This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
There are some records that have "smash hit" writ large across them, their prospects of a sales domination and perhaps, more importantly, seducing an entire nation with their appeal a matter of destiny rather than possibility.
Such is the glowing description that might be attached to Easy Love by Sigala which makes a majestic bow at the very top of the Official UK Singles chart this week. Yes, it is yet another new Number One single, but we'll deal with that in a moment.
For now take time to appreciate the graceful beauty of the track, the creation of DJ and producer Bruce Fielder whose previous claim to fame was as the co-writer of Sigma's Good Times. The track is a gentle and blissed out groove, over which is laid snippets of the instantly recognisable vocal of the 11-year-old Michael Jackson as lifted from the Jackson 5 classic ABC. Fielder has told how the track was made one night in a drunken haze, born of the frustration of continually mixing tracks for other people who were just never quite satisfied with what he delivered.
Easy Love is no less than the fourth single in a row to actually climb to Number One from a prior low chart position, the inevitable consequence of lightly-streamed singles making a more substantial first-week sales impact. As far as Top 75 records go, the 71-1 jump of the Sigala record is second only to the 73-1 climb made by Pixie Lott's Boys And Girls in 2009. Meanwhile the inability of any record to sustain a sales lead for any length of time continues, this now the seventh different Number One record in Britain in as many weeks, although one suspects that Easy Love stands a better chance than any before it of managing to land a second.
Its reign at the top may only have lasted a week, but Justin Bieber's What Do You Mean can at least console itself with a different kind of benchmark. Having last week set a new standard for first week streaming totals, the Canadian star now breaks the all-time digital streams record. It was officially played 3.87 million times in the last seven days, edging past the previous record holder See You Again which managed 3.72 million back in April. It bears repeating that the significance of this track cannot be understated, the first release ever for which the phrase "Justin Bieber single" is not being used pejoratively.
The only other Top 10 arrival this week is a single which has actually been floating around the singles chart for some time without receiving its due attention in this column, so let me correct that now. Peanut Butter Jelly moves 15-8 following a steady six-week climb to give Swedish duo Galantis their second Top 10 hit single, hard on the heels of Runaway (U & I) which charted back in May. The single is based around the melody from all but forgotten Atlantic Soul classic Kiss My Love Goodbye by Bettye Swan which was first released in 1974 although the origin of the heavily compressed vocals remains undocumented at least for now. [Greatest club hit of the year, I will fight anyone who says otherwise].
A different part of Scandinavia gives us what is technically the highest new entry of the week as Norway's Kygo lands at Number 18 with Here For You, his third chart single of the year and the second to reach the Top 20. Credited singer on the track is none other than Ella Henderson who has the curious experience of finding herself with back to back chart singles, her turn on Sigma's Glitterball one place below the new arrival at Number 19.
One massive international hit which is taking time to find its feet in Britain is R.City's Locked Away which makes a debut at Number 39 this week. Don't be fooled by this low key start, this is a smash hit in waiting. Although it hardly takes expertise to point that out really.
The barking mad randomness of the album market this week throws up a brand new Number One album for Iron Maiden as their sixteenth studio album The Book Of Souls storms to the top of the sales rankings. It is the veteran metal band's fifth Number One album in the UK and their first since The Final Frontier reached the top in August 2010. The album's progress to the top was helped no end by a tie-in with Tesco supermarkets who trumpeted the fact that they were "trialling" stocking vinyl records in 55 of their biggest stores by selling the Maiden record on the venerable old format. Naturally enough that makes The Final Frontier the biggest selling vinyl album of the week. Because yes, these things are still tallied deep in the heart of the Official Charts Company.