This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
Remember last week when everyone leapt on the new Daft Punk single as if it was the second coming? Well, this was after all with very good reason, for with each listen it becomes possible to appreciate just how phenomenally good the track Get Lucky actually is. Just about every radio station, whatever their format, has leaped hungrily on the track whilst I cannot remember the last time a pop record was released which had everyone I know felt all but compelled to remark in conversation or even on Facebook etc. "that Daft Punk single really is quite good isn't it?" Put simply, this is a piece of music with a generation-straddling genre-hopping mass appeal the like of which the music business has not seen for some considerable amount of time.
The result over the last seven days was an inevitably massive sale. With all the grace of an imperial accession, Get Lucky climbs two places to Number One on the Official UK Singles chart this week, selling well over 155,000 copies to grab the highest single week sale of 2013 to date. As noted last week the track becomes Daft Punk's biggest ever hit single and their first ever Number One success, a little over 16 years since their debut with Da Funk in early 1997.
The duo are only the sixth French act to have a Number One single in the UK and the second to do so in the 21st century following in the footsteps of David Guetta. Lead singer Pharrell Williams gets his first ever chart-topper but it is intriguingly the latest in a long line for the legendary producer and musician who plays his trademark guitar line on Get Lucky - a certain Mr Nile Rodgers. Although best known for his work with Chic in the late 70s, Rodgers had his biggest successes as a producer for other acts in the 1980s and his Number One hit productions during that period include Let's Dance for David Bowie (1983), The Reflex for Duran Duran (1984) and Frankie for Sister Sledge (1985).
After all that everything else feels like an afterthought, although there are plenty of other talking points on the chart this week. Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding rise 7-4 this week to ensure that I Need Your Love beats the Number 5 peak of Harris' last hit Drinking From The Bottle. You will note that despite my assertion last week that the 18 Months album had now spawned a record-equalling seven Top 10 hits, many other outlets reported that the current single is, in fact, a record-breaking eighth. To reach this total however you have to count the inclusion on the album of Rihanna's We Found Love which given that it was recorded for her own Talk That Talk album which was released a full 12 months before 18 Months can scarcely qualify as a hit from the Calvin Harris record. I'm splitting hairs, but if you are going to credit acts with making chart history it helps to properly define the terms under which they do so. [I still stand by this].
Whilst Get Lucky appears to be halfway to dethroning Thrift Shop as 2013's biggest selling single to date, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis do at least have the consolation of a second Top 10 hit as Can't Hold Us advances 12-5. The single is now a worldwide hit almost two years after it was first released by the pair independently in America.
With the new series of Britain's Got Talent well underway (and prompting surprising chart revivals as we shall see later on), it seems only appropriate that one of last year's discoveries makes their chart debut this week. Enormously appealing acoustic hip-hop trio Loveable Rogues were one of the sensations of the 2012 series although they ultimately lost out in the final voting, finishing fourth overall in last year's final. Still, as the highest ranked pop act on the show it was more or less inevitable that the Syco juggernaut would sweep them up, and their debut single What A Night dutifully appears this week at Number 9 as the highest new entry. The tale of the house party gone wrong becomes a hit after the trio spent the tail end of last year as a well-received support act for Olly Murs on his recent arena tour.
Frustratingly just outside the Top 10 this week at Number 11 is another intriguing single in the shape of Let Her Go by Passenger which rises 33 places to finally take its place as the hit single it has been waiting to be for - well, quite some considerable time actually. It is the first ever hit single for singer Michael Rosenberg who performs under the name of the folk band he was originally a member of between 2003 and 2007. Let Her Go is taken from his album All The Little Lights and makes a rather belated UK chart debut having first been released in summer last year with the single also having topped chart across most of mainland Europe in the early months of 2013.
No change at the top of the album chart as Michael Buble's To Be Loved holds firm at Number One. He holds off challenges from Frank Turner's Tape Deck Heart at Number 2 and will.i.am's much-delayed Willpower which lands at Number 3 amidst continuing rows over the uncredited inspiration for at least one of its tracks.
One chart record that has indeed been broken, although I was a week too early in awarding it is that of Emeli Sande's Our Version Of Events which this week spends week 63 in the Top 10, thus surpassing the 62 week total of Please Please Me from The Beatles as the debut album with the most consecutive weeks in the upper reaches.
Finally, I mentioned the influence of Britain's Got Talent on the charts. Down at Number 39 on the singles chart is the unexpected appearance of Iris by the Goo Goo Dolls which has incredibly arrived on the strength of little more than four hours of sales on Saturday night just gone, this after hopeful Robbie Kennedy performed the song in an audition which was shown on the latest edition of the show. Never a large hit when first released in the late 1990s, the rock classic owes its greatest chart success to another talent show audition, Frankie Cocozza's X Factor rendering of the song propelling it to an even more unexpected Number 3 peak in October 2011. If it continues to sell in the quantities it has been so far, I wouldn't rule out a similar chart fate for the track this time next week either.
