Clean Bandit and Demi Lovato climb to the to pot the singles chart. The Greatest Showman soundtrack tops the albums chart for a twentieth week.
Clean Bandit get their fourth number one single while The Greatest Showman soundtrack grabs a twentieth week at the top of the albums chart.
There’s another change at the top of the singles chart as Clean Bandit climb to number one with the Demi Lovato-assisted Solo (which sounds like a bit of a contradiction). It is Clean Bandit’s fourth number one single and Lovato’s first. Clean Bandit sneaked into the top 100 with A+E in 2012before breaking into the top twenty with the brilliant Mozart’s House the following year. They had their first number one single with Rather Be in 2014. The featured vocalist on that song was Jess Glynne who they displace at the top of the chart this week. She falls to number four with I’ll Be There after just a week at the summit.
George Ezra climbs to number two with Shotgun. It is the second single from his current album to peak at number two following Paradise. Ann-Marie’s 2002 spends another week at number three. Ariana Grande’s No Tears Left To Cry stays at number five. Tom Walker’s Leave A Light On continues to climb; it is up another one place to number seven.
Years & Years get their fourth top ten single as If You’re Over Me climbs to number eight. Jonas Blue’s Rise (featuring Jack and Jack) is up fourteen places to number seventeen and Juice Wrld climbs sixteen places to number 23 with Lucid Dreams.
Nicki Minaj made her UK top forty debut in 2010 as the featured artist on Jay Sean’s 2012 (It Ain’t The End). As we now know, 2012 was at least not the end of the world so they got that right. Sadly it also wasn’t the end of Minaj’s career. She has notched up a total of 28 top forty hits of varying degrees of awfulness. This week who gets a 29th as Bed enters at number twenty. She is joined by Ariana Grande, thereby reversing their roles on 2016’s Side To Side.
Dutch DJ Tiësto had his first UK top forty hit in 2001 but had to wait over twelve years before breaking into the top ten. A second top ten hit soon followed but then things went quiet again. In the last four years his top forty record amounts to a single week at number 39. This week he returns at number 35 with Jackie Chan, named after a martial arts practitioner and actor from Hong Kong.
Jackie Chan also features Post Malone along with Dzeko and Preme, the latter two making their chart debut. Canadian DJ Dzeko used to be part of a duo called Dzeko and Torres who should not be confused with footballers Edin Dzeko and Fernando Torres. Preme is a Canadian hip-hop artist and songwriter who was born Raynford Humphrey.
The Greatest Showman become only the twelfth album to spend at least 20 weeks at number one. Five of the others have been soundtracks and four are by The Beatles. One of them (A Hard Day’s Night) is both. It is the third album to reach this particular milestone in the 21st century following Adele’s 21 and Ed Sheeran’s ÷. Before these three the last album to reach the 20-week landmark was Simon And Garfunkel’s Bridge Over Troubled Water in 1970.
George Ezra’s Staying At Tamara’s is staying at number two for another week. The Beach Boys and RPO compilation is also a non-mover, at number four.
Just a couple weeks after hitting the top forty singles chart with Youngblood 5 Seconds Of Summer enter at number three with the album of the same name. It is their third studio album following 5 Seconds Of Summer (2014, number two) and Sounds Good Feels Good (2015, number one). A live album in 2015 failed to set the world alight.
There have been many examples of established artists recording under different names in order to hide their true identity. Jonathan King and Norman Cook have both recorded under a string of pseudonyms. In 2004 Welsh band The Alarm, tired of failing to get their songs playlisted and convinced that it was due to ageism, recorded a new song and sent it to radio stations under the name The Poppy Fields. A number of radio stations, under the impression that The Poppy Fields were a new teenage act, tarted to play the song. Music channels played the video which featured teenagers pretending to be the band. The song entered the chart a full fourteen years after the Alarm’s previous hit. Only then did the band come clean, feeling that they had proved their point.
The Carters do at least have a reason for recording under that name. Jay-Z and Beyoncé are, after all, Mr and Mrs Carter. However, the way the album was released without much fanfare does make one wonder what their strategy is. Is it that the album is rubbish and they were a bit embarrassed by it? Did they want to see whether it would sell if people didn’t realise who it was by (rather like when J K Rowling published her first Cormoran Strike novel under a pseudonym)? If it was the latter, it didn’t really work as their identity was known by a lot of people from the start.
