We’ve got a pretty dead week here.  Not much in the way of new releases, and what there is, hasn’t exactly sustained its sales.

30.  Kove featuring Melissa Steel – “Way We Are”

This was at 17 in the midweeks, so sales obviously tailed off quite badly in the second half of the week.  It’s an above average dance record with a low budget but decently edited video.  Kove is producer James Rockhill, making his first chart appearance.  Melissa Steel is a singer from Bradford who has her own single,  “Kisses for Breakfast”, out at the end of the month.

For some reason, even though Steel is promoting this record, that’s not her in the video – it’s Jo White, a dancer and model who was also in the video for “Everything You Never Had’ by Breach.  I’m not sure quite what’s going on there, since getting in a completely different person to lip-synch in your videos is not a common strategy these days, particularly someone who doesn’t look remotely like the actual singer.

16.  Ella Eyre – “If I Go”

Another guest vocalist making the move to lead credit – Eyre was the singer on “Waiting All Night” by Rudimental, a number one last year.  This is not actually her first single, but it’s the first to be effectively  promoted.  It’s also very like Rudimental, though with the balance a bit more soul than drum and bass.  A pretty solid debut, but at 8 in the midweeks, 16 in the final chart, and a dismal 35 in the current midweeks, it’s surely underperformed expectations.

6.  Nicole Scherzinger – “Your Love”

The sort of record where it’s vaguely surprising to discover that it doesn’t feature Pitbull.  This is the second single to be taken from Scherzinger’s second album – a presumably troubled project, given that the previous single was “Boomerang”, which got to number 6 last March.  (The official line is that the release was delayed so that she could give her full attention to the tenth season of X Factor, but seriously now.  No UK X Factor judge has ever been stupid enough to delay an album launch until after they’ve got a national TV platform to advertise it.)

It’s actually got a pretty good hook, this.  And it’s not a bad production either.  What it isn’t is any sort of showcase for Nicole Scherzinger, who comes across as pretty anonymous, when she isn’t wrestling with some of the worst lyrics of the year.  (“Knock me out like Michael Tyson / I’ll do everything you want”?  “Yeah my body’s like Bugatti / You know everybody wants one”?)  And it’s another brutal flare-out – 2 in last week’s midweeks, 6 at the end of the week, 13 in today’s midweeks.

1.  Rixton – “Me and my Broken Heart”

From the offices of Scooter Braun, the man who brought you Justin Bieber, comes Rixton, the latest boy band he supposedly discovered on YouTube.  Believe that if you want.  The lead singer is one Jake Roche, and he’s Shane Richie’s son.  (“Roche” is Richie’s real name.)  His mother is Colleen Nolan, who was the youngest member of the Nolan Sisters, probably best known (to British people who are old enough, at any rate) for their 1979 hit “I’m in the Mood for Dancing”, which got to number 3 in the UK, and an unexpected number 1 in Japan.

Please note that that video didn’t look much better when it came out.  This is four years after “Bohemian Rhapsody”, after all.  The song’s actually quite decent, though.  Jake has already beaten mum’s highest chart placing, but her group had a total of eight hits between 1979 and 1982, so she’s still ahead.

As for Rixton’s song, it sounds like something Malta might enter in the Eurovision Song Contest in an off year.  Although it did hang on to number 1 for the end of the week, it’s at 5 in the midweeks (behind three new releases and Ella Henderson’s “Ghost”, which turns out to have some staying power).  At this stage, Rixton seem to be another fans-only C-list boy band, but it’s only the first single, so they can fairly treat this as a reasonable start.

On the album chart:

• “X” by Ed Sheeran spends a fourth week at number 1, serenely disregarding the challenge of…
• “World Peace is None of Your Business” by Morrissey at 2.  Maintaining a clean record of top 5 places for his studio albums this century.  Admittedly he hasn’t released one since 2009.  In an interesting approach, there aren’t any regular videos for this album, but there is a spoken word version of the title track. (Not that it really works.  It kind of needs the music for a second dimension.)
• “Jungle” by Jungle at 7.  Soul group from London.  Single: “Time”.
• “Redeemer of Souls” by Judas Priest at 12.  Their seventeenth album, and – unsurprisingly given the way veteran rock acts seem to be holding up in the declining album market – it’s their highest chart placing since “Screaming for Vengeance” in 1982.   Not much has changed musically since then.  Sample track: “Halls of Valhalla”.  (You see?)
• “Black Market” by Rise Against at 13.  Highest chart position to date for the Chicago rock band.  Single: “I Don’t Want To Be Here Anymore”.
• “Yes” by Jason Mraz at 18.  A bit disappointing after his last two albums made the top 10.  Single: “Love Someone”.