This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
When the biggest selling albums of 2012 are the biggest selling albums of 2011 still carrying on, you know we are sitting waiting for things to wake up still. Nothing sums up the sluggish state of the long player market than the Top 4 of the album chart this week, which contrives to feature a collection of massive selling discs, all of which were released last year. It is time for everyone to swap places once again, a fact which means Adele's 21 doesn't have the privilege of celebrating a year on sale with a serendipitous 21st week at Number One. Instead the biggest selling album of the week is once more + by Ed Sheeran which returns to the top for the second time this year, four weeks after it was last at the summit and for what is now its third week in total. Mylo Xyloto is in second place, 21 is in third whilst just outside the medal positions is Bruno Mars with Do Wops And Hooligans. 2011 classics all.
The one new arrival of the week is bizarrely enough a collection of very old songs, although it does give the artist in question his biggest hit for some considerable time. Chris Isaak's new album Beyond The Sun features a collection of Rock N Roll standards, all recorded at the legendary Sun Studios in Memphis. It enters the album chart this week at Number 6, giving the star his highest charting album since his 1991 breakthrough release Wicked Game peaked at Number 4. Isaak has been absent from the British charts since his 2006 Best Of collection peaked at Number 65 in September that year.
Those in search of fresher material should look no further than the singles chart where the parade of perfect pop continues with a brand new entry at Number One for a track which once more might well qualify as one of the singles of the year. Twilight is the second hit single for Barbados pop foursome Cover Drive, the follow-up to Lick Ya Down which peaked at Number 9 in September last year. The vastly improved chart fortunes of this new single are surely entirely down to its improved pop sensibilities, the bubbly eurodance track the very definition of radio- and chart-friendly. One might puzzle just why a record with such a summery vibe has managed to break through during a damp and chilly British January, but the best pop is all about escapism after all.
Six months ago Australian singer Sia Furler was an almost forgotten footnote in pop history, with just one solitary Top 10 hit to her name way back in 2000. This week she finds herself the guest singer on not one but two Top 5 hit singles as not only does the David Guetta track Titanium advance one place to Number 2 but the new Flo Rida single Wild Ones to which she also contributes a co-vocal becomes a smash new entry at Number 5. Not that Flo Rida is any stranger himself to simultaneous his, as with Good Feeling still selling strongly at Number 9 he also is the proud owner of a Top 10 double. Both tracks are taken from the rapper's forthcoming new album Only One Rida (Part 2).
An influx of new Top 10 arrivals this week also includes pleasing climbs not only for Kelly Clarkson's magnificent Stronger (11-8) but also the absorbing Somebody That I Used To Know from Goyte featuring Kimbra. It all means that the Antipodean peoples are punching well above their weight in the Top 10 this week. Kiwi singer Kimbra joins Australians Sia, Goyte and Knife Party all in the upper reaches.
Meanwhile the Lana Del Rey publicity drive edges ever closer towards overexposure, but it has all helped to ensure she too has a brace of chart singles this week. Joining long-term seller Video Games (locked at Number 20 this week) is her second single Born To Die which enters the chart at Number 15. The new single is the title track from what is technically her second full length recorded album but which will be most popularly seen as her major label debut. Born To Die the album hits the stores this week and is more or less guaranteed to be a massive seller.
