This week's Official UK Singles Chart

This week's Official UK Albums Chart

No change at Number One on the singles chart this week, perhaps inevitably given the massive sales for the single in question so far and the continuing cultural domination of the 2010 World Cup. So it is that Shout by Shout For England featuring Dizzee Rascal and James Corden spends a second week at Number One, its sale of just over 84,000 representing only a minor decline from the six figure total the track shifted last week.

Running Shout close at Number 2 however was K'Naan with the similarly World Cup inspired Waving Flag. The single climbs one place to the runners up slot and was by the end of the week just 8,000 sales behind the Dizzee/Corden single. The two tracks appear to be the only football themed records to sustain their sales beyond the initial burst of World Cup fever last week, with the many golden oldies that peppered the listings last week taking some rather spectacular tumbles. Thus 3 Lions drops 10-26, World In Motion falls 22-43 and Vindaloo drops 32-57. Naturally the enthusiasm for cheerleading records is only going to persist as long as the England squad do in the tournament, so with the side staring down the barrel of a humiliating early exit midweek it is worth keeping a close eye on just how this affects sales of Shout in particular. That said, for all we know they may thump Serbia 4-0 and march into the second round which may well assist Shout in its struggle to remain at the top for a third week. Just think - the mere act of playing Joe Cole in the side could have a direct effect on the singles chart.

So it is that the two biggest new singles of the week are relegated to supporting slots outside the Top 2. Leading the charge perhaps to the surprise of some is Example with his brand new single Kickstarts which crashes in at Number 3. His third hit single, he has moved up the ranks with each release, watching Watch The Sun Come Up peak at Number 19 in October 2009 followed by Won't Go Quietly which made Number 6 in January. As befits its chart placing, the new single is easily his most appealing and commercial so far, an expertly crafted electropop single driven by a wailing synth line straight out of the MGMT school of 80s revivalism. All three of his hits are taken from his second album Won't Go Quietly which was released this week and will inevitably be making a chart impact of its own in seven days time.

So the surprise runner up in the chart race this week was the returning Kylie Minogue, back on the chart for the first time in almost two years with her brand new single All The Lovers. Such is her hard earned legendary status that offering an impartial critique of Kylie singles is more or less impossible - with the odd exception her singles releases make the Top 10 almost by default and it is only the remarkable way that they are all of deserved quality that prevents this becoming tedious. Hence it is something of a relief to note that All The Lovers is yet again a Kylie single worthy of the name, a simmering dance-pop record that comes complete with an eye-catching video and in a strange coincidence a wailing synthesiser line that makes it the genetic twin of the Example single just above it in the charts. The stats simply speak for themselves, this is Kylie's 46th Top 75 single since 1988 and her 33rd Top 10 hit, albeit one that is required to restart from scratch her run of consecutive such singles after her last chart single The One limped to Number 36 after a low key promotion in August 2008. It is worth noting though that she hasn't had a Number One single since Slow in November 2003, a situation that looks unlikely to change just for the moment.

Also new to the Top 10 at Number 8 is Swedish starlet Robyn who lands on the chart with Dancing On My Own. Just like Kylie she is charting for the first time since 2008 and is hoping to maintain the chart form that saw her make a spectacular comeback from the wilderness a year earlier with the Number One smash hit With Every Heartbeat. Dancing On My Own is now the fourth Top 10 single of her career.

The ability of David Guetta to sprinkle production magic everywhere he goes is demonstrated once more this week as his own Gettin Over You is joined in the Top 20 by his production of Commander for Kelly Rowland on which he is granted a co-artist credit. The single is the second collaboration in a row between the Frenchman and NotBeyonce following last summers Number One smash When Love Takes Over on which Rowland was the guest star. Commander is the first single from Rowland's forthcoming self-titled third album and essentially moves her even further away from her soul and R&B roots to cement her reinvention as a dance diva. That isn't to say the production is without its flaws as once again we need to bemoan the way her vocals are twisted and distorted by some quite unnecessary autotune work, thus reducing the voice of a woman who has stood toe to toe with Beyonce onstage and on record in the past into something rather thin and robotic. No matter, the single is her 10th Top 20 hit in a row and has enough momentum to reach the Top 10 in fairly short order.

With the final episode of the current series having aired on TV last week we can finally look forward to a brief respite of the endless parade of Glee Cast singles that have been washing over the charts almost continually since the start of the year. The TV stars nonetheless go out with a bang, landing two new hits at the bottom end of the Top 40 and watching one of their older ones make a surprise reappearance. The biggest Glee Cast hit of the week is yet another version of Over The Rainbow which lands at Number 30, just a few weeks after Danielle Hope's recording made Number 29. The song has now been a chart single for five different acts since the start of the 21st century.

The final episode of the series saw the cast perform a medley of Journey hits, an affectionate nod back to the work of the group whose song gave them their first and biggest hit. The first part of the medley lands on the chart as a single in its own right, a mashing up of Any Way You Want It and Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin at Number 32. That is one place above their now famous version of Don't Stop Believin' which rockets back up the chart after benefitting from the combined sales of both the earlier version and the new recording which featured in the series' final episode.

The new Glee hits are all contained on their last mini album, the six track Journey To Regionals which lands at Number 2 on the album chart to become their fifth Top 5 hit album since the start of the year. With the series now on a summer break, we can now catch our breath before it resumes later in the autumn when I guess the parade of hit covers will start all over again.

The Glee Cast were unsurprisingly denied a second Number One album by the collection of songs which was always going to be the biggest seller of the week. Noel Gallagher always insisted that an Oasis Greatest Hits album was only going to appear once the band were finished, hence their only compilations before now were rather more esoteric collections of b-sides (The Masterplan) and a carefully selected collection of "highlights" (Stop The Clocks). With the brothers now having gone their separate ways, the time has clearly come for the definitive collection of their singles and so it is that Time Flies 1994-2009 storms to the top of the album chart with the highest weekly sale seen by any album so far this year.

The collection is Oasis' 8th Number One album in this country, the singles collection duplicating the chart feat of every single one of their studio albums and intriguingly managing something that neither of their two previous compilations could manage. In a fun aside, Time Flies is also the 900th Number One album in chart history, as per the revised canon that sees the album chart trace its origins back to 1956. Appropriately enough the 899th Number One album manages to set a brand new benchmark of its own. Christina Aguilera's Bionic crashes 1-29 in the biggest fall from Number One in chart history, putting the 1-16 collapse of Ellie Goulding's Lights into a whole new perspective. Incidentally you may see reported in some places that the previous record was a 1-18 tumble experienced by George Harrison in 1971 - but that stat is only valid if you follow an alternate version of the chart canon which actually means we have had more than 900 Number Ones - I'll explain the full story in the podcast later this week.