The X Factor charity single, Hero, has held off all competitors at the top of another chart with high sales figures across the board. Live Your Life by T.I. and Rihanna equals Pink’s biggest top forty jump of thirty eight places as the song jumps 39-2, Beyoncé’s If I Were A Boy slides to No.3 and Human by The Killers debuts at No.4.

 

Hero by the twelve X Factor finalists from the current series has been a huge selling single, already 2008’s biggest seller, replacing Duffy’s Mercy at the top. This of course opens up the possibility that all future series’ will have similar group finalist singles, whether or not they will be for the same charities, if any at all, will of course be determined in the future. The Mariah Carey cover is the second Mariah No.1 in less than a year, the other being 2007’s X Factor winner Leon Jackson’s cover of her 1998 single, When You Believe. Mariah has twice visited the UK top five in the last twelve months, with All I Want For Christmas Is You (No.4) and Touch My Body (No.5). The former, and the Christmas classic, will no doubt be back in the top ten a month from now.

 

Having entered down at No.39 last week after a day’s worth of download sales, US rapper T.I.’s collaboration with Barbadian superstar Rihanna, Live Your Life, surges up a record equalling thirty seven places inside the top forty to No.2. Despite so far receiving no physical release, it is far and away T.I.’s biggest UK hit, the previous biggest being the No.22 2006 hit, Why You Wanna, although he has featured on UK top five hits by Justin Timberlake and Destiny’s Child. He has had considerably more success in his native US and has been one of the biggest stars of 2008, scoring two No.1 singles there, this song and his last single Whatever You Like, which limped up to No.47 here last month. Live Your Life, which samples Romanian boyband O-Zone’s 2004 top three hit Dragostea Din Tei, marks Rihanna’s sixth visit to the UK top five in the last eighteen months, after Umbrella, Shut Up & Drive, Don’t Stop The Music, Take A Bow and Disturbia. She has been by far the biggest star of the latter half of the noughties.

 

Beyoncé slides a place to No.3 this week with If I Were A Boy, despite the single receiving its physical release this week. Singles sliding in the week of physical release is becoming more and more commonplace now, proving that for many songs, a physical is not really needed now. Some songs of course prove that this is not always the case, Hero being the major recent example; it would not even be inside the top three this week on download sales alone. American electronic indie-rock act The Killers have had huge success in the UK since their 2004 debut. Somebody Told Me and When You Were Young were both huge top three singles in the UK in 2005 and 2006 respectively, whilst 2004’s Mr Brightside, despite only peaking at No.10, has gone on to become one of the most highly regarded singles of the decade. Human, the first single from their third studio album, Day And Age, goes straight in at No.4 this week on download sales and could challenge for the top spot in seven days time. Their highly anticipated new album is due out on November 24th.

 

Alesha Dixon’s physical release has helped her out as the Xenomania penned The Boy Does Nothing moves up three spots to No.5 this week. The last time Alesha was in the UK top ten was in July 2003 when her former band Mis-Teeq’s Can’t Get It Back reached No.8. Mis-Teeq’s biggest UK hits were the No.2 singles All I Want (2001) and Scandalous (2003). Fellow band member, former lead singer Sabrina, won the BBC reality show Celebrity Scissorhands this week, a year after Alesha won BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing. Girls Aloud are down three places this week to No.6 with The Promise, which spends its fourth week inside the top ten now and is well on its way to becoming one of the year’s biggest selling singles and certainly their biggest hit since 2002. Katy Perry’s second single, Hot ‘N’ Cold, is still a download only release, and stays at No.7 this week, also spending its fourth week inside the top ten. Far from being the all conquering No.1 single many expected it to be, Britney Spears’ new release, Womanizer, falls four places to No.8 on its second week inside the top ten. The physical release might help it out later in the month though, as will her impending X Factor performance. British dance act Guru Josh Project slide three spots to No.9 with the former top three hit Infinity 2008 whilst Forgive Me by Leona Lewis drops five places to No.10 on its second week in the chart. The top ten this week therefore includes five Brits, four Americans and one American/Barbadian collaboration.

