Chart Review with DJ Chris Plant (1/3)	(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).
www.djchrisplant.co.uk

Elvis again. We may have been spared an unprecedented three in a row last week but for the moment at least there is no stopping the relentless march of Elvis singles all queuing up for a crack at hitting the top for a second time. With this release we have moved into the early 1960s phase of Elvis' career. His US army service ended in March 1960 and upon being demobbed, Elvis was raced into the studio to record new material, his presence in the charts for the previous two years having been maintained by a dwindling stockpile of older recordings.

His manager Colonel Tom Parker was determined that the post-army Elvis would appeal to as wide an audience as possible and so shockingly the bad boy of rock and roll was steered firmly towards the middle of the road.

Hence It's Now Or Never, a reworking of O Sole Mio with new English words added. In pure chart terms this single was actually Elvis' most successful one ever, spending no less than eight weeks at the top of the charts in November 1960. Its release was actually delayed for several months in this country owing to copyright wrangling and anticipation for it had built up to such an extent that its original American b-side A Mess Of Blues had been released as a single here instead.

Back to the present day and as well as making Number One for a second time, It's Now Or Never gives Elvis the honour of having three out of the last four Number One hits, a strike rate only matched by John Lennon in the weeks after his murder when Just Like Starting Over, Imagine and Woman were only interrupted by a one week run for, ahem, There's No-One Quite Like Grandma.

Quite where we go from here is anyone's guess. There are still several months worth of Presley re-releases to come although word has it that the record company has seen the folly of its plan to release the singles as limited editions and will be upping the pressing run for future releases. This could be a double edged sword of course as whilst it may alleviate the first week rush of collectors to snap up the new releases (a large factor in their strong chart showings and subsequent rapid declines) there will of course be more copies to go round, raising the prospects of the Presley releases keeping pace with the rest of the chart as sales rise up from their traditional January slump.

Just as last week, the main challenge to Elvis' crown comes thanks to a US R&B star. This week however Ashanti fails where Ciara was triumphant and her new single Only U has to make do with second place. Whilst nobody will pretend the single is her greatest ever piece of work (it is actually a messy, drum-laden dirge that she is required to whine over rather than actually make best use of her voice) it nonetheless becomes far and away her biggest hit single to date, beating the Number 4 peak of her debut hit Foolish from July 2002.

She came within a whisker of being Number One this week but you know what, in spite of the way it is rapidly turning the singles chart into a joke, I prefer Elvis.

Next to play at Number 4 is the One World Project. The success of the new Band Aid recording at Christmas has of course suddenly made charity collaborations fashionable again and when news of the Asian tsunami disaster broke it was almost inevitable that some form of charity record would emerge. Several projects have been mooted but the biggest to emerge is bizarrely that of the One World Project.

I say bizarrely as the assembly of stars on this record doesn't so much represent a who's who of the pop world but instead stands proud as the biggest collection of relics the industry has to offer. Members of The Who, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones appear on the song along with the likes of Steve Winwood, Boy George, Rick Wakeman and er, Russell Watson. The main selling point of the song is the appearance of Robin and Barry Gibb who perform on record for the first time since the sad death of their brother Maurice. Oh and Cliff is on there as well.

The reason the single hasn't quite set the world on fire is apparent when you hear it for Grief Never Goes Old is a wonderfully pompous four minute dirge that sounds just as you would expect from the cast lineup - a bunch of old men desperately trying to sound cool. Ordinarily I'd feel bad about shovelling dirt onto a record released for such a worthy cause but this smacks of a record made for all the wrong reasons. The original Band Aid was a record made in an attempt to focus world attention on a disaster that might otherwise have slipped under the radar.

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