Jess Glynne wins a tight battle at the top of the singles chart to get her seventh number one. The Greatest Showman marches on at the top of the albums chart.
A close race at the top of the singles chart but another easy victory for The Greatest Showman in the albums chart.
There was a close race for supremacy in the singles chart this week with no fewer than four songs in contention. However, after three successive weeks of declining sales (including streams) and with a total of ten weeks in the chart, Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa’s One Kiss was not one of the contenders.
Three of the contenders for the number one spot had links to Clean Bandit. The first of those is the latest singel from Clean Bandit themselves, the Demi Lovato-featuring Solo. Curiously, two of the other contenders, Jess Glynne and Anne-Marie, got their first umerb ones as the featured artist on a Clean Bandit song - Glynne on Rather Be and Anne-Marie on Rockabye. As the band seem to have a strong preference for female vocalists, the fourth contender - George Ezra - seems unlikely to record with the any time soon. The fact that he seems to prefer to record with his own band surely makes it even less likely.
The eventual winner - by a margin of under 900 “sales” - was Jess Glynne who, with I’ll Be There, gets her seventh number one single although only her third as lead artist. She has now had two more number ones than any other British female solo artist.
Clean Bandit and Demi Lovato’s Solo climbs four places to number two. Anne-Marie’s 2002 spends a third week at number three. George Ezra finishes behind the three Clean Bandit-related artists; Shotgun climbs four places to number four. Ariana Grande’s No Tears Left To Cry stays at number five.
As noted above, the song that has been number one for the last eight weeks, Calvin Harris and Dua Lipa’s One Kiss, was out of the running for this week’s top spot. Its declining sales sees it move on to the Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR) whereby it takes 300 streams to make up one sale rather than the standard ratio of 150 streams to one sale. As a result it slumps to number seven and becomes the first song to spend exactly eight weeks at number one since Shakespear’s Sister’s Stay in 1992. Curiously, three songs had an eight-week run at the top in the 1950s and another three in the 1960s but only Shakespear’s Sister and now Harris and Lipa have done it since then. There are, therefore, just eight songs that have spent exactly eight weeks at number one, roughly one every eight years.
The previous number one, Drake’s Nice For What, also gets moved on to ACR and crashes sixteen places to number twenty.
The song that spent the last couple days of the chart week at the top of the iTunes chart, Tom Walker’s Leave A Light On, climbs into the top ten at number eight. Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin climb into the top ten at number nine with the very bad I Like It.
After last week’s bumper crop of new entries we have just three this week. The highest of them comes from the man born Guy Robin in Essex but who performs under the name Jonas Blue. He had his first hit with a diabolical reworking of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. Thankfully his later output has reached a higher standard.
This week he enters at number 31 with his fifth top forty hit Rise. It is the sixth song called Rise to reach the top forty following entries by Herb Alpert, Public Image Ltd., Eddie Amador (no, me neither), Gabrielle and Katy Perry. This song features contributions from Jack Johnson (not the one who had a few hits in the middle of the last decade) and Jack Gilinsky who go by the unimaginative collective name of Jack and Jack.
The next new entry also has a touch of blue about it as Jorja Smith enters at number 38 with Blue Lights. There have been a lot of blue things entering the chart as song titles - including Blue Eyes (Elton John), Blue Hotel (Chris Isaak), Blue Room (The Orb), Blue Peter (Mike Oldfield’s version of the television programme’s theme tune) and, of course, Blue Monday (New Order) - this is the first song called Blue Lights to reach the chart. Some people may wish to point out at this juncture that The Police enjoyed significant chart success and that The Move (with Roy Wood, later of Wizzard, on vocals) had a hit with Fire Brigade. Smith originally released Blue Lights in 2016; it now gets a new lease of life following her modest success with Let Me Down.
Chicagoan rapper Jarad Higgins, under the moniker Juice WRLD, makes his chart debut at number 39 with Lucid Dreams. He isn’t quite the first person to introduce lucidity to the UK charts; Queensryche had a hit in 1991 (and again in 1992) with Silent Lucidity. Following on from The Police reference above, the song contains a sample from Sting’s Shape Of My Heart.
The Greatest Showman soundtrack gets yet another week at the top of the albums chart. Its nineteenth week at the top gives it the longest run by a soundtrack album for well over fifty years, beating the eighteen weeks (successive in its case) achieved by Saturday Night Fever in 1978. That year saw just nine albums top the chart. Only two of them - Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and Boney M’s Night Flight To Venus - were not a soundtrack or compilation album.
Only three soundtrack albums have spent longer at the summit. Famously, South Pacific is easily the champion with a whopping 144 weeks - more than any album, soundtrack or otherwise. The Sound Of Music spent a total of 70 weeks at number one, The King And I 43.
