George Ezra finally has a number one single to his name. The Greatest Showman continues its reign at the top of the albums chart.
George Ezra gets his first number one single with Shotgun. The Greatest Showman soundtrack is still the number one album.
A common complaint among music fans is that record companies are too impatient with new artists. There is a general feeling that an act will be dropped if they do not achieve almost instant success. Thankfully, there are still times when a company seems sufficiently confident in an act to give them more than one hot at success.
One such act is George Ezra. His record company tried to push his debut single, Budapest, three times before it finally became a big hit in summer 2014. They had even tied releasing a different single with even less success before Budapest reached the top ten. Their patience was rewarded with a number one album, Wanted On Voyage (a few months after it was released), followed by a second with Staying At Tamara’s earlier this year. Now Ezra has finally got his first number one single as Shotgun climbs to the summit in its sixth week in the top forty (including one week when the album was released).
Shotgun is the ninth new number one of 2018; by this stage in 2017 there had been just six new number ones. As recently as 2014 there had been nineteen new number ones by the end of June.
His previous single, Paradise, has avoided having its streams downgraded several times by managing a sudden increase in sales. However, this week its sales fell for a third week in a row so it now takes 300 streams to make one sale instead of 150 (until next week when it all changes). As a result it falls seventeen places to number 29.
Clean Bandit and Demi Lovato slip to number two after a single week at the top. Anne-Marie’s 2002 spends a fifth week at number three. Jess Glynne’s I’ll Be There stays at number four.
Cheat Codes made their UK chart debut in 2016 with the number nine hit Sex. They have had a further three top forty hits since then; all of them have also reached a peak position divisible by three but none of them have got into the top ten. They get their fifth top forty hit this week with Only You at number 32. As with their previous hits they cannot be asked why “only you” appear on their songs. The featured act this time is the multiple chart-topping girlband Little Mix. Whether their appeal is sufficient to give Cheat Codes a second number one single is something we will discover in the coming weeks.
If you can judge somebody by the company they keep then Michael Stevenson, better known as Tyga, might hope people don’t notice that all three of his top ten hits also feature Chris Brown. Others might decide that his “musical” output is bad enough without dragging Brown’s reputation - or indeed Tyga’s own legal issues - into the mix. Still, it’s all a matter of taste which brings us to his latest hit Taste, a new entry at number 34. He is joined by one Kiari Cephus who uses the name Offset for recording purposes. Offset has previously been in the chart as one of the trio Migos. He’s been to jail too.
A year before winning the Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo Abba had tried to enter the contest with Ring Ring. That song made the lower reaches of the UK chart after Waterloo had gone to number one; it took another year before they began their long run of successive top ten hits. This week Jax Jones becomes the second chart act to have a top forty hit with a song called Ring Ring after their debut hit reached number one. All we need is another two acts to do the same and we can have a quiz question which even Only Connect might reject for being too obscure.
This particular Ring Ring, a new entry at number 40, also features Mabel, whose biggest hit to date is Finders Keepers from last year, and Rich The Kid. Rich The Kid is not called Richard, he’s called Dimitri, and isn’t really a kid any more - he turns 26 next month. He should also not be confused with The Rich Kids, a 1970s band featuring ex-Sex Pistol Glen Matlock as well as Rusty Egan and Midge Ure who went on to form Visage. The latter also had hits as part of Slik, Ultravox and Band Aid as well as a solo number one.
Last week The Carters (better known as Jay-Z and Beyoncé) released their album Everything Is Love. This week a track from the album, Apeshit, enters at number 36.
Not so long ago most singles got no higher than their entry position - largely because they had been played on the radio for weeks on end before being released. Now it is by no means unusual for a song to spend weeks in the chart before entering the top forty. This week’s example is Dennis Lloyd’s Nevermind which lands at number 39 after entering the top 100 in April. It is the first appearance on the top forty for Lloyd, a Israeli producer. It is unlikely that this song will achieve as much success and acclaim as Nirvana’s album of the same name. They too insisted on spelling the title as one word.
M-22 and Medina’s First Time climbs to number 24 for the third time. It has yet to get any higher. Tiesto and friends climb fifteen places to number twenty with Jackie Chan. EO’s German spends a third consecutive week (and a fourth in total) at number fifteen. It has spent the last seven weeks between numbers thirteen and fifteen. At least one German made it to the last sixteen then.
While the singles chart gets its third new number one in successive weeks, the top of the albums chart has a rather more familiar look to it. Yes, The Greatest Showman soundtrack is still there. It has now spent a total of 21 weeks at number one, level with two Beatles albums, With The Beatles and A Hard Day’s Night. The three albums with 21 weeks at number one therefore comprise two Beatles albums and two film soundtracks.
