This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
Daft Punk are Number One in the UK no longer, although bizarrely Pharrell Williams' spell away from the top of the Official UK Singles chart may well be short-lived, as I shall explain later.
For now, it is congratulations to British producer Naughty Boy who lands his first ever Number One single as a credited artist with the insanely catchy track La La La. Real name Shahid Khan, the producer owes his career largely to both a young enterprise grant and perhaps more pertinently a £44,000 win on the gameshow Deal Or No Deal which enabled him to purchase the equipment with which he made his first records. After making his chart debut with the 2006 Top 40 hit Phat Beach, [no, confusingly that was German produces Bassbumpers who grabbed the name first] the producer shot into the mainstream with both the 2009 Chipmunk track Diamond Rings, and the 2010 Wiley single Never Be Your Woman, both Top 10 hits also notorious for bringing a certain Emeli Sande to public attention. Naughty Boy's association with the Scottish star extended to being heavily involved in the production of her acclaimed Our Version Of Events album and she returned the favour at the end of last year by featuring on his last single Wonder which not only reached Number 10 but which also found its way onto the Special Edition of her album.
Naughty Boy, however, has an album of his own in the pipeline, Hotel Cabana and as well as Wonder it also features this new single which now gives him his first ever Number One hit single. The vocalist on La La La is Sam Smith [you may have heard of him], last seen as the guest star on Disclosure's Number 11 hit Latch at the tail end of last year. The single racked up another phenomenal total, selling over 145,000 copies last week, some way short of some of Daft Punk's totals over the past few weeks, but enough to be the highest first week sale of the year and to make this the sixth week in a row that the Number One single has sold in excess of six figures.
Mind you, La La La needed to sell that much. Get Lucky sold another 105,000 copies last week, ensuring that it has now sold over 100,000 copies for five weeks straight, something no other single this century has managed.
"Fast & Furious 6" remarked a friend of mine the other week, "I wonder how they keep the quality up…". Whilst the street race movie franchise continues to fling out sequels, the sixth instalment of the series does at least see its soundtrack spawn a major UK chart hit this week as We Own It (Fast & Furious) storms to Number 6 for 2 Chainz featuring Wiz Khalifa. The track is far and away the biggest chart success so far for the American rapper, his only entries into the record books thus far being guest appearances on a pair of minor chart entries earlier this year, A$AP Rocky's F***in' Problems in January and Kanye West's Mercy in March. For Wiz Khalifa, it is the fourth Top 10 hit single, his first since he made a sideways appearance at Number One with a guest vocal on Maroon 5's Payphone last year.
The third new arrival in the Top 10 this week is Olly Mur's with the raw and powerful Dear Darlin' which climbs 18-9 to give him a second Top 10 hit from his latest album. Rather curiously the three singles which drop out of the Top 10 this week are the singles from Demi Lovato, Wretch 32 and Sub Focus - all of which were new entries last week and which have turned out so far to be little more than one week chart wonders.
The annual broadcast of the Eurovision Song Contest the weekend before last inevitably has its usual passing chart impact, although naturally not for the United Kingdom entry sung poorly on the night by Bonnie Tyler and which garners almost as few sales as it did popular votes on the night. Despite to my ears being far from the best entry, Denmark's Emmeline De Forest ran away with the scores and stormed to victory on the night with Only Teardrops and so naturally enough it makes a UK chart entry this week, sitting comfortably at Number 15. That is some way short of the Number 3 position scaled by last year's winner Euphoria by Loreen, that track bizarrely enough also returning to the singles chart this week at Number 75 after being reprised during the voting interval. Other Eurovision songs to chart are the Malta entry Tomorrow by Gianluca Bezzina at Number 66 and the Swedish entry You by Robin Stjernberg at Number 72. The full house of Scandinavian entries is completed by Norway's I Feed You My Love by Margaret Berger at Number 80 and my personal favourite Finland's Marry Me by Krista Siegfrieds at 102.
On the album chart, the Number One is inevitably Daft Punk's Random Access Memories which blows away the competition to debut at the top, thus eclipsing the Number 2 peak of their 2001 album Discovery as their highest charting ever. The album sold 165,000 copies last week - almost three times as many as Rod Stewart at Number 2.
A busy week for new albums sees Top 10 new entries for Demi Lovato (Number 10), 30 Seconds To Mars (Number 5), National (Number 3) but perhaps most intriguingly of all one-time 1990s superstars Texas who enter at Number 4 with The Conversation, their first studio album since 2005s Red Book and their highest charting release since their 2000 Greatest Hits compilation and 1999 recording The Chase both topped the charts. All this does mean something of an end of an era - Emeli Sande's Our Version Of Events drops out of the Top 10 for the first time since its release.
Oh yes, and Pharrell Williams? Heading back to Number One next week as co-star on Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines. Bet your life on it. [Sometimes I want to wind back the clock to the glorious moment of hearing Blurred Lines for the very first time. Just to be blown away by it all over again. But at least now we get to savour the moment when it became a cultural phenomenon].