Andrew Lloyd Webber is probably the most successful British composer of musicals. At the American theatre industry’s Tony awards ceremony this week was given a Lifetime Achievement award. He cited the film of South Pacific as the work that made hime want to write musicals. Later in the week he picked up a Special Recognition Award for Musical Theatre and Education at the revived Classic Brits. That ceremony will be shown on ITV on Sunday night so there may be an impact on next week’s albums chart.
In a week which has seen a song complete the rare feat of spending exactly eight weeks at number one in the singles chart it is also worth noting that only one other album has spent exactly nineteen weeks at number one. That album was yet another soundtrack - My Fair Lady in 1958. As with Saturday Night Fever, all its weeks were consecutive. Thanks to Colin (zeuss at Buzzjack, orthon at Haven) for that last fact.
George Ezra’s Waiting At Tamara’s continues to sell well and climbs back up another place to number two. With the year close to its half-way point, it - along with The Greatest Showman - is one of only five new albums to top the chart so far in 2018. The album that started the year at number one, Ed Sheeran’s ÷, returns to the top five at number five.
One of the compilation albums to top the chart in 1978 was The Beach Boys’ 20 Golden Greats album. It spent three weeks at number one following three weeks for a Buddy Holly album with exactly the same name. Forty years on the latest way of getting people to buy greatest hits-type albums is to add an orchestral accompaniment to old material. It is proving to be a very lucrative venture for the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra who follow their two albums of Elvis Presley hits and their albums of Aretha Franklin and Roy Orbison songs with a collection of Beach Boys songs. As the immaculate production was always one of the Beach Boys’ greatest strengths, one might wonder why their songs need an orchestral accompaniment. Nevertheless, this collection enters at number four.
Jorja Smith, the winner of the 2018 Brits Critics’ Choice Award, enters at number three with her debut album Lost And Found. The albums features her belated current hit Blue Lights but not her Stormzy collaboration Let Me Down.
Last week Kanye West entered at number two with his new album Ye. That falls to number ten this week. However, he also enters at number seven as half of Kids See Ghosts. The other half of the outfit is Kid Cudi who has yet to have a major hit album in the UK although he did have a top ten single with Day ‘n’ Nite in 2008.
In interviews to promote her new album Lily Allen has not shied away from saying that she thinks her last album, Sheezus, is pretty awful. No Shame, her fourth album, was written in the aftermath of her divorce an event that is reflected in many of the songs. The album also reflects on the divorce of her own parents when she was very young. Among the co-writers is Ezra Koening who really should be concentrating on giving us another Vampire Weekend album. Allen’s three previous albums all reached the top two. No Shame enters at number eight.
With the new series of Poldark under way what better time could there be for one of the cast to release an album? Of course, it may be a coincidence but Eleanor Tomlinson (who plays someone called Demelza Poldark apparently) has released her debut album Tales From Home. It includes hr interpretations of songs such as Homeward Bound (Simon & Garfunkel) and Tapestry (Carole King) and enters at number fourteen. She is not, as far as I am aware, related to One Direction’s Louis Tomlinson although, coincidentally, his current partner is called Eleanor.
The entry a couple weeks ago of a live album from Biffy Clyro showed that such albums can still sell in reasonable quantities. The release of a live album from Steps (their second) has proved to be a little less successful. The album, recorded last year on their Tears On The Dancefloor promotional tour - enters at number eighteen.
Despite having a name that sounds like it should belong to an Italian DJ Tremonti are actually an American rock band. In other words, the Italian presence in this week’s chart matches their presence in the World Cup. They enter at number nineteen with A Dying Machine.
If the music industry handed out awards for Welshness, Gruff Rhys would always be a leading contender. Not only is his name about as Welsh as they come, his band, Super Furry Animals, even recorded an album in Welsh - Mwng in 2000. His first solo album, Yr Atal Genhedlaeth, was also recorded in Welsh. Sadly, despite releasing wonderful, often quirky songs such as Ice Hockey Hair, Do Or Die and Juxtapozed With U, they have never achieved major success.
Rhys’s chart record as a solo artist is also fairly modest. He didn’t break into the top forty until the release of his fourth album, American Interior, in 2014. His fifth release, Babelsberg, enters at number 23.
Earlier this month Spandau Ballet announced the identity of their new singer, chosen to replace Tony Hadley who left the band last year. The announcement made some of us feel very old - the new singer, Ross Wild, wasn’t even born when the band had their first hit with To Cut A Long Story Short in 1980. The day after the unveiling, the aforementioned Tony Hadley released his first studio album, apart from a Christmas album, for ten years. Talking To The Moon enters at number forty.
The award for weird logic of the week goes to indie band Mansun who have released a 21st anniversary edition of their debut album Attack Of The Grey Lantern 21 years, three months and a bit after its original release. Perhaps it took them a little longer than anticipated to generate sufficient enthusiasm for the release. The album - which includes Wide Open Space, probably their best-known song - originally topped the chart in 1997. This re-release enters at number 28.
Kylie Minogue’s Golden re-enters at number 38.
Published on: 2018-06-15 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 220647 Views
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