This week's Official UK Singles Chart

This week's Official UK Albums Chart

 

Some things are just not meant to be. No matter that they are surely the pre-eminent boy band of the moment, no matter that five of their last seven singles have all been instant Number One smashes, no matter that their latest release had pride of place on the X Factor UK results show last weekend. JLS simply failed to make the grade this week, and see their brand new single Take A Chance On Me relegated to the Number 2 position on this week's brand new UK Singles Chart.

Instead they are outsold - not by last weeks chart-topper Professor Green (who instead tumbles to Number 4) nor indeed by any other hot new release. Instead it falls to Rihanna and Calvin Harris to reclaim the chart position they last occupied three weeks ago as We Found Love rebounds back to Number One for what is now its fourth week in total.

Once the rarest of rare occurrences, the new download era of the charts appears to have made such a rapid repeat far easier to achieve - We Found Love is no less than the fifth single in the last three years to perform the stunt, although bizarrely Rihanna is only the fourth act to do so - following Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga last year and the Black Eyed Peas who actually did it twice back in 2009. Rihanna finds herself at Number One exactly one year since she was at the top of the charts with Only Girl (In The World), itself a constant seller and by a strange curiosity a track which occupies the bottom rung of the Top 75 to ensure she has both the best and worst selling single of the week.

As for JLS, well they can understandably feel annoyed at this turn of events. Of all their previous singles releases only January releases One Shot and Eyes Wide Shut have failed to top the charts in their first week on sale and they have never before had the experience of seeing a single enter the Top 3 without reaching Number One. The chances of Take A Chance On Me giving them a sixth chart-topper appear remote as well, especially with their new album Jukebox (home to both this track and its predecessor She Makes Me Wanna in the shops this week.

This week's other new Top 10 arrival is pop princess Pixie Lott, the 20 year old from South London also looking to follow up on a Number One hit single with a similarly impressive performance. As it stands, What Do You Take Me For limps onto the chart at Number 10 although this does at least mean she has broken a rather strange chart jinx having never before had a single "just" go Top 10. All her previous releases having either gone to Number One (three of them to date) or miss out altogether. So whilst What Do You Take Me For doesn't add to her total of chart-toppers it is at the very least the fourth Top 10 hit of her career, with both this track and its predecessor featuring on her second album Young Foolish Happy which, you guessed it, hits the stores this week.

In a busy week for new singles, there are several new arrivals just inside the Top 20 as well. Leading the charge is Britain's Loick Essien with his latest track Me Without You which lands at Number 14, perhaps a rather disappointing follow-up performance to Number 2 smash How We Roll which charted back in July.

Bruno Mars has the rather extraordinary achievement of landing two Top 20 hit singles in the space of three weeks. You may remember a fortnight ago he charted at Number 19 with album cut Runaway Baby following his barnstorming performance of the single on the X Factor results show. As handy a hit single as it was, it was never destined for a proper promotional push - all attention really was on new track It Will Rain which duly makes a debut on the UK charts at Number 16. This too is a rather understated opening for what is after all the first brand new Bruno Mars track since the release of his Do Wops And Hooligans album last year. It Will Rain is lifted instead from the soundtrack of the latest of the interminable Twilight saga of films but as hot an act as he may be, for the moment it seems this previously unheard ballad is set to become one of his rather less well known hits.

Rounding off a busy Top 20 is I Need which becomes the second solo Top 20 hit the uniquely talented singer/rapper Maverick Sabre, following on from Let Me Go which reached Number 16 back in August. A gloriously atmospheric soul track, one which marks him out as a very exciting talent indeed, this is actually a single which deserves far more than a brief moment in the sun, and to see it land almost unnoticed this week is nothing less than a crying shame.

Now whilst the UK singles chart race may not have been the foregone conclusion we all expected it to be, it is a slightly different story on the album chart. Three years on from her talent show discovery, the Susan Boyle juggernaut rumbles on with her now traditional pre-Christmas album release. Her third collection of songs Someone To Watch Over Me dutifully follows its two predecessors and smashes its way to the top of the charts. Although named after the George and Ira Gershwin song which features on its running order, the album also contains the usual eclectic choice of cover material, including her own take on the Depeche Mode classic Enjoy The Silence and Tears For Fears' Mad World.

The only true race of the week then was between the rather more mainstream teen acts, a battle for that all-important Number 4 place which was eventually won by Cher Lloyd with her debut album Sticks And Stones, outselling Battleground from The Wanted which limps in at Number 5, a place below the peak of their self-titled debut release from 2010.

Finally, if you weren't aware that Christmas is rapidly approaching, you only have to take a look at the sudden mini invasion of easy listening material on the album chart. As well as Susan Boyle at Number One, we have Michael Buble at Number 2 with Christmas and new at Number 7 Dutch violinist Andre Rieu with And The Waltz Goes On, marking the second time he has placed an album in the Top 10 after breaking through to the mainstream with Forever Vienna which peaked at Number 2 in February 2010.

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