This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
I told you nothing was going to shift it just yet. With another huge sale that puts most of the rest of the Top 10 in the shade, California Gurls from Katy Perry and Snoop Dogg spends a second comfortable week at Number One on the singles chart. Its sales may have slipped slightly from the 100,000 plus it managed seven days ago, but only just - the single selling over 93,000 copies which is almost double that of its nearest chart rival. Katy Perry has already appeared on two of the Top 20 biggest sellers of the year so far (Starstrukk and If We Ever Meet Again) and at this rate could end up all but guaranteeing herself a place in the year end Top 10.
With nothing going on at the very summit of the singles chart it is left to the tracks just below the top to create the best stories of the week and indeed over the course of the last seven days an intriguing three way battle was joined between a brand new hit, a climber from the depths and an established chart single which experienced an unexpected but easily explained fresh surge. In the end just 4,000 sales separated the singles at 2,3 and 4 making this one of the tightest top end races for some weeks.
Emerging triumphant in the end is Airplanes from B.o.B. And Hayley Williams which has spent five weeks on the charts already, the first handful of these as an album cut hovering around the bottom of the Top 20. Now with airplay and exposure for the track kicking in for real, the single has taken off and this week charges 12-2 as the most pleasant chart surprise of the week. Airplanes is unlikely to match the chart-topping feat of B.o.B's last single Nothin' On You but the track has at least given Hayley Williams the biggest chart hit of her career so far, eclipsing the Number 14 peak that she scaled with Paramore on Ignorance in September last year.
At Number 3 is the true surprise package of the week, All The Lovers by Kylie Minogue which on its third week on the chart rebounds three places to land itself its highest chart placing to date. This sudden sales surge actually has little to do with the appeal of the record itself or any brand new high profile exposure it has received - all Kylie did this week was actually release a single. Having been available merely as a single digital download for the past fortnight, this week All The Lovers was promoted as a full single release with not only a full digital bundle of mixes but a proper CD release as well. I guess if you have collected a full set of Kylie singles to date you have no reason to stop now, and this level of dedication amongst her more hardcore fans has helped the single arrest its decline and become her first Top 3 single since I Believe In You way back in December 2004. Make no mistake this is something of a one week wonder and All The Lovers will sink back next week to something approaching its true chart level, but for this week at least her new single ranks as one of her biggest hits for some time. All eyes now on just how long the track will remain in the Top 10 - I Believe In You was her last to manage a four week run and she has not have a single stay in the upper reaches for five weeks since the golden age of Can't Get You Out Of My Head in 2001.
Your sympathies then for the track which at one stage was making a strong challenge to be Number 2 but eventually finds itself eclipsed by not one but two older hits and can progress no further than Number 4. The highest new entry of the week is from a returning Enrique Iglesias who lands on the chart with I Like It, ably assisted by a guest rap from Pitbull. The track is his first chart single in well over a year, the follow-up effectively to Takin Back My Love which hit Number 12 in March 2009. I Like It is taken from his forthcoming new album Euphoria, his first album proper in three years, and one which will feature a mixture of English and Spanish language tracks. For we insular Brits the first single is an English one, a strange production that drenches the star in electronic effects and which features a cheeky lift of some of the lyrics from Lionel Richie's All Night Long as part of the hook. Perhaps not as immediate as some of his past offerings, the single for all that is still yet another Top 5 hit, the sixth of his now decade long career.
The B.o.B. single isn't the only one to break the proverbial Top 10 glass ceiling this week as another slow burner Commander from Kelly Rowland and David Guetta makes a 13-9 climb. Technically this is Kelly Rowland's first Top 10 hit as a lead artist since 'Work' made a similar climb from the chart depths to reach Number 4 in January 2008 but of course this is to overlook that Commander is the second straight Top 10 collaboration between her and French producer Guetta, following on from the Number One hit When Love Takes Over which hit the top in June last year. Guetta misses out by a narrow squeak on having two simultaneous Top 10 hits, his last single Gettin' Over You dips 10-13 this week as if to make way for its successor.
An otherwise quiet Top 20 is enlivened by the arrival of Rescue Me from Skepta at Number 14. It is the third and biggest chart hit so far for the Grime MC, the direct follow-up to Badboy which had a brief chart run back in March when it peaked at Number 26. Although a member of Roll Deep, Skepta did not feature on their recent Number One single Good Times, ensuring that Rescue Me can rank as his greatest chart success to date.
Towards the lower end of the Top 40 we have a genuine oddity, a potential smash hit in the making which is for the moment charting in what most will regard as the "wrong" version. Ask anyone in the know and they will cheerfully tell you that We No Speak Americano from Australian group Yolanda Be Cool is set to be the big global smash hit of the summer. Already a Top 10 and in some territories a Number One hit across Europe, the track had been pencilled in for a mid-July release here to neatly coincide with end of school and the holiday season. Except there is a problem - a "spoiler" and in some ways rather inferior cover version by Marco Calliari which has arrived in the shops early and is capitalising on the already high levels of pent up demand for the smash hit. Hence after initially charting at Number 43, his version of We No Speak Americano is now a Top 40 hit as it rises this week to Number 26. Needless to say this has caused a brief panic at All Around The World records, the UK licensees of the Yolanda Be Cool version - causing them to release their own version a fortnight earlier than had originally been planned. With the Marco Calliari version still gaining chart traction and still selling in reasonable quantities, we could have a genuine head to head chart battle on our hands next week, albeit one which surely is only going to have one obvious winner.
Over on the album chart this week Eminem reigns supreme with Recovery spending a second week at Number One, denying the Scissor Sisters the top slot and forcing them down to Number 2 with their brand new album Night Work. By far the most interesting chart moves of the week are reserved for the acts which headlined at the annual Glastonbury music festival last weekend, their performances at the event having inevitably a beneficial effect on their sales. Hence the hitherto stuttering Plastic Beach from Gorillaz moves 24-12, The Resistance from Saturday night headliners Muse rises 62-13 and perhaps inevitably after his Sunday night climactic performance Stevie Wonder has his 2002 hits collection The Definitive Collection rise 57-16 in its best chart performance since September 2008.
Back on the singles chart the Glastonbury effect is rather more muted, although Muse run out the winners here once more with current single Neutron Star Collision rising to Number 58 and 2009 single Uprising reappearing at Number 63. The most popular Stevie Wonder track of his performance appears to be Superstition which charts at Number 64, neatly beating the Number 65 peak the single scaled on its last run as a download hit back in September 2008. The track was originally a Number 11 hit in February 1973. Perhaps oddly it is the only Stevie Wonder track to sell enough to chart inside the Top 100 this week.