In which Lily Allen’s comeback veers off script a bit.
39. Boyzone – “Love Will Save the Day”
This is the lead single from Boyzone’s fifth album – their second as a reunion act. While their comeback has been, shall we say, less noteworthy than Take That’s, and they’re the sort of act you would naturally expect to gravitate towards albums by this point, number 39 is still surprisingly low. The lead single from their previous album made the top 10 (the follow up missed the top 40, admittedly, but at least there was some interest from the singles audience). It’s not even a particularly bad track – it’s certainly better than many of their actual hits.
31. AWOLNATION – “Sail”
Re-entry. This has been floating around the edge of the chart for a while and made 39 two weeks ago.
30. Justin Bieber & R Kelly – “P.Y.D.”
Another “Music Mondays” release. The title stands for “Put You Down”, a notion so scandalous that it can only be conveyed through the medium of abbreviation. It’s hard to imagine this getting considered for single release in normal circumstances – it’s five minutes of Bieber and Kelly singing over a virtually beat-free loop of synth washes. Pretend he’s singing to a dog and it takes on a wonderfully sinister edge.
27. Avicii – “Hey Brother”
His next single, which started picking up sales during the week. ”Wake Me Up” rebounds from 33 to 18 this week, and Avicii is evidently very taken with his new country influence – for the first 90 seconds, this is the least Avicii-sounding record ever to bear his name. After that… well, you know the drill, but it’s still a lot less Avicii-sounding than many of his songs.
Somehow Avicii continues to get away with skipping the usually obligatory “featuring” credit. The singer here is Dan Tyminski, a member of the bluegrass band Union Station.
26. Rudimental featuring Emeli Sande – “Free”
Climbing from 39 last week. Still don’t see this one matching some of their earlier hits, though it’s starting to grow on me.
19. JLS – “Billion Lights”
JLS are splitting, and this is the token new track on their greatest hits album, before they are freed from their contractual obligations and allowed to go their own way. If it doesn’t go further (and it won’t), this will be the lowest charting JLS single, and only the second to miss the top 10. Probably chose a good time to quit while they were ahead, then.
9. Lily Allen – “Hard Out Here”
Um. Lily Allen has been away starting a family for three years. She now returns with an unlikely one-two of John Lewis cover “Somewhere Only We Know” (number 2 last week), and this rather more typical single. While I’m sure nobody’s losing sleep over the success of the advert track, they’ve got to be disappointed with the official comeback track landing at only 9. The lead singles from her previous two albums both got to number 1, after all. And current position on iTunes? Twenty-two. Judged against realistic expectations, this has kind of tanked, to be blunt.
The video has sparked much handwringing in Guardian-reading circles, and I’m not entirely convinced it works – fundamentally, I’m not sure it actually goes far enough over the top to consistently register as parody, and so it ends up seeming like a slightly odd counterpoint that doesn’t quite fit with such a direct song.
The title is apparently a reference to Three Six Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp”, which won an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2005, but is pretty much unknown in the UK.
6. Martin Garrix – “Animals”
Last week’s number 1 takes an unusually steep tumble. Same happened to Storm Queen last week. Odd behaviour these days, but then it’s odd for two dance tracks to top the charts, period. Apparently there was a ton of pent-up demand for this that was all satisfied in week one.
3. Gary Barlow – “Let Me Go”
Time for another crack at a solo career, then. Gary Barlow tried this before between 1996 and 1999, ending up overshadowed by Robbie Williams. Now, with Take That back on hiatus, he’s giving it another go. And admittedly, he’s had solo credits on “Shame”, his 2010 duet with Robbie Williams, and on last year’s Jubilee single “Sing”.
Given the stage his career is at, I’d say number 3 is an excellent placing for somebody who you might think was a more natural fit for the album charts, particularly now that he’s Going A Bit Mumford.
2. Bastille – “Of the Night”
This weeks highest new entry is the bonus track from the special edition of Bastille’s album, and it’s a truly odd affair – a murky cover of Corona’s “Rhythm of the Night” (number 2 in 1994), with bits of Snap’s “Rhythm is a Dancer” thrown in (number 1 in 1992), distorted vocals, and a video of lip-synching murder victims.
I’m not completely convinced by it – if you’re familiar with the Eurodance original, it really can’t help feeling like a novelty job. Still, it’s such a drastic reworking of the song that it gets points for the surprise factor. Compare…
1. Lily Allen – “Somewhere Only We Know”
Climbing from last week’s number 2, Lily Allen finds herself at number 1 with the wrong song, thanks to the heartwarming video in which a hare interrupts a bear’s naturally-dictated hibernation cycle to make sure that he can enjoy Christmas.
There is arguably an asterisk next to this, because One Direction released a bunch of instant grat tracks during the week that (of course) aren’t eligible for the chart, all of which briefly topped the iTunes chart. But none of them were there long enough to seriously suggest that they would have been number 1 even if they’d been chartable – only the official single “Story of my Life” has shown real staying power. Which, if nothing else, proves that One Direction do sell records to people other than their hardcore fan base.
On the albums chart:
“Swings Both Ways” by Robbie Williams at number 1. This is the 1,000th number 1 album, which is a round number, so it must be important.
“Shangri La” by Jake Bugg at 3. Follow-up to his self-titled debut which made number 1 last year. But then it didn’t come out in the run-up to Christmas. There were singles released in advance of this album, but none of them made the top 40. Lead single: “Broken”.
“Goodbye – The Greatest Hits” by JLS at 6. Contract fulfilled.
“Voices” by Gareth Malone at 23. Weird pop-classical hybrid thing. Malone does a choir-recruitment reality show on BBC2 (no, really, that’s a thing) and this is a collection of choral cover versions of pop songs, striking credited to Malone himself rather than to the actual singers. There’s an album sampler on iTunes here – it falls between two stools pretty badly.
“Now and Always – 20 Years of Dreaming” by Gabrielle at 38. Yes, that Gabrielle. She already released a greatest hits album in 2001, but there were a couple of releases after that, so…