LONDON, UK (Top40 Charts) Avicii finishes way ahead of the competition for a second week at number one in the singles chart. X Factor runner-up Jahmene
Douglas benefits from a quiet week for new album releases and goes straight to No 1.
After
Avicii trounced all-comers last week with the highest weekly sales of the year so far, it is no surprise that he gets a second week at the top of the singles chart this week, again by a convincing margin. Sales will have exceeded 100,000 again to extend the run to 14 weeks out of the last 15 with at least one song's sales reaching six figures.
With both of their albums still selling steadily - their second album Take Me Home returns to the top 40 at number 24 this week -
One Direction have released the first single from their forthcoming album Where We Are. The song contains a sample from The Who's 1971 song Baba O'Reilly which briefly entered the top 75 last year after it was performed at the Closing Ceremony of the London Olympics.
You have to wonder about the wisdom of calling a song Best Song Ever, no matter who it is by, Using that title for a song by a boyband who, by their very nature, attract a lot of negative comments seems particularly bizarre. It barely matters whether the lyrics claim the song to be the best ever - which they don't. Unsurprisingly, this is not the best song ever. It isn't even the best
One Direction song ever (by a long way) or the best song with the word song in its title. It is well short of the quality of Redemption Song (Bob Marley), This Is Not A Song (The Frank and Walters), The Number One Song In
Heaven (Sparks) or The Wombling Song (The Wombles) to name but four. One DIrection have recorded some decent pop songs in the past but this is dire. It enters at number two to extend the band's run of consecutive top ten singles to nine (excluding a b-side which charted separately).
One Direction's entry knocks
Robin Thicke,
John Newman and
Icona Pop down one place to three, four and five respectively.
By Friday's update it was looking distinctly possible that
One Direction would have the only new entry this week. The late release of a new song by
Lana Del Rey changed that. Summertime Sadness is a new entry at number 32. The song features French
Cedric Gervais who gets his second top 40 hit following last year's number 26 hit Molly. The Gervais remix gives the song a more electro sound than Del Rey's previous output. Del Rey's first two chart hits - the wonderful Video Games and Born To Die - both reached number nine but she has yet to get a third top ten hit. Her next two top 40 entries peaked at number 32 followed by a number 23 hit with Young And Beautiful earlier this year. Will she continue the trend with a number 23 peak with this song?
Toploader's insipid cover of King Harvest's Dancing In The Moonlight - not to be confused with Thin Lizzy's Dancin' In The Moonlight - reached number 19 when it was originally released in March 2000. They followed that up by reissuing Achilles Heel which had limped into the chart at number 64 the previous year. After that had reached the top ten, they reissued Dancing In The Moonlight in November (this, of course, was before the download era so a positive decision to reissue the song was required) and that too reached the top ten in February 2001. For no better reason than that it has been reduced to 59p on iTunes, it returns to the top 40 this week at number 27.
As is often the case when there is a lack of new entries, some recently departed songs reappear this week.
Calvin Harris and
Ellie Goulding return at number 40 with I Need Your Love and Armin van Buuren is back at number 38 with This Is What It Feels Like.
When Imagine Dragons' Radioactive entered the top 40 at the beginning of December last year and promptly dropped straight back out, there was no reason to believe that it would still be in the top 40 at the end of July this year. However, it is and this week it reaches a total of 24 weeks in the top 40 although it never reached the top ten. Toploader's Dancing In The Moonlight gets a 24th week in the top 40, over twelve years after its 23rd and Bastille's Pompeii has been around for 22 glorious weeks.
Two of last week's new entries take a tumble this week. Lucy Spraggan's Lighthouse (26 last week) has gone out altogether and
Avril Lavigne has crashed 21 places to number 35. By way of contrast
Calvin Harris and Ayah Marar climb 14 places to number 14 with Thinking About You.
