This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
The power of television. Not something you should ever underestimate. Although in actual fact this should be extended to the power of the television commercial, for the Number One single this week owes a great deal of its success to a highly regarded and extremely memorable piece of advertising.
The work in question is an advert for Lucozade Lite which runs a full 90 seconds in its full version and features quad skaters Candice and Danielle and a host of other like minded athletes performing a series of eye-popping stunts in and around Venice Beach in California. Soundtracking the whole spectacle is an edit of the single which this week was finally released for commercial purchase and which takes full benefit of the extensive exposure it has already received on TV and in the cinema to charge to Number One with the second highest weekly sale of the year so far. Louder by drum and bass star DJ Fresh sold a whopping 140,000 copies last week, more than double its nearest competitor to be an easy and quite sensational Number One single.
In truth even without the TV advert, the single might well have been a smash hit under its own steam. Daniel Stein's last hit single as DJ Fresh was Gold Dust, a single which was actually a re-release of a track he had first debuted back in 2008 but which helped to by and large define the sound of the summer of 2010, making its chart debut in the middle of August last year. The single never managed to push past its initial chart entry of Number 24, but it spent 8 weeks in the Top 30, selling 143,000 copies by the end of the year, a total which has since swelled to well over 200,000. Quite simply DJ Fresh was set to go massive with his next release no matter what, but I suspect few could have predicted the dramatic style in which he did so.
The singer of Louder and who gets a co-credit on the chart is Sian Evans, better known normally as the lead singer of Kosheen but who here lands herself a chart single far bigger than anything she has ever achieved before with her bandmates. The biggest Kosheen single to chart was Hide U which crept to Number 6 in September 2001.
For the first time since November 6th last year the top two tracks on the singles chart are both new entries. Although it naturally finished a long way behind its rival, How We Roll by Loick Essien featuring Tanya Lacey makes a comfortable debut in the runners up slot this week. Having made his debut as the guest star on the Chipmunk track Beast back in 2008, Grime star Loick Essien made his Top 40 debut earlier this year with Stuttering which stuttered itself by charting at a lowly Number 36 despite the theoretical star presence of various members of N-Dubz on guest vocals. His breakthrough hit single eschews big names for the hitherto unheralded voice of Welsh singer Tanya Lacey on a synth driven track which in all honesty could teach JLS a thing or two about energy and excitement - sounding fresh without straying too far from what is instantly recognisable as an extremely commercial formula if that makes sense. No? Watch the video, you'll see for yourselves.`
Rounding off the Top 3 is Ed Sheeran who makes an unexpected three place climb with The A Team, the single returning to the peak it first scaled upon its chart debut three weeks ago. In a week when no other new singles penetrate the Top 10, the big loser is last week's Number One Don't Wanna Go Home which plummets 1-5 to leave Jason Derulo languishing somewhat in the face of some rather large competition.
The biggest mover outside the Top 10 is Set Fire To The Rain by Adele which week after week seems on the verge of giving up the ghost but which then advances still further. After a mere two place rise last wek, the single now vaults a further nine and sits pretty at Number 12 where theoretically it stands a good chance of joining its two predecessors as a Top 10 hit sometime in the next fortnight (he says, hedging his bets).
A week of rather crazy activity lower down sees a former Top 3 hit go on an unexpected yo-yo of its own. David Guetta's Where Them Girls At spent just three weeks in the Top 10 before making a swift charge to mid table, but in the last few weeks it has appeared to be on the verge of changing its mind, shuttling back and forth between 23 and 26 a few times. This week the single bounces back to Number 17, its highest chart placing for five weeks.
Mind you that is nothing compared to the rather amusing Brown/Lopez sandwich which occupies much of the 21-30 segment of the singles chart as two American stars find their previous and current hits crossing over with one another in a lovely symmetrical fashion. At the centre of it all is Chris Brown who has Beautiful People falling one place to Number 25, with its successor Next 2 You rising to occupy its previous chart position. Yet he is bracketed by none other than Jennifer Lopez who boxes him in with former Number One On The Floor at Number 23, outlasting its own follow-up I'm Into You which tumbles to Number 26. No, none of this has any particular significance at all, but it amused me to see it nonetheless.
Actually no, what is equally as funny is the way two very different versions of the same track sit side by side just outside the Top 40. Adele's Rolling In The Deep is at Number 43 this week, just one place behind an extraordinary cover by Linkin Park in a live version swiftly culled from their set at the iTunes festival. Theirs is no less than the third version of the track to chart within the last six months, Adele's original having already been joined by a timely remake by the Glee Cast who charted at Number 49 at the start of June.
Not every blue-sky promotional idea works the way it was supposed to. Much was made in some quarters of Pete Andre's latest wheeze of popping up on shopping television every day this week to promote his new single Perfect Night. It charts at Number 48, outsold one suspects by a beautiful charm bracelet reduced from its recommended retail price to a superb value £9.99. [Thank you, I'm here all week. Try the fish!]