The truth is that the album is meant to be part of a trilogy. Beypncé’s Lemonade album addressed her concerns about her marriage while Jay-Z’s 4:44 was seen - in part - as an apology for his indiscretions. Everything Is Love brings the two together in a lovey-dovey sort of way. Even though the album was released part way through the chart week - and is currently only available to download or stream - they might have been expecting to enter higher than number five.
One of the most highly-acclaimed songwriting partnerships of the 1980s was that of Morrissey and Johnny Marr of The Smiths. Since the break-up of the band Morrissey has enjoyed significant solo success, as well as regularly making headlines for his ever more outlandish political statements, whereas Marr’s solo career, has been rather more low-key. He has also been rather less ready to pontificate on political matters.
Both Morrissey and Marr have demonstrated that their musical tastes go beyond a Smiths-style sound. Morrissey is a fan of the Eurovision song Contest and Marr is an admirer of the Pet Shop Boys. He worked with the Pet Shop Boys (as well as Bernard Sumner of New Order) in Electronic and appeared with the band and an orchestra at the Albert Hall last year.
Marr didn’t release his first solo album until 2013, the year he turned 50. That album, The Messenger, reached the top ten as did Playland the following year. His third solo album, Call The Comet, has received generally favourable reviews with some critics suggesting that he is finally escaping form the shadow of his former bandmate. It enters at number seven to give him a new peak as a solo artist.
As noted above Tiësto had a long wait between his first top forty single and his first top ten success. Rapper Nas has a similar record in the albums chart. He first entered the top forty with It Was Written in 1996 but didn’t reach the top ten until the release of Life Is Good in 2012. Maybe he has spent the time recovering from the shock, but it has taken him six years to release another album. The result, Nasir, enters at number sixteen.
In 2010 Christina Aguilera gained an unwanted chart record when her Bionic album crashed from number one to number 29. That was largely a sign that her career was past its peak although she did claim a featured artist credit on Maroon 5’s huge hit Moves Like Jagger - even if her contribution was very easy to miss. Her next album, 2012’s Lotus, only reached number 26 so her latest release, Liberation, marks an improvement by entering at number seventeen.
It is almost a year since the death of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington. One of his former bandmates released an EP, Post Traumatic, reflecting on his feelings since then. He has now expanded that into a full-length album and it is a new entry at number twenty.
WIlko Johnson earned himself a mention here recently as a result of his album with Roger Daltrey. Like Daltrey Johnson is something of a veteran. He started a a member of 1970s band Dr Feelgood who were an influence on a number of punk bands later in the decade. He later played with one of the great post-punk bands Ian Dury and the Blockheads. The Wilko Joohnson Band released eleven albums between 1981 and 2010 but none of them have managed even a single week in the chart. That changes this week as Blow Your Mind (perhaps an appropriate title in the circumstances) enters at number 24.
Music fans - along with people whose interests lie elsewhere - can sometimes face a bit of a dilemma when someone whose work they admire turns out to be a bit of a dick (or worse). Phil Spector was one of the greatest music producers of the 1960s but is now also a convicted murderer and the subject of many stories that suggest the phrase “difficult to work with” is something of an understatement. The aforementioned Jonathan King has served a prison sentence for sexual abuse and tGary Glitter is now probably better known for his crimes than for his music. Morrissey, also mentioned above, seems to relish the publicity he gains every time he offers up a political opinion.
All this came to the fore this week with the murder, at the age of just 20, of XXXTentacion as it became clear just what a dreadful life he had led thus far. Whatever one may think of his music (and it really sin’t to my taste at all) it is hard to overlook his reputation for violence towards women and gay men. That reputation hasn’t stopped people buying and streaming his music over the last few days.
Three XXXTentacion “songs” make the top forty. Sad, originally a hit earlier this year, is at number 31 with Moonlight, also in the top forty earlier this year, at 32 and Changes at 33. In the albums chart ? re-enters at number nine and 17 is at number thirteen. Perhaps at least some of the money earned by these sales can find its way to charities supporting the victims of violence.
Paul Simon’s Ultimate Collection re-enters at number nineteen while Liam Gallagher’s As You Were returns at number 21.
Published on: 2018-06-22 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 262350 Views
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