Chart Review 16th May 2005 with DJ Chris Plant (2/3)

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

All of this means that just for once the biggest new single of the week is actually little more than a footnote in the tale of the chart. Sliding in at Number 4 is Hate It Or Love It, the second single from The Game who once again enlists the help of main man 50 Cent for that little extra help. The follow-up to February's How We Do, it becomes his biggest hit so far and ensures that Fiddy can claim his third Top 10 single of the year, his own Candy shop only this week dropping out of the Top 20 after a chart run that saw it also peak at Number 4.

With De La Soul taking lead vocals on the Gorillaz track it means that four out of the Top 5 singles this week are hip-hop tracks, and the continuing presence of Eminem and Will Smith is enough to give the genre a 70% sweep of the Top 10. Have we turned into America all of a sudden?

Next up at Number 6 are The Coral, making a triumphant chart return after a year and half and ready to promote their third album, the follow-up to 2003's Magic And Medicine. The first single is In The Morning which dutifully charges into the chart to give them their third Top 10 single and their biggest hit since Pass it On hit Number 5 in July 2003. Like so many releases In The Morning has actually been available online for the past month, hovering around the Top 20 of the download chart all this time, the release of the CD single finally pushing it into the full official sales chart.

The chart career of Kelly Osbourne continues to cause furrowed brows all around. Ozzy's daughter made her chart debut in 2002 with a by the numbers cover version of Madonna's Papa Don't Preach. Although it made Number 3, rumours were that it was destined to be little more than a one-off until mother Sharon brow-beat the record company into releasing a follow-up, Shut Up, the title of her debut solo album making Number 12 early in 2003. Her only other hit to date was at the very least a Number One, her duet with her father on a reworking of Black Sabbath's Changes spending a memorable week at the top in December of that same year.

Now in 2005 and with the Osbournes TV series finally finishing it seems people are determined to turn her into a record star - and on this occasion in quite bizarre fashion. For a start there is the futuristic-looking sleeve to the single One Word that has attracted much derision for the way her natural pudginess has been airbrushed out to turn her into a size 10 model.

Then there is the single itself, a world away from the plastic punk of her first album but one which instead rides the wave of electro pop revivalism - in itself not a bad idea but One Word features such a wholesale lift of the melody of Visage's new romantic classic Fade To Grey that Steve Strange's lawyers must be rubbing their hands with glee. Let us not overlook the way that this most unlikely of pop stars has landed herself yet another Top 10 hit, but the fact that that most comment about the song is either about the risible cover or what appears to be the blatant copying of someone else's song suggests that this won't go down as one of the greatest hits of the year.

Continued ...next page

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