joe Bonamassa churns out albums at a remarkable rate, Machine Head have adopted a more leisurely approach. They released their debut album back in 1994 and Catharsis, released last week, is only their ninth album in well over twenty years. Of the previous eight albums not a single one has spent as much as a week in the UK albums chart. This week they finally get their breakthrough with a new entry at number twelve. The only ever-present member of the band, Robb Flynn, celebrated his fiftieth birthday last year.
The list of cellists to have recorded a hit album is rather short. There is Julian Lloyd Webber and that is just about it. That exclusive list has a new member this week as Sheku Kanneh-Mason, the winner of the BBC’s Young Musician of the Year competition in 2016, enters at number eighteen with Inspiration. The album mostly comprises classical pieces but also includes versions of Bob Marley’s No Woman No Cry and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The number of versions of Hallelujah to have appeared on charting album is now approximately 150,609.
While on the subject of short lists, Django Django are the only act with a pronounceable name beginning with the letters DJ to have a top forty album. This week they get their third entry as Marble Skies enters at number twenty,
Unfortunately, there is no quick way of determining how many acts whose name is a mis-spelt animal have had a top forty album. Gorillaz are an obvious example as well as the Monkees. The latest act to join this list continue with the simian theme as Marmozets enter at number 23 with Knowing What You Know Now, a title seemingly designed to confuse students of English as a second language.
German composer Nils Frahm makes his chart debut at number 21 with his ninth album All Melody. Turin Brakes, who don’t come from Italy but hail from from Balham , gateway to the south enter at number 37 with Invisible Storm.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of War Of The Worlds. Later in the year the live version will be touring the country once again. In the meantime, yet another repackaged version has been released and it enters at number 29.
Jeff Wayne has now clocked up a total of 260 weeks (five years) in the albums chart, all but two of them accounted for by the various versions of War Of The Worlds. The other two (just one of them in the top forty) were with his attempt at a musical version of Spartacus. The album, released a full fourteen years after War Of The Worlds, featured the voices of, among others, Anthony Hopkins and Catherine Zeta-Jones. Perhaps he should have waited even longer for Daniel Roche (Ben from Outnumbered) to be available. Fans of Outnumbered will recall that a large part of the final series centred around Ben taking part in a school production of Spartacus.
Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic is a re-entry at number 27.
Published on: 2018-02-02 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 361592 Views
To be fair to Drake he is #5 in the sales chart this week (and was #2 last week). 'One Dance' was still at #1 after it had left the top 10 of the sales chart. Whether 'God's Plan' will do the same depends on if we get a new Justin Bieber or Ed Sheeran song in the next month.
*puts pedant's hat on*
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Following the relative failure of Filthy last month, Justin Timberlake looks like doing even less well with Say something, the second track to be made available from his new album. It enters at number 32. The song features country singer Chris Stapleton who makes his UK chart debut a couple months short of his 40th birthday. While the song itself is an improvement on Filthy (not that that is particularly difficult) it is not a patch on James’ 1994 hit Say Something.
Third actually, the second single 'Supplies' only made it to #84 though.
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While Migos and Quavo enjoyed significant success in the singles chart last year, Migos did rather less well in the albums chart. Their debut set Culture entered at number sixteen before dropping straight out of the top forty, never to be seen again. It would appear that the only discussions over the title of their second album were about whether to call it Culture 2 or Culture II before settling on the latter.
Again, third actually. Their debut studio album 'Yung Rich Nation' was released in 2015, it didn't chart in the UK though. And that's not counting their 12(!) mixtapes.
if we can include all mis-spelt living creatures we can add The Beatles. Snoop Doggy Dogg takes the crown for mis-spelling dog twice and the name of a Peanuts dog once. The Blackbyrds get the flying Walking In Rhythm nod, having been beaten to it by a more generic Mr Tambourine Man The Byrds. These were chased by MC Skat Kat in Paula Abdul's Opposite Attract video, who appeared to beat Gorillaz to the animation starting line.