 

Kanye West’s Love Lockdown is the first of the movers outside the top ten, the former No.8 single moving back up a place to No.11, continuing to grow in popularity in a much higher sales climate than it found itself in when it first reached the top ten. UK soul singer Lemar has the second highest new entry this week, going straight into the top forty at No.14 with If She Knew. It is Lemar’s ninth top forty hit since he debuted in 2003 with the No.2 single Dance (With U) after coming third in the BBC reality show Fame Academy, behind the long forgotten David Sneddon and Sinead Quinn. Along with Will Young and Girls Aloud, Lemar is seen as one of the few reality survivors from the earlier part of the decade, his defining career moment being the classic 2004 single If There’s Any Justice. If She Knew is Lemar’s first single from his new album The Reason which is out on November 24th.

 

The Pussycat Dolls make a very minor climb of a place from No.20 to No.19 with new single I Hate This Part, perhaps suggesting that this will be their first single to miss the UK top ten. Kings Of Leon are up four places to No.21 with the second single to be taken from Only By The Night, Use Somebody. The album is already looking likely to be one of the big sellers over the Christmas period and could well pass a million sales before the end of the year. Welsh soul singer Duffy has undoubtedly been the biggest star of 2008 with singles such as Mercy and Warwick Avenue, and the million selling debut album Rockferry. Her new single, Rain On Your Parade, is a new track taken from the forthcoming deluxe edition of that album and debuts at No.22 this week on download sales. The Script jump ten places to No.24 this week with Break Even, the third single to be lifted from their eponymous debut album which topped the UK chart earlier in the year. Last single, The Man Who Can’t Be Moved, is still a top forty fixture, going down two places to No.39 on its seventeenth week inside the top forty. It is more than likely to be one of many tracks to benefit from ‘the Now effect’ in seven days time, where cherry picked tracks from the new Now compilation, Now 71, will lead to a sales rise, and potentially chart position rise for many of the current chart singles that feature on the album.

 

Gotta Be Somebody by Canadian rock group Nickelback is the next new entry to the top forty this week, debuting at No.26 after its digital release. The first single to be taken from new album Dark Horse, due out on Monday, it quickly follows up the renewed success the band have had in the UK this year with the huge No.2 gold selling single Rockstar and No.2 album All The Right Reasons, a relative flop when first released in 2005. Legendary American rock group Guns N’ Roses make their long awaited return to the singles chart, debuting at No.27 this week with Chinese Democracy. The band were huge in the late 1980s and early 1990s producing classic singles such as Sweet Child O’ Mine, Paradise City, November Rain and Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door. Chinese Democracy is the first single to be taken from the long delayed new album of the same name which will finally be released on November 24th.

 

US country duo The Bellamy Brothers continue to gain exposure from the Barclaycard advert. Their 1976 No.7 hit Let Your Love Flow is up two places to No.28 this week. The final new entry to the top forty is the only Children In Need themed single in the top forty, two days after the annual televised event took place. We Have A Dream by Pudsey’s Beautiful Dreamers, a collective of famous Scottish singers and actors, debuts at No.40 this week after a physical and digital release. The official Children In Need single, the double a-side Stay With Me/Do Ya by McFly, is due out on November 24th. The band will hope that it follows its predecessors, One For The Radio and Lies, into the top five, and not follow the path of last year’s Children In Need single, Headlines (Friendship Never Ends) by Spice Girls which missed the top ten, peaking at No.11 a year ago.

 

The album chart sees another change at the top with the Simon Cowell created opera group Il Divo, who transform contemporary classics into Italian operatic pop songs, going straight in at No.1 with their third chart topping album out of four releases, The Promise. The four members of the band come from the US, Spain, Switzerland and France and therefore cater to a huge worldwide audience. They have already topped the album charts in the UK, the US, Canada, Spain, Finland, Hong Kong, Colombia, New Zealand, Slovenia, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Portugal, Thailand, Singapore, South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, Australia and Sweden, and have reached the top five in many other countries. A Decade In The Sun, the best of The Stereophonics has to settle for a new entry at No.2. The Welsh trio have had a huge career over the past decade or so, achieving five huge UK No.1 albums including the critical successes 1999’s Performance And Cocktails and 2005’s Language.Sex.Violence.Other? which gave them their only No.1 single, Dakota.

