If you don’t do reality TV, Mercury Music Prize nominees Amy Winehouse and Arctic Monkeys are creeping back up since last week’s announcement that they’re in the running for the prestigious prize. The lat-ter’s second album Favourite Worst Nightmare is at No 10, while Back to Black is up six places to No 8 after 38 weeks in the chart. Meanwhile, Timbaland’s Shock Value shot to No 5 following the success of singles “Give it To Me” and “The Way I Are”.
1 - Gareth Gates Anyone Of Us (Stupid Mistake) (S)
2 4 Scooter The Logical Song (Sheffield Tunes)
3 1 Elvis vs JXL A Little Less Conversation (RCA)
4 - Ashanti Foolish (Murder Inc/Mercury)
Five million or so were sold, down a few per cent on last year, but still a source of good cheer for the industry as it awaited Wednesday’s Gowers Review verdict. The industry lobbied hard for an extension in copyright on sound recordings beyond the current 50- year limit, but the Treasury-commissioned report has concluded that no change is warranted. Thankfully, it will be a while before Take That, led by Gary Barlow ( above), in at No 1, need to fret about their intellectual property.
As Simply Red enjoy a second week in the Top 10 with the self-funded Stay and Paul McCartney ( above) inks a deal to release an album via Starbucks - “exploiting the 44 million people walking through Starbucks stores every week” - the ailing majors might regard it as less a case of Enter Shikari than enter the dragon.
Two of their kind, Ray Quinn ( above) and Ben Mills, make a bid for world domination this week, taking advantage of the breach in the time/space matrix caused by Mother’s Day to debut at No 1 and 3 respectively. Oh, and there’s an alien at No 4.
