This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
We have something rather unique at the top of the Official UK Singles chart this week. For the top two singles to be brand new entries is nothing new, but for both to be technically "new releases" which have climbed to the top end of the charts from lower down the Top 75 chart is something of a first.
At Number One this week is Fight Song from Rachel Platten, the single with a sense of inevitability squaring the circle and finally becoming a massive British hit to complement its current status as a Top 10 hit in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Belgium. At the age of 34, the American singer is considerably older than the average chart debutant although her rise to stardom after over a decade of slogging it out in obscurity is a genuine story of hope over adversity. Fight Song is the third Number One hit in a row to climb to the top of the charts from a previously lowly chart placing, having reached Number 68 last week on streams alone. As this is within the Top 75 this is one for the record books and counts as the second highest climb to Number One ever, just short of the 73-1 leap by Pixie Lott with Girls And Boys in 2009. And yes, the Jess Glynne and Charlie Puth singles did indeed both make bigger climbs in the last two weeks, but for now at least the Top 75 remains the cutoff point for "official" records.
Video: https://youtu.be/xo1VInw-SKc
20-year-old German producer Felix Jaehn has already been the brains behind one of the biggest hits of the summer thanks to his work remixing OMI's Cheerleader, helping the reggae single to top charts around the world. This week he lands a smash hit as a credited artist for the first time ever as Ain't Nobody (Loves Me Better) leaps 54-2 to become the second big new single of the week. Like its predecessor, the single is a blissed out tropical house remix of a track that has been in existence for some time, in this case, British singer Jasmine Thompson's acoustic remake of the venerable old song Ain't Nobody which originally reached Number 32 in 2013. First recorded by Rufus and Chaka Khan in 1983, the song has developed a ubiquity all of its own in the decades since - cover versions by artists such as KWS, Jaki Graham, Diana King and LL Cool J all having charted. The Jaehn and Thompson collaboration duly takes over as the second biggest hit version of the song to date, for now, one place behind the Number One scaled by LL Cool J with his rap remake in February 1997.
Jess Glynne's reign at the top of the singles chart may well have only lasted a week but she has the consolation of an easy Number One on the Official UK Album chart this week as I Cry When I Laugh blasts away the competition with a combined sale of just under 60,000 copies to land the second biggest opening week of any debut album in 2015. A busy week for new albums sees Bon Jovi chart at Number 3 with their rather pointed label flounce Burning Bridges and intriguingly former Britain's Got Talent discoveries Bars & Melody at Number 4 with their debut album 143. I say 'intriguingly' as although the duo released their first single Hopeful in 2014 through SyCo records they have since gone it alone and although their subsequent single releases have not been hits, they have continued to leverage an online following large enough to propel their album into the Top 5.
The rest of the singles chart remains quiet, although this does mean a chance for a pair of long-running hits to further extend their Top 10 runs. Former Number 4 hit Shut Up And Dance by Walk The Moon spends a third straight and sixth week in total at Number 8 this week to clock up 12 weeks as Top 10 hit single whilst just below them the former chart-topper Are You With Me by Lost Frequencies drops 7-9 in its 10th week in the Top 10 although this marks its lowest chart position since its release as a for-purchase download.
Two existing singles though are on the rebound. Body On Me by Rita Ora and Chris Brown reverses its decline in fortunes of a week ago and leaps 41-28, just short of its Number 23 peak of a fortnight ago however. The perfect storm of both the long-awaited full availability of its video, plus the news this week that the group are to take a "hiatus" at the end of the year prompts a new surge of interest in One Direction's Drag Me Down. Having fallen to Number 16 last week, just a fortnight after topping the charts the single climbs back to Number 11. This is perhaps less of a surprise when you note that past 1D singles Steal My Girl and Story Of My Life have both traced similar chart arcs in the past, enjoying extended chart careers beyond their initial burst of fan-led demand. Maybe we wrote it off too soon after all.
Oh, and just to prove that not all speculation comes to fruit on these pages, This Summer by Maroon 5 fails to become their latest slow burner and instead crashes 40-63. If only they'd crashed a few weddings.
