Rolling UK Pop/Chart/"Few people would dispute that Elbow have given us the album of the year" Thread 2009

Gomez to become first band to win Mercury twice, calling it

Laughing Len at 19

really?

BRITISH POP "STILL ON TOP" - yup, Calvin Harris gets his first non-Dizzee-assisted number one, "I'm Not Alone" dislodging Poke Of Face after three bastard weeks, AND NOT ONLY THAT but La Roux storms up to number four in some kind of rubbish-eyewear double-whammy. And The Noisettes are still number five! Everything's alright forever! Lovely Sexy Magic zooms in at 6.

The Hillsborough memorial single is at 16, with Depeche Mode quite predictably entering at 24. Bat For Lashes gets a first-ever top 40 hit at 36 (from little acorns do MGMT grow), and, in further "what you've all been waiting for" news, James Morrison's follow-up to "Broken Strings" enters at 39, 21 spots behind its predecessor.

Lady Gaga is still Bestest at album-selling, tho, with Doves having to settle for second place. Bat For Lashes - literally EVERYWHERE this week - charts at 5, with YYYs at 3+3+3 (i.e. nine). For some reason Tapestry is at 12 - some kind of reissue thing? - and, for less reasons, Eoghan Quigg is at 14. Nu-Neil-Young at 22, Totally Best Of Ultravox Ever at 35.

The Tapestry reissue is even getting TV adverts unusually.

Oh, and "Is That Amy You'd Be Looking For, Then?" has climbed into the top 40 at 35.

Oddly enough, though, there's drops for "I Love College" (down to 41), "Sugar" (down to 35), and... "Untouchable", which is down to 42 from 41. I'm guessing that's down to it not being out physically yet, but I think that First Girls Aloud Single Not To Go Top 10 medal might just be finding a chest to get pinned on.

Elsewhere: Fightstar's not-exactly-any-good "Mercury Summer" is at 46, one ahead of Ercola's "Every Word". Two Miley singles - "The Climb" advanceth to 49, and "Hoedown Throwdown" (do not want to know) is new at 62. The Jools Holland Effect sends "Zero" rocketing to 68. There's another Basshunter single, and it's at 76, one ahead of "White Winter Hymnal", which is two ahead of The Prodigy's "Warriors Dance". Deadmau5 and Kaskade climb to 91, five spots ahead of Eoghan Quigg's reworking of "Get Off The Internet". Alexandra Burke's "Hallelujah" re-enters at 86.

ACTUAL FUCKING HISTORY RIGHT HERE PEOPLE: For the first time ever, a song with "Number 1" in the title has actually got to number one in the charts and it's Tinchy Stryder and hat-boy from N-Dubz wot done it. Congratulations to them and their pretty half-decent record. Having missed last week's chart (SECOND WEEK OF NON-ALONE-NESS is what I would have called it fwiw), I also missed La Roux soaring (painfully) to number two, which is where she/they stay this week, with The Calvinist slipping to number three. Yes, that's an all-British top three right there for the first time since... don't actually know, but I'll be going and checking ChartStats in a bit to find out, won't I? Yes I will. Aside from "We Made You" climbing to number five, nothing else of interest in the top 10, really.

BUT OUTSIDE THAT: Biffy Clyro offshoot Marmaduke Duke get the festival season started early, with "Rubber Lover" (YES SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE THERE) getting to number 12, one ahead of Pink Has Designs On Your Kneecaps, which is in turn three ahead of Miley Cyrus' "Maybe I Like The Misery". Prodigy's back-ness continues, with "Warriors Dance" getting to 18, and Keri Hilson has her first proper grown-up hit with "Return The Favor", at 20.

"Numa Numanenome" is at 22, Championg At Beer Pong re-enters at 26, one ahead of "A Personal Journey Through The Theme Tune From Tiny Planets With Girls Aloud", and Deadmau5 brings back the heyday of all chart dance acts being slightly dodgy Amiga-based animations (there was Usura, and... someone else), with "I Remember" finally breaching the 40 at 39 (one ahead of Bat For Lashes).

