This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
A quite intriguing chart battle developed during the week, the race for Number One swinging first one way and then the other, the ultimate winners being an act who were trailing by some distance when the midweek update was announced.
Congratulations therefore go to The Script whose will.i.am collaboration Hall Of Fame climbs a place to give the Irish band their first ever Number One single. This first chart-topper comes a little over four years since the group made their debut with the single We Cry back in 2008, however for two of their members it represents the culmination of an even longer slog to the top. Script members Danny O'Donoghue and Mark Sheehan actually began their hit-making career as one half of Irish boyband mytown whose one and only UK hit single Party All Night climbed the Number 33 in early 1999. For will.i.am it is his second spell at Number One this year, coming just two months after his own This Is Love topped the charts. Aside from his many Number One hits with the Black Eyed Peas, he was also credited as guest star on Usher's OMG which spent a week at Number One in June 2010. The rise to the top of Hall Of Fame coincides neatly with the release of The Script's album Number 3 which fails not only to give them a chart-topping double but also avoids living up to its name, entering at Number 2 instead.
Taking the runners up slot this week then is a lady for whom an against the odds comeback is all but second nature. Amelia Lily first came to prominence as a contestant in the 2011 series of X Factor UK, eliminated at the first hurdle by mentor Kelly Rowland but then sensationally voted back onto the competition a month later when the infamous Frankie Cocozza was thrown out for rule breaches. She subsequently survived to finish in third place in the competition and so appropriately enough now follows the two acts who finished ahead of her - Marcus Collins and Little Mix - into the singles chart. Her (rather surprising) early week lead sadly didn't translate to a Number One, at least not for the moment, but her debut single You Bring Me Joy is at the very least the highest charting new release of the week, and if you want the honest truth, the very best of them too.
Speaking of X Factor, one quarter of the judging team has a new single of her own out this week, Tulisa entering at Number 11 with Live It Up in partnership with guest star American rapper Tyga, this the follow-up to Number One hit Young and the herald of her debut solo album whose date was originally slated for this week but which has now been pushed back to a more X Factor live show-friendly date of late November.
One place below at Number 12 is the rather extraordinary sight of a single which originally topped the charts in 1963. Gerry and the Pacemakers' take on You'll Never Walk Alone, originally written for the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel (and whose lyrics the group famously mangle) has for a long time been an anthem of Liverpool Football Club and has been propelled into the charts this week by a co-ordinated mass purchase campaign by fans of the club determined to stamp a musical mark on a week which has seen the 1989 Hillsborough Stadium Disaster and its aftermath back in the news once more. The timing of it was slightly off, as the idea to download the single did not gain momentum until late in the week, but it is still worth noting that the record charts where it does after just a day and a half of intense sales. When the recording of the song topped the charts in 1963 it famously made the Liverpool group the first in history to make Number One with their first three releases, a feat which wasn't duplicated until 21 years later although many more times since. This is by no means the first time in recent years the single has returned to the UK charts, with fans of Celtic football club, who also claim it as an anthem, conspiring to send it to Number 33 in May 2010.
If it wasn't confusing enough that David Guetta's 2011 Nothing But The Beat album was available in a variety of extended formats, this week it was re-released a new "Version 2.0" edition which lands at Number 13. In its wake two tracks also storm the singles chart, official single She Wolf (Falling To Pieces) with Sia on guest vocals at Number 14 and also Play Hard which teams up both Ne-Yo and Akon on vocals which lands at Number 22.
Guetta's reassuringly lowly entry for this milking of the cash cow of his fans is balanced with an album chart featuring new material from both old and young. In the 'young' pile are the XX who top the charts with new release Coexist, up from the Number 3 peak scaled by their self-titled debut in 2009. In a generational contrast the 71 year old Bob Dylan enters at Number 3 with Tempest, just down on the Number One position he memorably scaled with his last full studio release Together Through Life in 2009 at the tender age of just 68. Completing the parade of Top 10 new entries are Joe McElderry with what is extraordinarily his fourth album in under two years Here's What I Believe and hardy veterans the Pet Shop Boys their latest release Elysium.
Finally for anyone tiring of music they can actually understand, it is fun to note the appearance at Number 37 of Gangnam Style by Korean rapper Park Jae-sang, better known professionally as Psy. From the genre tenderly known as K-Pop it is the first Korean language track ever to enter the UK Top 40.
