I missed last week, but honestly not much happened anyway. Kings of Leon presumably continue to baffle onlookers from their own country, having extended "Sex on Fire"'s run at the top to three weeks and added a fairly massive selling number one album. Oh and (next single?) "Use Somebody" is in at 29 too. I must have heard it as I heard the whole album at the weekend, but don't really remember much past general professional likableness.
"Disturbia"'s long life on music TV channels allows Rihanna to reach a peak at 3 after twelve weeks, at the expense of Pussycat Dolls. Biggest climber near the top is Iglu & Hartley, up to 5 and a total mess in far too knowing a way, like they thought for a long time about being this lazy.
James Morrison is 6 (bad luck, Scottish international footballer James Morrison), although "You Make It Real" is still behind "You Give Me Something" for top YouTube result on him. About right since it is basically the same song, except with added slickness. Which is about twentieth on the list of attributes that it needed more of. I never got "About You Now" as anything other than good but too safe, and "Girls" at 8 definitely isn't that, whacking great well known sample nonwithstanding. But they seem to run out of song just as they get into their stride, with that sample just taking up way too much space for how much at adds to the song. The top ten closes out with evidence of the horrors of a downloads based chart as someone singing Faith Hill's sub-Dion "There You'll Be" on The X Factor is enough to return it.
Will Young stalls at 13, down from a mere 10 last week. A shame because "Changes" is the first thing that I unreservedly like so far, doing a good job of easygoing soul with its strings and falsetto deployed for an actual reason beyong usually being in this kind of thing. You can't record an album as fanbase-losing as his last one, go away for years and only come back with this amd expect them to come back though. At 16, Kanye West's continuing bid to be the biggest pop star ever gives us "Love Lockdown"! I have read much but not listened to it til writing this so don't know any comparisons with live versions or uninished versions or whatever, and the first thing is to be a bit surprised by just how bare it is. Second thing, those drums! The autotuned vocals do leave a bit of a feeling of just hanging in there, waiting for the drums and bass to kick back in, but it's worth it. "Paper Planes" glides into the top twenty at 19 and is still on it's way up, maybe? Is Pineapple Express actually out yet? Don't know my films I don't care about very well.
At 26... OK, I know there's Bond traditions to uphold, but "Another Way to Die"? Could you get any more generic a title? Surely Jack White could have managed a "Quantum of Solace", and if he couldn't then Muse probably already wrote one. The intro to the song almost singlehandedly redeems it though, throwing all the best recognisable bits of White Stripes and Bond together and implausibly making it stick. The piano's good too, shame that Jack and Alicia shouting at each other seems such an afterthought.
At the bottom of the top forty there's two (??) entries by Jonas Brothers, still taking the McFly model, diluting it down and then selling it back to us. Plus all that purity stuff of course. Hopefully it won't get any further than this but I'm not optimistic. Ditto for DJ Ironik's follow up single at 35. Pink is at 38, we'll talk about that a lot more next week. And Elbow's "One Day Like This", having taken a week's break, pops back up at 39 just in time to get in the way of the release of its follow up.
In the albums, beyond the aforementioned Kings of Leon, there's entries in the top ten for Pussycat Dolls (with a large number of songs that were meant to be on Nicole's ill-fated solo album, apparently), Bette Midler (ah, Strictly Come Dancing, so much to anwer for), McFly (inconclusive as to whether a mere 8 is due to giving it away for free with the Daily Mail, their fanbase deserting them, or both) and Dave Gilmour. Live in Gdansk!
Katy Perry appearing on albums-oriented Later (watch and note Pete and Guy of Elbow nodding along politely) isn't enough to get her beyond 11.
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