This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
On one notable music blog I read, the author recently contemplated jacking it all in, reasoning that if a record as vacant and pointless as Scream & Shout could make it to Number One then there was little point in continuing. Goodness only knows what he will make of matters this week, for the will/Britney collaboration is replaced at the top of the Official UK Singles Chart with a track that is surely as divisive as it is extraordinary.
The single in question is Get Up (Rattle) by Dutch electro duo Bingo Players with added vocal contributions from the Far East Movements. Messrs Baumer and Hoogstraten have been active in their home country since 2006 but until now the closest they have come to mainstream recognition on these shores has been with 2011 track Cry (Just A Little Bit) which was in turn transformed by Flo Rida into his international smash I Cry. Their Number One single began life as an instrumental entitled Rattle and was a minor hit across Scandinavia two years ago. In its brand new vocal mix it gives the producers their first ever major smash hit, one which storms to the top of the UK charts in almost effortless manner.
For all the added commercial appeal the vocals from Far East Movement give the track, it is still hard to escape the fact that this is still an enthusiastically raw slice of Dutch Electro House and one which will frighten the life out of those with more conservative music tastes. That said, for those who it is aimed at this single is a giant of a club track with a pulverising base and resonant beat which when cranked to the max at the climax of the night in your favourite club cannot help but sound like the greatest record ever made. And that is why it is Number One this week.
Last week's two big superstar new hits turn out to be slight flashes in the pan as 50 Cent falls to Number 7 and JT drops out of the Top 10 altogether. This does leave room for some upward movement of existing hits, none better than the 28 place leap made by Connor Maynard and Wiley on Animal which sits this week at Number 6. That is enough to make it 4/4 Top 10 hits for the former YouTuber and gives his guest star his third Top 10 hit in a row, the best run of his own career to date.
As was widely expected, Emeli Sande also climbs into the Top 10 as Clown rises three places to Number 8. Counting collaborations it is her ninth such single and the fourth to be taken from smash hit album Our Version Of Events.
After debuting at Number 2 with her first single You Bring Me Joy back in September last year, X Factor discovery Amelia Lily makes a rather slower start with her second offering Shut Up (And Give Me Whatever You Got) which lands on the chart at Number 11, despite being widely regarded as the stronger of its two hits. Like its predecessor, it is written and produced by the Xenomania hit factory and is released through their own label. She does at least get off to a rather better start with this single than her fellow X Factor 2011 graduates Little Mix. Their new track Change Your Life bursts into flower at a mere Number 36 this week as the third single release from their debut album DNA.
Little Mix are actually one of a string of established female acts whose latest singles are sitting in the "to be continued" positions at the lower end of the Top 40, joined by Rita Ora's Radioactive at Number 32 and Explosions from Ellie Goulding at Number 33. Both should, in theory, be Top 20 by next week, but of all the upwardly mobile hits of the moment, the one to keep a close eye on is Thrift Shop by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis which sits at Number 24 this week. Always remember that it was at this time last year that an underhyped single called Somebody That I Used To Know rose from nowhere to become the biggest song on the planet and you ignore these old-fashioned 'breakers' at your peril.
Leading an album chart still suffering from some quite shockingly depressed sales figures is the Les Miserables cast recording, reigning supreme for a second week. The week's highest new entry is Let It All In by I Am Kloot which debuts at Number 10. It is their sixth album and by far their highest charting to date (which in the current sales climate is hardly surprising), beating the Number 24 debut of their last album Sky At Night in 2010. By far the most notable arrival of the week, however, has to be the first album in 17 years for 1980s superstar Adam Ant who is at Number 25 with the extraordinarily titled Adam Ant Is The Blueblack Hussar In Marrying The Gunner's Daughter, a work which he first began talking up three years ago and which he has doggedly completed, despite the publicly expressed fear of his friends that it is simply a continuing manifestation of the mental health problems that have sadly dogged the star in recent years.
