Chart Commentary by gooddelta: Sun 26/10/08

Posted October 26, 200816 yr

British girl group Girls Aloud have proved that they just keep on getting stronger with new single The Promise blasting its competition to debut at No.1 this week. Pink’s So What slides to No.2 after three weeks in control and Razorlight and Guru Josh Project also arrive in the top five this week.

Cheryl, Nadine, Nicola, Sarah and Kimberley formed as Girls Aloud in late 2002 as winners of Popstars: The Rivals. They went head to head with One True Voice, the male band formed by the show, in a battle for Christmas No.1, and Girls Aloud triumphed with the edgy pop single Sound Of The Underground. Their second chart topper was 2004’s Children In Need single and Pretenders cover I’ll Stand By You, and their third No.1 single was last year’s Walk This Way, a Sugababes collaboration with proceeds going to Comic Relief. The Promise is their 19th consecutive top ten single in the UK, and the first of their four No.1’s not to be associated with any TV show or charity, making this quite an achievement six years after the band first got together. The Promise is a retro sounding mid-tempo pop song and very much a natural successor to Can’t Speak French, their last single from their hugely successful 2007 album Tangled Up, with that single and its predecessor Call The Shots arguably opening up the band to a wider audience with a more accessible, radio friendly sound. The girls highly anticipated fifth studio album, Out Of Control, is due out on November 3rd.

Pink’s So What has reigned supreme for the past three weeks but the power of Girls Aloud proves to be too much for her and the American singer slides a place to No.2 this week, although still selling well. It is now well on its way to becoming her biggest selling UK single to date. Paul Walden is a British dance producer better known as Guru Josh Project. He had huge success in 1990 with the horn laden anthem Infinity which reached No.5 in the UK as well as the top ten in various other European countries. He returns this year with a 2008 electro re-working of the song and it ends up going in instantly higher on download sales alone, entering at No.3 this week. It has been a huge European hit already this year, reaching the top ten in Austria, France, Germany, The Netherlands and Sweden. American indie rock act Kings Of Leon stay at No.4 with Sex On Fire, their former three week chart topper, and British/Swedish indie rock act Razorlight have a huge leap from No.30 to No.5 with Wire To Wire. The first single from their third album Slipway Fires, due out on November 3rd, it is their fourth UK top five hit after Somewhere Else, In The Morning and America, the latter being their only UK No.1 single to date.

The lowest of last week’s top five entries slips the least, Up by girl group The Saturdays easing just a place to No.6 while Geraldine McQueen and Leon Jackson suffer more substantial drops moving 2-10 and 3-11 respectively. Katy Perry’s second single, Hot ‘N’ Cold, surges nineteen places to No.7 to give the American singer her second top ten hit after the huge No.1 I Kissed A Girl. Another Dr Luke/Max Martin creation, the single has seemingly been unaffected by claims that Katy has been glamourising the use of knives after a promotional picture of her holding a knife was picked up on by the media this week, despite having been on the internet for months and not having been deemed newsworthy enough before. The singer, who will be hosting the MTV European Music Awards in November next month, is on her way to becoming a global superstar, this single having already gone top ten in the US, Canada, Australia and now the UK.

Kanye West finally moves into the top ten on his fifth week around with the grower, Love Lockdown, his new single. It moves up three places from No.11 to No.8 after four weeks previously inside the top twenty. German dance collective Sash! debuted at No.9 last week with Raindrops (Encore Une Fois), their first single for eight years in the UK, and the single stays in the same place this week. The aforementioned Geraldine, Peter Kay’s fictional talent show winning creation, slides to No.10 on ‘her’ second week in the chart with The Winners Song, marking the biggest slide from No.2 since McFly dived 2-21 with One For The Radio in July. The top ten this week therefore features five British acts (one of those part-Swedish), four Americans and one German act.

The second week in a row that the top ten has seen five singles leave simultaneously, Leon Jackson, Ne-Yo, Sugababes, Rihanna and Snow Patrol are the casualties this week in a volatile chart, Leon and Snow Patrol both only managing one week inside the top ten. Jack White & Alicia Keys have the next climber, Another Way To Die moving from No.27 to No.18 on the week of its physical release. The theme, to the new Bond film The Quantum Of Solace, it had looked destined to peak at No.26 after spending its first three weeks there before sliding to No.27 last week. Whether it can rise again in the future remains to be seen but it is entirely likely seeing as the film is due out next Friday which could well give the track an added boost. American Idol 2007 winner Jordin Sparks rises fives places to No.24, with the download only single Tattoo, and six singles join the lower end of the top forty this week.

