Adele tops both charts with Easy On Me still the number one single and 30 trouncing all opposition to top the albums chart.
Adele scores a chart double as Easy On Me remains on top of the singles chart and her new album becomes the fastest selling album of the year.
Adele’s Easy On Me gets a sixth week at number one in the singles chart, making it the longest-running of her three number ones. Only Olivia Rodrigo’s Drivers License (nine weeks) and Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits (eleven weeks) have spent longer at the summit this year.
The release of Adele’s new album and the continuing popularity of tracks from Ed Sheeran’s + means that there is not a lot of variety in the highest reaches of the chart. Adele has new entries at number two with Oh My God (not a version of the Kaiser Chiefs song) and at four with I Drink Wine. Sheeran is at number three with Shivers, number five with Bad Habits and at ten with Overpass Graffiti.
Today marks a very sad day in UK chart history as D-Block Europe get their first top ten hit. The only consolation is that they have done so on a technicality. Without the three-song limit, there would have been enough Adele songs ahead of Overseas (which features Central Cee) to have kept it out of the highest reaches of the chart so perhaps we should pretend it hasn't actually entered at number eight. To compound the misery, they also enter at number 22 with No Competition and number 35 with Funny Bunny Nails.
Imagine Dragons enter at number 40 with Enemy. It is their first top forty single since Thunder in 2017. They have had two long-running chart hits, Radioactive and Demons, but they have yet to reach the top ten.
Four weeks from today (Friday), it will be Christmas Eve. Santa will be packing his sleigh and making sure he has the right Covid passport for each country. People will be making panicked visits to the shops to buy last-minute presents while others will be making sure their spreadsheet of instructions for cooking Christmas dinner is prepared. Some of those people (along with many others) will be listening to some festive tunes. Two of them are already in the top forty and they are the two which topped the chart just before and after last Christmas, Speaking of which, Wham’s hit of that name is one of them, re-entering at number 28. Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You is at number 24.
November also means the BBC launch their annual Children In Need appeal which also means a fund-raising single. This year Niall Horan and Anne-Marie have teamed up to record a version of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere, a cover version that only avoids being labelled completely pointless by the fact that it is raising money for a good cause. If you are interested in the music, listen to the proper version rather than the one that is a new entry at number 23.
The bottom two places are occupied by acts having their first top forty single for several years. Lost Frequencies had a number one with their debut hit single Are You With Me in 2015. The follow-up, Reality, fared rather less well, stalling at number 29. Until now, that was their UK singles chart career in its entirety. This week, however, they finally score a third hit with Where Are You Now at number 39. It features Calum Scott for whom the question has been equally apt since he reached number two with an inferior version of Dancing On My Own in 2016.
Outside the top forty, The Weeknd’s fabulous Blinding Lights is still in the top 100. It therefore becomes the first song ever to spend a full 104 consecutive weeks (two years) in the UK chart, a feat made even more remarkable by the fact that it has had to withstand two annual invasions of Christmas songs. While it was in the early stages of its marathon run for its first Christmas, surviving a second Christmas is a lot more difficult. Thanks to daniellovesmusic at Buzzjack for highlighting this record.
For the third time in four weeks, there was never any doubt about what album would top the chart this week. Following easy wins for new albums by Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, this week it was Adele’s turn to obliterate all opposition. Her fourth album, 30, is her fourth number one and, as reported above, she scores a chart double by topping the singles chart as well. She also had a chart double in 2011 when Someone Like You and its host album 21 spent five weeks together at the top of the charts.
Aderle’s new album was always likely to set another new record for the best first week “sales” of the year, ahead of Ed Sheeran and Abba and she has done so very comfortably with total “sales” of 261,000.
The aforementioned albums by Ed Sheeran and Abba are at numbers two and three respectively.
In August 1996, when they were at the height of their popularity, Oasis played two concerts in the massive Knebworth Park. Hundreds of thousands of fans attempted to get tickets to stand in a field and look at a large screen for evidence that the tiny figures they could see on a distant stage were indeed Oasis. Twenty-five years after the event, a film has been released with accompanying CDs, downloads etc. Successful live albums are relatively rare, but acts with a reputation for being a great live band can still achieve it, particularly when the chances of seeing said act performing live again are close to zero. Knebworth 1996 enters at number four.
Another artist with a great reputation is Bruce Springsteen, now in his eighth decade but still a highly energetic performer. Springsteen, accompanied by the E Street Band, performed an anti-nuclear weapons concert in Madison Square Gardens, New York, in 1979. As with the Oasis gig, there is now a film of the concert and an accompanying soundtrack. The soundtrack album is at number eleven.
As well as Oasis and Briuce Springsteen, the list of most acclaimed live acts should include Queen. Much of that reputation was due to their flamboyant font man Freddie Mercury who died thirty years ago on Wednesday (24 November). Shortly after his death, Queen’s massive 1975 number one Bohemian Rhapsody was re-released and, inevitably, it went straight to number one. As it topped the chart over the new year period on both occasions, it became the first single to be at number one in four different years.
While he remains best known for his work with one of the biggest rock acts of all time, Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant has also enjoyed success in the albums chart as a solo artist. He has had two number two albums on his own and a third with American country singer Alison Krauss. His second album with Krauss, Raise The Roof, enters at number five.
In choosing to release their ninth studio album Flying Dream I in the same week as Adele put out her new album, Elbow knew they stood no chance of getting a fourth successive number one. They probably also realised that they would be likely to finish behind Ed Sheeran and Abba as their albums were still fairly new. Realistically, then, their best possible position was number four. In the event, they are at number seven.
One of the Christmas songs that regularly misses out on a top forty place is The Darkness’s gloriously over-the-top Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End). The song was involved in a famous battle for Christmas number one in 2003 when it narrowly missed out to Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ stripped-down version of Tears For Fears’ Mad World. The Darkness had a further three top ten hits before calling it a day in 2006. They got back together five years later and have now released a further five albums to add to the two before the break-up. The fifth of those, Motorheart, is at number sixteen.
For their latest project, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra have moved away from recording an album of songs by a single artist and chosen instead to do an album of songs from one of the music industry’s most famous record labels, Motown. In order to qualify for the man albums chart instead of the less-noticed compilations chart, they have had to reverse the credit so that their name appears first. The album, which includes classics such as I Heard It Through The Grapevine (Marvin Gaye), Reach Out I’ll Be There (Four Tops) and The Tears Of A Clown (Smokey Robinsoin and the Miracles) is at number 21.
The D-Block Europe monstrosities polluting the singles chart come from their new mixtape Home Alone II which enters at number six. Andre Rieu’s annual new entry, Happy Together, is at number twelve. Twitter favourite James Blunt has a Greatest Hits collection, The Stars Beneath My Feet, at number nine. We can be thankful that most of its sales are probably from real sales rather than streams. Otherwise we might have seen You’re Beautiful back in the chart.
Sting’s new solo album The Bridge is at number 27. A 30th anniversary reissue of U2’s ninth album Achtung Baby is at number 34. The original release peaked at number two.
Published on: 2021-11-26 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 3000 Views
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