BUT OUTSIDE THOSE: Not posting last week meant missing Frankmusik's first top 40 hit, and this week it drops from 26 to 42. Sizeable-ish hoiks for "Hoedown Throwdown" (43) and Third Alesha Dixon Single (45). It would also appear that "Zero" peaked last week at 49 - it's at 64 this week :-(

It's another week of GAGA SMASH PUNY ALBUM CHART, not sure how long that makes it now but never mind eh. Depeche Mode have to settle for runner-up spot, Noisettes are at 7, Fightstar's Be Human (ewwwwwwwwwwwww) debuts at 20. And at 32 - CAMERA OBSCURA! Seriously! The Scottish ones! With the woolly hats! And the scowling! And such! Paul Morley's endorsement puts them six whole spots ahead of Asher "So Many Other Songs" Roth, with Entirely Necessary 10cc Best Of one spot further back. Lacuna Coil's Shallow Life (ewwwwwwwwwwwww) is at 43, and Christy Moore's new thing charts at 51. One behind Eoghan Quigg :-(

And the answer - 29th March 2008 ("American Boy" - "Mercy" - "Better In Time/Footprints In The Sand").

and?

lol at Gallows and Maccabees beating The Horrors in the LP charts.

Not much else happening, is there?

wonder if there will be any #1s this year that AREN'T a solo artist (either with/without guests). Comic Relief collectives don't count.

Black Eyed Peas, probably?

and of course the Manics with "Jackie Collins Existential Question Time"

Midweeks:

Singles

1 Dizzee Rascal 45.5k
2 Black Eyed Peas 22.4k
3 Alexander Rybak (Eurovision winner) 14.7k
4 Tinchy/N-Dubz 14.3k
5 Eminem 12.6k

Top 10
7 Daniel Merriwether

Top 15
Soulja Boy
15 Jade Ewen (UK Eurovision entry)

Top 30
Paolo Nutini
25 Yohanna (Iceland Eurovision entry)
Star Pilots
Green Day

Top 40
Keri Hilson
Eminem (Beautiful)
Alicia Keys (No One - Britain's Got Talent Effect Pt 1)

Top 50
Katy Perry
Asher Roth
50 Girls Aloud

Top 60
Alex Swings Oscar Sings (German Eurovision entry)
Kelly Clarkson

Top 70
Michael Jackson (They Don't Care About Us - Britain's Got Talent Effect Pt 2)
Waldo's People (Finnish Eurovision entry)
69 Urban Symphony (Estonian Eurovision entry)

Top 80
71 Lady GaGa (Paparazzi)
Beyonce (Diva)
Lenka

Albums

1 Eminem 63.9k
2 Green Day 23.7k
3 Manic Street Preachers 17.99k
4 Lily Allen 6.2k
5 Madness 5.5k

Top 15
11 Alesha
Jarvis Cocker
Tori Amos

Top 20
Steve Earle

The biggest Eurovision chart onslaught since 1974?

I didn't see the Icelandic entry, and the bit they showed seemed to be a random segment from somewhere in the middle. Was it really that good?

Rather a fine song, actually - conventional in format but she can certainly sing and there was a nice political subtext too.

WOW (and YAY) at that Eurovision chart invasion!

Non-scientific vox pop:

1. Yohanna's "Is It True?" (Iceland, #25) was my partner's favourite song from the first semi-final.

2. Alex Swings, Oscar Sings "Miss Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" (Germany, Top 60) was the unanimous favourite of the six neighbours whose dinner party I crashed to watch the voting.

3. The co-worker who sits opposite me now has Urban Symphony's "Rändajad" (Estonia, #69) as his mobile ring-tone.

Incidentally, the jury-only voting results have now been released. Same Top Two (Norway/Iceland), but Jade Ewen moves up to 3rd and France's Patricia Kaas moves up to 4th.

Is Micky Jackson gonna be #1 on Sunday and with what? Billie Jean?

http://cascadabiography.com/images/Cascada-07.jpg

I'm not sure any song getting to number one has made me this happy in quite a while.