 

Girls Aloud’s Out Of Control slides to No.3 after a week at the top and Kings Of Leon’s Only By The Night is back up two places to No.4 this week. Pink’s former chart topper Funhouse drops three places to No.5. Irish singer Enya continues to find album chart success two decades after her only UK No.1 single, Orinoco Flow. Her new album And Winter Came debuts at No.6 this week as the follow up to 2005’s Amarantine, a No.8 hit. It is her eighth UK top ten album to date. Greatest Hits by Enrique Iglesias slides four places to No.7 this week and Celine Dion’s My Love – The Essential Collection is down one spot to No.8. Snow Patrol’s A Hundred Million Suns fails to recover from its poor start, falling a further four places to No.9. Christina Aguilera rounds off the top ten at No.10 with her first hits album, Keeps Gettin’ Better – A Decade Of Hits, which features her four UK No.1 singles Genie In A Bottle, Lady Marmalade, Dirrrty and Beautiful as well as new songs Keeps Gettin’ Better and Dynamite, and reworked songs Genie 2.0 and You Are What You Are.

 

Next week’s chart should be very interesting as it looks increasingly likely that Hero, the X Factor single might die down enough to allow a new No.1, which would most likely be a climber from either T.I. and Rihanna, Beyonce or The Killers. Current hits from Alesha Dixon and Katy Perry should also continue to stay around or climb further. Notable physical releases, besides The Killers whose single is only available on 7”, are due from Duffy, James Blunt, John Barrowman, Nickelback and The Verve. The highest new physical entry is likely to come from Christian Falk feat Robyn, the Swedish duo unleashing the dance anthem Dream On simultaneously physically and digitally on Monday. The string laden anthem is likely to give Robyn, who has had a miraculous career revival recently, another big hit after the recent top forty success of With Every Heartbeat, Handle Me, Be Mine! And Who’s That Girl. New download entries should come from Craig David, whose dance/R&B anthem Insomnia is out on Monday, Papa by British hip-hop trio N-Dubz and Run by Leona Lewis, the Snow Patrol cover that the former X Factor winner sang on this weekend’s live X Factor show.

 

A number of big new albums will most likely see Il Divo have to surrender their No.1 album. Dido’s long awaited third album Safe Trip Home is out on Monday but after the flop of the lead single, Don’t Believe In Love, it won’t be a huge surprise if the album misses the top spot. Nickelback are hoping for their second top five album of the year with Dark Horse whilst UK hip hop trio N-Dubz are likely to reach the top ten with their debut album, Uncle B. As Christmas draws ever nearer, other big albums are due from Beyoncé, Leona Lewis, Russell Watson, Tom Jones, Simply Red, Scooter, Adele, T.I. and T-Pain, a number of these being deluxe editions of previously released albums.

 

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

:cheer: He Strikes again! :P

Superlative work, Rich. ^_^

:cheer: He Strikes again! :P

 

 

Can't think of anything else to say apart from the usual "great again!" post so i copied Johnjo's :P

 

 

But it was great anyway :P

Edited November 16, 200816 yr by Harve

Great read as always.

 

I know this is incredibly pedantic but Enya has had two number ones ... as well as the one you mentioned she received a featured credit on Mario Winans 2004 number one 'i don't wanna know'.

 

 

Great read as always.

 

I know this is incredibly pedantic but Enya has had two number ones ... as well as the one you mentioned she received a featured credit on Mario Winans 2004 number one 'i don't wanna know'.

 

forgot about that :o

 

and glad you, Johnjo, Harve and Lucille liked it :D

bump (for those that missed it)

bump (for those that missed it)

 

LOL i did miss it when viewing earlier :lol: Anyway great read

Edited November 17, 200816 yr by KJ Rob

thanks Rob, I noticed it had been shunted down the page quite quickly and hadn't had as many views as usual