It might be thought that an album that has spent so long at the top of the chart would by now have sold well over a million copies. In fact, it has yet to reach that milestone. Indeed, it has only reached 50,000 weekly sales (combined sales and stream-equivalent sales) on one occasion. It looks rather like the album equivalent of Rihanna’s Umbrella which had still sold under half-a-million copies by the time its ten-week run at number one came to an end.
The Greatest Showman’s current six-week run at the top is the longest since The Verve’s Urban Hymns at the beginning of 1998.
The unlucky act to be denied their moment of glory this week are American rock band Panic! At The Disco. They led the way in the updates throughout the week but, in the end, they couldn’t quite do enough to topple The Greatest Showman. Pray For The Wicked is the band’s fourth top ten album in six releases . The last two had contrasting fortunes after reaching the top ten. Too Weird To Live, Too Rare to Die! (2013) spent just one week in the top forty and only three weeks in the top 100. Death Of A Bachelor (2016) spent a little onger in the top forty (although only one week in the top ten) and has notched up a total of 83 weeks in the top 100, most of them in the bottom half of the chart.
George Ezra’s Staying At Tamara’s slips back to number three. It has now been in the chart for fourteen weeks, all of them in the top five. Ed Sheeran’s ÷ returns to the top five at number five.
In 1998, before the days when some channels devoted a large proportion of their airtime to “reality TV” the BBC made a series about the staff of a cruise liner on its maiden voyage. One of the staff featured in the programme was Jane McDonald, employed as an entertainer. Six months after the show began McDonald released her debut album an dit spent three weeks at number one. Further albums followed although only one, Jane (2007), reached the top ten.
In 2017 McDonald started presenting a travel show on Channel 5. Apparently there are still people who watch that channel, enough to create demand for an album of songs from the show. That album, Cruising With Jane McDonald, enters at number six. The album includes versions off Wham’s Club Tropicana, Abba’s The Winner Takes It All and Ultravox’s classic Vienna.
Although they have been around for thirty years, Nine Inch Nails’ best-known song, Hurt, owes its fame to a brilliant cover version by Johnny Cash. Leona Lewis has also recorded a version, but it’s probably best to pretend that never happened. They have had a steady run of top ten albums, the most recent being 2013’s Hesitation Marks which reached number two. They enter at number twelve with Bad Witch.
One of the consequences of low albums sales is that niche acts with a small fanbase can reach the top forty. As a result the albums chart continues to be rather more diverse than the singles chart. This week, at number thirteen, we have an album by an American jazz saxophonist. Heave And Earth is Kamasi Washington’s sixth album but the first to reach the top forty in the UK. He has previously worked with musicians such as Ryan Adams and Kendrick Lamar.
Bebe Rexha has had three top ten (and four top eleven singles since her chart debut in 2014. She has also written songs for singers such as Rihanna, Iggy Azalea and David Guetta. However, it has taken until now for her to release her debut album, Expectations. Whatever the expectations were, they were probably more ambitious than entering the chart at number 33. Nevertheless that is what has happened.
Tottenham rapper Headie One enters at number 32 with The One Two. With his hat-trick against Panama Tottenham’s Harry Kane went to the top of the World Cup scorers chart last weekend with The One Two Three.
The West Sussex town of Crawley is not one that features here very often. Its current claim to fame is perhaps the fact that England manager Gareth Southgate went to school there - a school that later employed Romesh Ranganathan as a maths teacher. Musically, its biggest contribution is probably the band The Cure. While they never became megastars, they did notch up an impressive list of hits including A Forest, The Love Cats, Close To Me and Friday I’m In Love.
In 1990 the band released an album of remixed versions of some of their best-known songs. The album, Mixed Up, reached the top ten. Now singer Robert Smith has remastered the tracks for a new version of the album and it enters at number sixteen Sadly it does not include Friday I’m In Love as that wasn’t released until two years after the original version of Mixed Up.
One of the most popular videos of the week featured James Corden being given a tour of Liverpool by Paul McCartney. Not all of McCartney’s anecdotes were exactly new (he’s commented before on how his father wanted the lyric changed to She Loves You, Yes, Yes, Yes) but who cares? The Beatles’ 1 compilation (which spent nine weeks at number one in 2000/2001) re-enters at number 31.
There are also re-entries for Foo Fighters Greatest Hits (number 22), Ed Sheeran’s + (36), Little Mix’s Glory Days (38), The Killers’ Direct Hits compilation (39) and Post Malone’s Stoney (40).
At the beginning of this week the Official Charts Company announced the latest changes in the way the singles chart is compiled. These new rules will be used to compile next week’s chart. Further details will be included in next week’s commentary.
Published on: 2018-06-29 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 260615 Views
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