Bringing us up to date before the middle aged retro-fest on Sunday…

1.  Wiley (featuring Ms D) – “Heatwave”

Second week at the top.  This is in the post immediately below.  Go see it there.  The midweeks and the iTunes chart both indicate that two weeks will be as far as it goes.

We may now begin this week’s theme: new entries having their one week of glory that look set to plunge in the midweeks.

3.  Lawson – “Taking Over Me”

This is the follow-up to their debut “When She Was Mine”, which reached number 4 in June.  Lawson are an unusual group; they’re a proper band, but they’re being promoted mainly to the boy band audience.  This is presumably an attempt to fill a gap in the UK market, one roughly the shape of Maroon 5.  The results so far have been mixed.  Yes, “When She Was Mine” entered high – but it swandived to 24 in its second week.  The midweeks show this single dropping to 16.  So, just like many a boy band, they’ve got a core fanbase but very limited crossover appeal to a wider audience.  And, if anything, being positioned as a boy band is likely to undermine the potential appeal they might have.  Personally, I think this is a very bland record, but it’s also one that ought to have broader appeal beyond the teenage girls.

5.  Redlight – “Lost in Your Love”

This is the followup to “Out Of My Head”, which made number 18 in February, and hung around the lower reaches of the top 75 for quite some time.  As with the previous single, it’s something of a turn of the 90s throwback, even down to the Italian house piano and the video, which is very much something you’d expect to see on the ITV Chart Show Dance Chart from that period.  (See for yourself if you don’t believe me.)

Redlight is the producer.  The two uncredited singers are Baby Sol, a session singer who’s also released some records of her own without much impact, and (as best I can determine) Lottie Bernardout, who sings for a group called Tricity.

22.  Dizzee Rascal (featuring Pepper) – “Scream”

This is the lead single from Dizzee Rascal’s next album, but it’s mainly been released as yet another officially sanctioned Olympic tie-in, which perhaps explains the relatively unimpressive placing.  It’s certainly not an obvious choice for a lead single, nor is it one of his better records.

Pepper has charted before – she’s the singer from Pepper & Piano, one of the acts from Sky One’s talent show Must Be The Music that had minor hits in 2010.  In their case, the song was “You Took My Heart”, which reached number 7.  Dizzee was a judge on that show.  At that point, she sounded more like an aspirant Adele, but heaven knows where she’ll end up now that she’s signed to his label.

(Say, whatever happened to Emma’s Imagination, the winner of that show?  She was rather good.)

I don’t recall this track actually featuring in the Olympic opening ceremony.  It did feature Dizzee’s number 1 hit “Bonkers” from 2009, which curiously re-enters on this chart at number 31, evidently on some sort of time delay.

25.  Justin Bieber (featuring Big Sean) – “As Long As You Love Me”

This made number 30 as one of the tracks released in advance of Bieber’s album earlier in the year.  It’s now being promoted as a proper single, and the video came out this week.  I doubt it’ll go much further, though, since Bieber’s hardcore fanbase presumably bought it when it first came out, if they were going to.

28.  Of Monsters And Men – “Little Talks”

Of Monsters And Men are an Icelandic indie folk band, who won a contest in their home country in 2010, and unexpectedly broke through in America last year, where their album “My Head is An Animal” made the top 10.  They’re now being promoted internationally, which is why the British audience has belatedly picked up on a single that’s actually been available since April.  It’s not going to stick around.

Interesting fact: of the fourteen singles to be number 1 in Iceland so far this year, 11 were by Icelandic acts.  Two were British, and the other one was the Eurovision winner from Sweden.  That’s an incredible predominance of local talent for a country with a population of 320,000 – roughly the size of Coventry.  UK acts account for fewer than half of this year’s UK number one singles.  (Going purely by the lead acts, and place of birth, it comes out as 9 UK acts, 5 from the US, and 1 each from Barbados, France, Belgium, Canada and Kosovo – though admittedly Kosovo’s Rita Ora and Barbados’ Cover Drive are both now based in the UK.)

36.  Cheryl – “Under the Sun”

That would be the former Cheryl Cole.  In theory, the single doesn’t come out until the start of September, but it’s been available as an album download since June, and the video was released at the end of the July.  A bit of a slow start here, and the midweeks only show it climbing to 34.  But it could still pick up steam.

39.  Avicii – “Silhouettes”

This dropped out of the top 75 five weeks ago, so I’ve no idea why it’s suddenly back now.  Doesn’t seem to be sticking around, anyhow.

And that’s us up to date.  Next week: Olympic closing ceremony spillover, from the looks of it.