Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa take their One Kiss to number one. The Greatest Showman gains a thirteenth week at the top of the albums chart.
Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa top the singles chart. The Greatest Showman soundtrack returns to the top of the albums chart once again.
After a couple tight races for supremacy in the singles chart, it was a rather clearer-cut affair this week with Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa maintaining a comfortable lead in each update with One Kiss. The song entered at number three last week and now climbs two places to give Harris his ninth number one single and Lipa her second. It is the fifth number one song with the word Kiss (rather than Kisses or Kissed) in its title and the first since Example’s Changed The Way You Kiss Me in 2011.
This means that Drake is toppled from the number one spot after just one week. His two previous number ones both had long runs at the top but Nice For What is down to number two. Perhaps his fans have reacted badly to the fact that there is something resembling an actual tune in parts of this song.
Lil Dicky and Chris Brown’s Freaky Friday falls one place to number three. George Ezra’s Paradise climbs one place to number four, swapping places with Rudimental’s These Days. In these days of long-running number ones it is unusual to have a top five with only one song (Paradise) which has not reached the summit.
For a time last year it seemed that almost every chart featured a new entry by a former member of One Direction. Things have now slowed down a little so that a new release form one of them is a bit more of an event - for some people at least. Zayn Malik gets his seventh solo top forty single with Let Me at number twenty.
If I had wanted to find something positive to say about Cardi B last week I might have offered the observation that she was not Nicki Minaj. This week it has to be reported that Minaj has two new entries in the top forty and that they have particularly infantile titles. She enters at number 26 with something called Chun-Li and at number 31 with Barbie Tingz. She has now had 28 top forty hits since 2010’s 2012 (It Ain’t The End). If only the parenthetical part of that title had proved to be an inaccurate prediction.
There was a time when comedians were fairly regular visitors to the chart. Billy Connolly had a few hits (including a number one with D.I.V.O.R.C.E.) and Jasper Carrott reached the top ten with Funky Moped (although many people bought it for the rather ruder Magic Roundabout on the other side). Before that The Goons, Charlie Drake and Bernard Cribbins had all had hits with comedy singles.
Such novelty hits seem be having a bit of a revival at the moment although they are often by previously unknown acts. The latest offering to enter the chart is German by sixteen-year-old EO, also known (although not very well) as eocrossover). It enters at number thirty and is a bit rubbish.
One week after notching up his 34th top forty single David Guetta makes it to 36 with two more new entries. Flames, featuring Sia Furler, is at number 37. For a decade the Australian singer had just two top forty singles to her name until she teamed up with Guetta on the hugely successful Titanium in 2011. Flames brings that figure up to thirteen.
Guetta also enters at number 40 with Like I Do, The song features Martin Garrix - who has yet to match the success of his 2013 debut hit Animals - and Dutch producer Brooks.
In the albums chart The Greatest Showman soundtrack climbs back to the top after a week at number two, It has now spent a total of thirteen weeks at the summit and is still selling well. The film itself is still showing in many cinemas across the country.
After a few years of moderate success Welsh band Manic Street Preachers hit the jackpot with the release, in 1996, of Everything Must Go, their first album after the disappearance of their original lyricist Richey Edwards. The album entered at number two (behind George Michael) and eventually spent a total of sixteen weeks in the top ten. It also gave them four of their fifteen top ten singles.
The success of Everything Must Go helped the follow-up, This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours, go straight to number one where it spent three weeks. Five of their subsequent releases have reached the top three although none of them has made it to the very top. Their thirteenth studio album, Resistance Is Futile, continues that unlucky streak as it enters at number two. Among the tracks are a song about acclaimed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas and his wife (Dylan and Caitlin) and one dedicated to the victims of the 1989 Hillsborough disaster (Liverpool Revisited).
George Ezra’s Staying At Tamara’s remains at number three. Despite many predictions (including here last week) Kylie Minogue’s Golden has not dropped straight out of the top ten. Its second week sales are sufficient for it to suffer a relatively modest fall to number four after a week at number one. Despite a fall in sales Cardi B’s Invasion Of Privacy climbs one place to number five.
While essentially a 1970s punk band The Damned enjoyed some of their biggest chart success with covers of two classic pop songs - Barry Ryan’s Eloise and Love’s sublime Alone Again Or. Even more bizarrely their guitarist Raymond Burns, better known as Captain Sensible, had a number one single with his version of Happy Talk from the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific. The original soundtrack of South Pacific will probably never see its 115 weeks at number one (the first seventy of them, including the whole of 1959, consecutive) surpassed. On the other hand, Happy Talk’s record climb to number one within the top forty (from number 33) was eventually beaten by Pink’s So What which climbed from number 38.
Back with The Damned, they have disbanded and re-formed a few times over the last forty years or so with regular line-up changes. The one ever-present has been vocalist Dave Vanian. Now they have returned with Evil Spirits, their eleventh studio album and the first since 2008. It enters at number seven to give them their first ever top ten album. Their previous peak was with Phantasmagoria which reached number eleven in 1985.
Gary Barlow released his first solo album, Open Road, in 1997 shortly after Take That called it a day for the first time. Therefore, it might have been expected that an anniversary edition would have been released last year but it wan’t. Perhaps they forgot or, alternatively, they started listening it it and fell asleep. After all, while Barlow has written some great pop songs for Take That, his solo material has not exactly been memorable.
If Barlow’s record label were nervous about releasing a 21st anniversary edition, they may have been encouraged by the success of the Courteeners’ rerelease last week. Their gamble has paid off as the re-issue of Open Road enters at number 25.
Two other major re-releases miss the top forty having featured in each of the daily updates. The first of them is Changestwobowie, a David Bowie compilation originally released in 1981. As well as hit singles since a previous collection (Changhesonebowie) in 1976, it also included some older songs omitted from the first compilation. The album was released in the then still excitingly new CD format in 1985 but was soon deleted. It has remained unavailable on CD until now. The album peaked at number 24 in January 1982.
Another re-issue highlights a quirk of the UK chart rules. When Metallica released The $5.98 EP - Garage Days Revisited in 1987 it qualified as a single and gave them their first UK hit, reaching number 27. Now the five-song collection has been re-released but its length (five songs clocking in at just over 25 minutes) means it counts as an album.
American rock band Breaking Benjamin released their first album in 2002 but didn’t reach the UK chart until album number five, Dark Before Dawn, reached number 34 in 2015. They will now feel that they are on a roll as their sixth release, Ember, enters at number 35.
Isaac Gracie started his music career as a choir. That career ended in the inevitable way when his voice broke. When he returned to music it was as a singer and guitarist performing songs by the likes of Bob Dylan, Jeff Buckley and Radiohead. He then started writing his own songs and now, at the age of 23, has released his debut album. The set, also called Isaac Gracie, is a new entry at number 36.
UB40’s A Real Labour Of Love jumps back in at number fifteen. Ahead of the release of their new album Arctic Monkey’s most recent release AM climbs fifteen places to number sixteen. Their debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not, re-enters at number 27.
Since its inception in 1943 the Pulitzer prize for music - awarded for “a distinguished musical composition of significant dimension by an American” - has always gone to a classical or jazz album. Before 2004 the work had to have received its first performance over the preceding year which ruled out most albums. Even the change to allow work that had had “its first performance or recording” during the year didn’t stop the dominance of jazz and classical music until this year when it was awarded to Kendrick Lamar’s album Damn. That album re-enters at number 37.
Published on: 2018-04-20 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 233695 Views
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