This week's Official UK Singles Chart

This week's Official UK Albums Chart

 

As you would expect for a single which is on course to become one of the biggest global smashes of the year, Get Lucky by Daft Punk spends a comfortable second week on top of the Official UK Singles chart this week. Actually 'comfortable' is understating things a little as the smash hit single actually beats its own record from last week, increasing its sales yet again to sell 163,000 and set a new benchmark for the highest one week sale of the year. Christmas singles excepted, Get Lucky is the first single to sell in excess of 150,000 copies for two weeks running since the 2008 X Factor Finalists single Hero in November of that year and perhaps more significantly the first non-charity release to do so since the original Pop Idol finalists Will Young and Gareth Gates did so with their debut singles within weeks of each other in early 2002.

Whilst Rudimental spend a second week at Number 2, we should not overlook their own sales performance either. In the three weeks it has been on sale, Waiting All Night has sold 107,099, 79,615 and now a reported 81,000 copies - numbers which in most ordinary weeks would have been enough to ensure it would spend all three of them at Number One, rather than the single one it has managed thus far. The group do at least have the consolation of the Number One album this week as their debut release Home shoulders Michael Buble out of the way to become the week's best seller and in the process sparking a resurgence in interest in their two previous singles with Feel The Love back in the Top 40 at Number 30 and Not Giving In up at Number 53.

Climbing into the Top 10 this week as expected are Let Her Go by Passenger which jumps 11-4 to give the folk singer a rather belated smash hit in his home country and David Guetta along with Ne-Yo and Akon as Play Hard leaps 21-6. One of the more popular tracks from the special edition of Nothing But The Beat, Play Hard has already been a hit single on these shores, spending a fortnight at Number 22 when the album was first released in September last year.

The highest new entry on the singles chart this week belongs to a Disclosure whose new single You & Me storms the chart at Number 10, the follow-up to Number 2 smash hit White Noise which itself refuses to burn out, spending a second week at Number 24 this week. The new single features a guest vocal from Eliza Doolitte, her first chart credited appearance since she made her debut in 2010 with a well-received solo album and two Top 40 hit singles, the biggest of which was Pack Up which peaked at Number 5. The Disclosure album Settle is slated for release in early June.

Also making a strong climb in what is an otherwise rather quiet singles chart is Iris from the Goo Goo Dolls which benefits from a full week of sales in the wake of its latest talent show exposure following the performance of the song by Britain's Got Talent hopeful Robbie Kennedy the weekend before last. Number 12 is down on its Number 3 peak in the wake of Frankie Cocozza's X Factor rendition in 2011 but still a no less than extraordinary chart return for a classic single which underperformed all expectations when first released in the late 1990s.

This week is actually a mixed one for former stars of TV talent shows. It is a great one for Bo Bruce, a discovery of the first series of The Voice UK last year and who debuts at Number 10 on the album chart with her first ever full-length release Before I Sleep. It is a major shot in the arm for the talent franchise which until now was notable for the singular lack of major recording stars it had managed to discover. First series winner Leanne Mitchell having flopped with her post-show coronation single, a cover of Whitney Houston's Run To You which limped to Number 45 in June last year. Of last year's contestants, the only one to have had any measure of singles chart success is Tyler James although none of his three chart singles since the show have managed to match the peaks of the music he released during his first brush with fame back in 2004 and 2005.

Meanwhile, some former female X Factor stars are finding it hard going too. Last week Amelia Lily limped to Number 40 with her latest single Party Over, Little Mix flamed out at a lowly Number 16 with How Ya Doin' which falls three places to Number 19 this week and now Misha B can only reach Number 35 with her third single Here's To Everything (Ooh La La).

Instead of all this negativity, we should end on a bright note as at Number 38 is the rather heartwarming story of a posthumous hit single for Michael Molloy with Rise & Fall. An aspiring singer and songwriter, the teenager was one of three people killed when the coach he was riding in crashed on the way back from the Bestival music festival on the Isle Of Wight last year. Released with the support of the festival's own label the single has received particularly strong support on Merseyside where Molloy lived and sells enough this week to land a Top 40 place. The story echoes that of Berkshire teacher Jimmy Higham whose recording of Isn't She Lovely was released as a tribute after he passed away from cancer and which narrowly missed out on a place in the Top 40 at the end of last year.

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