The great thing about these posts is that you can write them in small bits.

And then completely forget to actually post them until the end of the week.

30.  OneRepublic – “Counting Stars”

OneRepublic haven’t had a hit in the UK since 2010.  Their current album “Native” came out in March and only made number 35; previous singles sank without trace.  But belatedly the opening track is now poking its head into the singles chart.  And, while I was all geared up to hate it when I looked it up on YouTube, “Counting Stars” turns out to be a good strong radio-AOR single which may have found a gap in the market.

15.  Drake featuring Majid Jordan – “Hold On We’re Going Home” 

A nicely chilled out 80s-style R&B track.  It’s the second UK single from his upcoming album “Nothing Was The Same”, following “Started From The Bottom”.  No video yet.

Majid Jordan are Majid Al Maskati and Jordan Ullman, a duo from Toronto who used to call themselves “Good People” until somebody presumably pointed out that “Majid Jordan” was both more memorable and easier to search for online.  They are (of course) signed to Drake’s label, and this is their first major release.

12.  Ray Foxx featuring Rachel K Collier – “Boom Boom”

Ibiza dance music, making one of its increasingly rare visits to the top 40.  Foxx is (obviously) a DJ, and this is his first top 40 hit, though a track called “La Musica (The Trumpeter)” scraped the bottom end of the top 75 two years ago.  It’s also the debut for Rachel Collier, a Welsh singer who’s been writing for dance labels for a while now.  (Her official website offers a bio which is simultaneously out of date and weirdly over-detailed – rare is the artist who thinks that the public want to know when they passed Grade 8 piano, but Collier is that woman.)

10.  The Wanted – “We Own The Night”

Oops.  The Wanted may be a B-list boy band, but they’re not supposed to enter at 10 and plummet the next week, which to judge from the midweeks, this will.  It’s got a respectably terrace-chanting chorus married it to a hilariously clunky lyric in which the act of going out to get drunk is solemnly presented as one of epic heroism fit for immortalisation in multi-volume poetry.  (“When my time is over, lying in my grave / Written on my tombstone, I want it to say / This man was a legend, a legend of his time / When he was at a party, the party never died.”)  The rather hamfisted video does it no favours, but the song is amusing enough, though not necessarily for the intended reasons.

8.  The Arctic Monkeys – “Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?”

Song starts at 1:37, though even then it’s more of a short film.  The Arctic Monkeys have had an unexpected singles chart resurgence this year.  Since 2007, the pattern has been that their singles do reasonably well in the first week and then plummet straight out of the chart – and of course, this whole genre now resides principally on the album chart.  But out of nowhere, previous single “Do I Wanna Know?” has bucked the trend, peaking at 11 in its first week out, but going on to hang around the top 20 for two months.  This is the second single from the upcoming album, and gives the Monkeys two concurrent hit singles.  I suspect this one doesn’t have the broader appeal that’s kept “Do I Wanna Know?” around for so long, and the midweeks strongly suggest it won’t be sticking around for long.

5.  Lady Gaga – “Applause”

A midweek release, apparently because the track was leaked.  It was supposed to be out next week.  It’s worth noting, though, that this did not make number one on iTunes – it is not a shadow number one hit, denied the slot solely by its midweek release.  And it’s going to drop next week.

That might seem surprising, but in fact, none of the singles from the last album made number 1 either.  Lady Gaga has had four number one hits in the UK – “Just Dance”, “Poker Face”, “Bad Romance”, and “Telephone” – and the most recent of those was in 2009.   Note also, though, that none of those singles entered at number one.  She has the very unusual distinction, in the modern era, of having three number one hits that took over a month to climb to the top.  She writes more growers than you think.  You never know.

1.  Ellie Goulding – “Burn”

The first number one for Ellie Goulding, who made her chart debut with “Starry Eyed” back in 2009.  This is a bit of a mixed single, quality wise.  On the plus side, it’s got a fabulous tune and there are bits where it sounds like a Regina Spektor remix.  On the other hand, the lyrics are pretty wretched stuff of the all-purpose inspiration genre.  “We, we don’t have to worry about nothing / Cos we got the fire, and we’re burning one hell of a something” is a placeholder, not an opening couplet.  So don’t listen to the lyrics.  Seriously, it will not improve your enjoyment.

This is the single promoting the special edition reissue of Goulding’s album “Halcyon”, and it gives her her first number 1 hit in the UK.  She previously scored a number 2 hit when she covered “Your Song” for a John Lewis advert; her peak for original material is number 4 with both 2009’s “Starry Eyed” and this year’s Calvin Harris track “I Need Your Love”.  In America, she’s best known for “Lights”, which made number 2 over there, but that was never a hit in this country.

It broke the 100,000 barrier, and it’s on course for a second week at the top.

Albums:

• Richard and Adam, “The Impossible Dream” spends a third week at number one.  This is starting to look like it could be in for an epic run at the top, which is… surprising.
• “Big TV” by White Lies at 4.  Third album from this indie band, who’ve never had much success in the singles chart but consistently place high in the albums.  Quite why they don’t have hit singles is a bit of a mystery, given that they’re releasing stuff like this, which ends up sounding like a more bombastic Killers.

• “See You There” by Glen Campbell at 35.  Yes, a new Glen Campbell studio album.  Campbell had his first hit single with “Wichita Lineman” in 1969 and his last in 1978 (we’ll politely gloss over his featured artist credit for an atrocious novelty samplefest in 2002), but he’s been popping up at the bottom end of the album chart again in recent years.