Canadian rapper Kardinal Offishall makes his top forty entrance with the Akon collaboration and new single Dangerous this week, which is up from No.46 to No.32, still a download only release, but gradually picking up more airplay. This is not the rapper’s first time in the UK charts, he reached No.9 with Scottish band Texas in an unlikely collaboration on 2003’s Carnival Girl, the lead single from their Careful What You Wish For album. American alternative rock band Fall Out Boy have been one of the major success stories of the last few years, scoring top ten hits in the UK with Sugar We’re Going Down, Dance Dance and last year’s No.2 hit This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race. I Don’t Care is the first single to be taken from their new album, Folie à Deux, which had been due for release next month but has been postponed until December now to avoid a clash with the American presidential election. I Don’t Care previously reached No.40 on downloads but returns to the chart at a new peak of No.33 after its physical release this week, though still a long way short of their previous successes. It has been similarly ignored in other major markets, reaching only No.21 in the US and only No.35 so far in Australia.

American rapper The Game returns to the top forty this week with new single, the Lil’ Wayne collaboration My Life. The single received its physical release this week and duly bounces from No.55 into the top forty at No.34. Another American entry next, singer John Legend’s new album Evolver came out this week and it finally gives the lead single Green Light, which features André 3000 from Outkast, a boost into the top forty, climbing from No.50 to No.35 on its fourth week inside the top seventy five, beating its previous peak of No.45. British indie act Bloc Party score another hit single with Talons, taken from the physical release of new album Intimacy, previously released digitally earlier in the year. Talons, the follow up to the top twenty hit Mercury, was not available on the digital album and has been released as a physical/digital single this week for the first time, making its entrance at No.39, although it is their smallest hit since 2004. Finally, American R&B singer Chris Brown continues an incredible year with a fifth top forty hit. He has already scored top ten hits with With You, Forever and No Air, and the recent re-release of Kiss Kiss reached No.39. Superhuman was another of the bonus tracks added to the ‘Forever Edition’ of his album Exclusive and it is a duet with Keri Hilson, who has previously featured on Scream and The Way I Are by Timbaland, the latter was of course a huge UK No.1 single last summer. Superhuman is in at No.40 on downloads with the physical release due on November 17th.

In a packed week of album releases, it is Australian rockers AC/DC who top the chart with new album Black Ice, their first studio album since 2000’s Stiff Upper Lip, surprisingly only a No.12 success here. The classic album Back To Black was their only previous album chart topper here back in 1980. They have famously never achieved a UK top ten single in a chart career spanning over thirty years, coming closest in 1988 with the No.12 single Heatseeker. British rock band Kaiser Chiefs go in at No.2 with their third album Off With Their Heads whilst Kings Of Leon stay strong with Only By The Night sticking at No.3 and looking set to be one of the big sellers this Christmas. X Factor 2007 winner Leon Jackson is the first of the show’s victors not to score a No.1 album, with his debut set Right Now going in at No.4. Welsh classical singer Katherine Jenkins goes in at No.5 with Sacred Arias, her fourth top five album in the UK.

Last week’s top two albums, Keane’s Perfect Symmetry and Oasis’ Dig Out Your Soul both dive down the chart this week from 1-6 and 2-7 respectively. British girl group Sugababes have had five former top three albums in the UK, including two No.1’s, but new album Catfights And Spotlights can only debut at No.8 this week after the relative failure of the lead single Girls, at least in comparison to other lead singles and UK No.1’s Freak Like Me, Hole In The Head, Push The Button and About You Now. Boyzone’s second Greatest Hits compilation, Back Again…No Matter What, falls to No.9 this week and German dance act Sash! follow their comeback top ten single Raindrops with their first top ten album since 1998. The Best Of, which features huge hits such as Encore Une Fois, Ecuador, Stay, La Primavera, Mysterious Times and Adelante, is in at No.10 meaning that on her thirty fourth week on the chart, Duffy’s Rockferry finally leaves the top ten as it falls to No.13 this week.

Next week’s chart should see a titanic battle as more big new releases are due out on Monday. Girls Aloud will be hoping that the huge opening sales of The Promise will ensure a second week at No.1, but their main competition is likely to be Hero by Help For Heroes, a cover of the Mariah Carey classic by the current X Factor finalists, as performed on this weekend’s live show. Guru Josh Project will be hoping to challenge these two big contenders with the current download hit Infinity 2008, whilst Razorlight will be hoping to move upwards with Wire To Wire, which is physically released on Monday. Pink looks set to stay strong, Katy Perry should move upwards with Hot ‘N’ Cold and Dido should make her chart return with new single Don’t Believe In Love, out this week. Other singles out physically on Monday and likely to make some sort of impact on next week’s chart come from Adele, David Guetta, Robin Thicke and The View. AC/DC are not likely to get a second week as the UK’s biggest album with big new albums on Monday due out from Pink, Snow Patrol, Bloc Party, The Saturdays, Anastacia, Katie Melua and Celine Dion.

Thanks to Polyhex, EveryHit, ManicKangaroo and Play.com for various information and resources