This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
We are rapidly reaching a point where the most pertinent chart facts of the week are essentially old news to many of the people reading this. Adele's record-mangling chart run has now crossed over into mainstream fact. Her extended spell at the top of the album chart no longer a point of interest for seasoned chartwatchers like ourselves, but a genuine mainstream music news story which has suddenly got everyone hooked.
It is now 11 weeks in a row at Number One for Adele and 21, a fact that means she has now sailed past anything achieved by Dire Straits and Adam and the Ants and is now nudging the 12 week total of Legend by Bob Marley and the Wailers as the longest running Number One of the last 30 years.
This 30 year cutoff point incidentally appeared to raise the ire of some on here last week. It is not to discount or somehow disregard the music made in the 60s and 70s but simply to take a relevant point of comparison for the kind of chart performance put in by the Adele record. Bear in mind that what she has done is pretty much unprecedented in a generation, beating the sales runs of records that were made before she was even born. Setting her now 11 week spell at the top in the context of "well didn't The Beatles once manage six months at Number One with an album" is actually to belittle it and to attempt to compare music markets decades ago like for like.
If, however, you prefer to see Adele's chart run in a true universal context, then consider that her 11 weeks at Number One is the longest continuous run by any solo artist studio album in the whole of chart history. Groups and duos of the past have had more epic stays at the top, but the only other albums credited to one artist alone to have surpassed this total were two Elvis Presley movie soundtracks GI Blues and Blue Hawaii back in 1961 and 1962. Adele has this week achieved something that hasn't been done in 50 years - never mind 30.
As is now customary we have to note the big new album release of the week which failed to depose the balladeering diva from the top. This time around it is On A Mission from Katy B which storms to Number 2 just as its current hit single Broken Record drops out of the Top 10. All eyes I guess now on the Foo Fighters release which seems to be the only thing standing between Adele and a 12th week on top.
By contrast the singles chart appears to be something of an anti-climax with very few new singles of note arriving. That leaves the path clear for Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull to spend a second week at Number One with On The Floor. This is actually slightly more significant that it seems as J-Lo's two previous chart-topping singles managed just a week apiece at the top. In pure statistical terms On The Floor is now the American star's biggest chart hit ever.
With no big new singles arriving, the glass ceiling shatters with a rather pleasant noise as no less than three different singles climb into the Top 10 from where they had been bubbling around in last week's Top 20. Leading the charge is Katy Perry with ET, the single jumping 12-5 to match the achievements of the three other singles lifted from her Teenage Dream album as well as ensuring Katy Perry has now appeared or sung on six Top 5 hits in a row. Although it has now stormed to a commanding lead in its own right, intriguingly at one point during the week the Kanye West-featuring single version was selling neck and neck with the original rap-free album version. The practice of crowbarring a hip-hop star onto a pop record is more or less de rigeur for any American single these days, the idea being to give the track "cross over" appeal and ensuring it gets played on urban stations as well as hits radio. Oddly enough over here the more nervously programmed hits stations are more likely to give airplay to the rap-free mixes of a track (does that make it a cross-under?) but as a simple glance of live download charges will tell you, in general it is the full blown single mix that people purchase anyway.
It is a rap duet which gives the chart its second Top 10 new entry, Buzzin from Mann and 50 Cent climbing 11-6. This is enough to make the track 50 Cent's biggest chart hit since his cameo shot on Eminem's Crack A Bottle in February 2009 and the 12th Top 10 hit of his career. Buzzin borrows heavily from the bass and synth lines of I Can't Wait which was a 1986 chart hit for Nu Shooz on both sides of the Atlantic, the track reaching Number over here.
The final Top 10 climber of the week is Sweat by Snoop Dogg and David Guetta which moves 16-9, Snoop's first Top 10 hit since he appeared on Katy Perry's California Gurls a year ago and if one presumes he is the lead artist on the track rather than just an equal partner to his French producer then the track is his biggest hit single since 'Signs' hit Number 2 way back in 2005. The single is a rather cleaned up version of a track called Wet which features on Snoop's forthcoming album Doggumentary and in in a glorious throwback to one of the best moments of 1990s dance contains an interpolation of the Felix classic Don't You Want Me from 1996.
Just hanging in to a Top 10 place at Number 10 is Jessie J's Price Tag and just as well really. Along with Adele she is just one of two British representatives in the upper reaches of the singles chart this week with the remaining 8 places all occupied by American acts. Indeed it gets worse the further you look down the Top 20. 15 of the biggest singles of the week are American hits, the flag for Britain flown by just four stars - Adele, Katy B, Jessie J and The Wanted.
If its current momentum is anything to go on, one of the bigger hits of the next couple of weeks is like to be Chris Brown's new single Beautiful People which charges to Number 20 this week, one place behind its predecessor Yeah 3X. The single features a co-credit for producer Benny Benassi, the first chart credit for the Italian DJ since No Matter What You Do crept into the Top 40 in February 2004. Chris Brown incidentally grabs the crown of most prolific chart act of the week for as well as the aforementioned Top 20 hits he also features on the Chipmunk single Champion at Number 26 and is the guest singer on T-Pain's Best Love Song which makes its chart debut at Number 40.
