This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
It has been a very long time since this has happened. Still the unshakeable leader in both sales and streams, Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars remains lodged at the very top of the Official UK Singles chart this week to make it five straight and six total weeks at Number One. Even this deep into its chart life, the single is still selling and being streamed in quite enormous numbers. Yet again its combined sales exceed 120,000 and the single once more breaks its own streaming record, the 2.562 million plays contributing over 25,000 chart sales to its total.
For those struggling to keep count, that now puts Uptown Funk on a whopping 1,018,000 combined sales since its release, although we should note that this doesn't yet make the single a million "seller" as the Official Charts Company still only tracks actual paid downloads for these purposes, for consistency with the past if nothing else. Strip the reported streaming totals out of that figure and the Mark Ronson single is still on around 857,000 copies, meaning it is likely to reach seven figures at the present rate sometime in the next 2-3 weeks.
Back to the single's extended stay at Number One though and not since the close of 2011 has any single spent as long as six weeks at the top of the charts in Britain, We Found Love by Rihanna and Calvin Harris the single in question. We Found Love however notched up its total stay thanks to two equal runs of three weeks apiece. To find the last single to spend five consecutive weeks at the top of the British charts requires an even further spin back through the record books - to 2008 to be precise when no less than three different singles managed the feat. The most recent came in the summer, Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl from the middle of August onwards, although Now You're Gone by Basshunter and Mercy by Duffy also landed five apiece.
If Uptown Funk clings on again next week things start to get a little clearer. Just one single holds the honour of being the last single to spend six straight and seven total at Number One - "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis.
Philip George's reign as chart runner-up comes to a close this week however, he is replaced as unlucky Number 2 by Lips Are Movin' by Meghan Trainor. Just like her first hit, this single has spent time charting thanks to its streams alone and so essentially takes a 50-2 chart leap this week. Reportedly a late addition to the tracklisting of her debut album "Title" which finally gets a release this week, Trainor's second hit suffers slightly from being essentially a retread of All About That Bass - a sensible move possibly given that it is clearly a winning formula but actually rather frustrating at the same time given the versatility that the other tracks on the album demonstrate. Lady Gaga is to date the only solo American female to top the British charts with her first two singles. Meghan Trainor this week came as close as you can possibly get to becoming the second.
This is actually one of the more extraordinary chart weeks for some considerable time. Trainor's single is literally the only new release of the week to gain any kind of sales traction and her 48 place jump makes her quite extraordinarily the only "new entry" to the Top 40 chart this week. Such a situation is by no means unknown, but in the modern era of well-hyped new releases and rapid turnover of smaller hits, it is pretty much unheard of.
Instead all I have left to recount are new peaks for Avicii's The Nights which climbs 16-8, Sia's Elastic Heart bounding 13-11 and perhaps most intriguingly of all Cool Kids by Echosmith which moves 28-17 to belatedly become a British chart hit single, over 18 months after it was first released and six months after its American chart success.
Next week looks rather more interesting with new singles from Fergie, Karen Harding, Selena Gomez and Hannah Wants set to give the charts a long overdue shake-up, but it is hard to escape the view that this has been a long, slow winter so far.
At least album buyers have had plenty to tempt them this week. In marked contrast to the becalmed singles chart there are no less than nine new entries in the Top 16 of the Official Albums chart, amongst them well regarded new arrivals from Fall Out Boy (No.2), Enter Shikari (No.6), Belle & Sebastien (No.9), Bjork (No.11), The Waterboys (No.14) and Marilyn Manson (No.16). Beating them all, however, is - who else - Mark Ronson whose new album Uptown Special storms to the top of the pile to give him a singles and album chart double. It is the super producer's first-ever Number One album after his first two 'solo' releases Version and Record Collection both topped out at Number 2 in 2007 and 2010 respectively.
So that really is all for this week. Shall we find something else to talk about? Football... those naughty, naughty Patriots.
Dedicated to the memory of Christina Annesley, Number One in the memories of everyone who knew her.