Why is Man In The Mirror, of all Jacko songs, the one at #2?

It's the Michael Jackson single that can double as (auto)biographical whitewashed story of his life slash sentimental anthem for our times a la "Candle In The Wind"??

At least that's popular and not very disturbing (c.f. "Childhood").

i'd never heard 'man in the mirror' before i saw it was the most popular on the charts. it's not great, is it.

i also didn't know until last week that the woman on 'in the closet' is PRINCESS STEPHANIE OF MONACO.

'stranger in moscow' would've been a far better autobiographical ballad choice

i also didn't know until last week that the woman on 'in the closet' is PRINCESS STEPHANIE OF MONACO.

LOL, whatever happened to etc... "Man in the Mirror" does seem to be a favourite among Jackofans

I think the position is reversed for most people though lex - they know "Man In The Mirror" very well but wouldn't recognise "Stranger In Moscow" (as fantastic as it is).

I saw "Man in the Mirror" done as a fabulous piano soul number on Australian Idol a few years back.

yeah, my first MJ memories are his 90s material and i only bothered acquiring bad last week.

it does seem that the off the wall stuff is doing oddly badly in comparison to everything else.

I like "Man in the Mirror" a lot and it's sufficiently jaunty. "Stranger in Moscow" would have been too dark, plus not his most popular era, as Tim says.

x-post Pre vs Post "King of Pop". Most of the coverage seems to skip from "Ben" to the first ten seconds of "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" to "Billie Jean".

Also you'd think the only singles on Thriller were "Billie Jean", "Beat It" and the title track.

'ben' is probably the biggest MJ hit i've never heard

I used to play it on the jukebox in my local boozer every time I went in, I was really popular

Ben still makes me cringe, actually.

That's rattist.gif

i wish Chart Stats guy would update his site quicker.

not particularly interesting but seemingly every site that lists the chart is pretty wretchedly designed (including the official CIN site's and yahoo uk music's) like they just converted an Excel spreadsheet to HTML and couldn't be bothered to dress it up or at least make it clearer.

'Man in the Mirror' probably best fits the MJ vision people would like to believe - flawed but with plenty of hope, or something like that - rather than the vision put forward by the nutso odes to paranoia and so on.

I try to be a good poptimist but the idea of Cascada being good is a few steps beyond my understanding.

cascada are just impossible to care about either way

prob still the 3rd or 4th best no 1 of the year so far though *cries*

was almost tempted to listen to Radio 1 on Sunday evening to see how they'd actually go about playing all the Jackson songs - whether they'd keep making light of this or try and play it down, or just only play some of them (did they actually play the 4 in a row?)

seriously over halfway through the year and LILY FUCKING ALLEN has made my favourite UK no 1 - this cannot be permitted to continue

also, wherefore the summer anthems?

(xpost) They played all of them. And before each one, there was a short clip from a celebrity/musician (Pete Tong, etc.) saying how much said track meant to them.

plus kinda want Jackson to destroy the charts in this way - sort of interesting to see how long it will take for the songs to drop back out of the 40

also, wherefore the summer anthems?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKEtHp-qJxc

;)

surely it's a prerequisite of a summer anthem that it has to be halfway decent

that is one lame stock photo cover

It's a bit like one of those enormous wallpaper mural things.

Xpost to Lex: I've *loved* this year's run of Number Ones - best in years! Comic Relief and Pixie Lott have been my only duds.

lily allen accidentally stumbling on her first and so far only good song and the black eyed peas on autopilot have been the only NON duds. i really hate the cheapo electro trebly sound that apparently is the hallmark of "pop" now. i wish taylor swift had got to no 1.

i like the ~idea~ of dizzee and tinchy being no 1 artists, the latter totally unexpectedly, but it's with material which is just so shoddy compared to what they're capable of

Ah, OK, that explains it - I'm a total sucker for those cheapo electro noises.

They appear to have permeated almost everything this year to an almost unprecedented level. I think the industry has cottoned onto them as the ultimate faux-unifying force.

'Bonkers' doesn't seem particularly trebly - probably why i quite like it now