Originally Posted by
Andries
SINGLES
A very eventful chart week with a healthy amount of new entries: 10, or one fifth of the entire Top 50. The Number One remains unshaken though, still Leona Lewis in a seventh consecutive week for her tear-jerker "Bleeding Love". The highest new entry at an awe-inspiring #3 is for a name that's widely touted among Belgium's top musical ambassadors, but was in the physicals-only era never associated with the singles charts: dEUS. As for so many of their 'alternative' peers however, legal downloads have turned all this around. Demand for the Antwerp collective's highly anticipated (and accessible) comeback single "The Architect" has been so high that a week after being released on iTunes, it has sold enough to debut straight into the Top 3 just on digital sales. Their previous best (strictly on CD singles) was a #30 in late 2001 for the melancholic "Nothing Really Ends", like nearly all of their singles considered part of the pop history canon in Flanders.
We have another Top 10 debut at #7, which is slightly overshadowed by dEUS but in nearly every other week would be big news. This single is likely to climb a fair bit higher anyway, since it's Belgium's selection for the 2008 Eurovision Song Contest. After the abject failure of Kate Ryan two years ago, the Flemish televoting public seemingly got a bit sick of 'safe' traditional Eurovision songs, as the entire final consisted of out-of-the-ordinary entries. The eventual winner is arguably the most out-of-the-ordinary of them all: "O julissi na jalini" by Ishtar, a band of classically trained world/folk musicians previously unknown to the public at large. Like Urban Trad's surprise runner-up "Sanomi" at the 2003 contest, it is completely sung in an imaginary language, though musically it is another kettle of fish. Many would label it a simple nursery rhyme-like chant, recalling one of the biggest Belgian hits abroad of all time: "Dominique" by Soeur Sourire/The Singing Nun. Both the 'pro' and 'con' camps of Ishtar and their song have been very vocal, making this Belgium's most polarising ESC entry since Pas de Deux' "Rendez-vous" all the way back in 1983. In today's Eurovision climate, this type of instant 'love/hate' reaction is arguably a good thing, so fingers crossed for the first semi on the 20th of May!
The singer that settled for second place on the 'Eurosong' stage debuts at an also impressive #11: Sandrine Van Handenhoven, the number three but most-praised talent out of the second Flemish 'Pop Idol'. Her entry "I Feel the Same Way" has the same '60s feelgood Motown kick recently revitalised by the likes of Amy Winehouse, and came with by far the most polished and professional act of the entire preselections, but ultimately lacked the punch to go all the way with the televoters. In any case Sandrine's career has been put well and truly back into the spotlight (especially now she has also been selected as a new presenter on public TV network één), and all eyes are on her forthcoming second album, which was probably the main goal of the singer and her new management/label The Entertainment Group.
Greatest gainer is for Moby with "Disco Lies" (49-19), now that CD single sales have joined those of the download, and new at #22 is another long-standing act of the Mute label: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds with the title track and lead single of their chart-topping "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" album. It becomes just the second Ultratop 50 hit for the gloomy Australians, after the legendary Top 3 Kylie Minogue duet "Where the Wild Roses Grow" in 1995. Back to the Eurosong board then for #24: 'Idool' alumnus Brahim Attaeb who, just like in 2006 with "P.O.W.E.R.", finished fourth in the grand final. This year he did so with "What I Like About You", a smooth nu-soul number in the grand tradition of Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. A winner it was never destined to be, but another guaranteed radio smash and concert favourite for Brahim it most definitely is.
A chart full of Eurovision action, yet the most blatantly gay-oriented single in this week's Top 50 is in at #27: New York collective Hercules And Love Affair with the 21st-century disco anthem "Blind". It has the distinguishable vocals of Antony Hegarty of Antony & The Johnsons notoriety, the first time he has ever been near a singles sales chart. For the last time (this week) we go ESC, with the winner of the first semi and number five in the final of Eurosong 2008: Nelson Morais. The likeable Antwerp singer/songwriter with Capeverdian roots already came fourth in the 2004 preselection accompanying his younger sister Elsie, who would go on to score a Top 10 hit with the summery "Amoré loco". Four years on he tried his luck on his own, and was able to charm a large audience with the saccharine R&B ballad "When I Can't Find Love", in at #38.
Unlike her usual pattern, we've not had to wait some four years for Swedish popstar Robyn to follow up a big international hit (in this case last year's instant pop classic "When Every Heartbeat"), as she is in at #42 with the follow-up single "Handle Me". The catchy tune, whose chorus controversially contains a muffled nazi-referencing line, was a lower Top 20 hit in the UK last November, but bizarrely never a hit in her native. It was already serviced to Flemish radio stations several months ago, but has only just had the final push for the sales Top 50 following an appearance at the tongue-in-cheek awards show Humo's Pop Poll, held in the Antwerp Sportpaleis.
Two rungs below we find the first Flemish 'X-Factor' winner, Udo Mechels, making a comeback with the soulful (or at least the closest that a white blue-eyed Belgian can get to soul) radio fave "You Got a Good Thing Comin'". One new entry left at #50, and it's a former ten-week Number One in the Billboard Hot 100: Tramar Dillard AKA Flo Rida, featuring rapper T-Pain, and the unspeakably catchy "Low". Those who had hoped for crunk'n'B to be a fleeting fad restricted to 2004/5 can keep on dreaming for a little while yet!
ALBUMS
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds remain on top, while Monza keep up their 100% Top 5 strike rate with "Attica!" (6-3). Highest entry at #4 is "11", the (surprise, surprise) eleventh studio album of Bryan Adams, and the Canadian AOR star's fifth Top 5 long-player in the Ultratop era. Gorki's tried-and-tested mix of acute lyrics and melancholic music meanwhile leaps 44-8 through "Voor rijpere jeugd", the fifth Top 10 exploit since 1995 for the band around media personality Luc De Vos.
A hat-trick of newcomers in the 11-13 block: first up Muse and the live CD/DVD "HAARP", immortalising the larger-than-life UK trio's Wembley concerts in June last year, in the middle the self-titled album by the afore-named Hercules And Love Affair, and finally trendy duo The Kills and second chart album "Midnight Boom". Retro soul chanteuse Duffy is in at #20 with "Rockferry", one of the fastest-selling debut albums in British chart history, and at twenty-seven we have Calvin 'Snoop Dogg' Broadus and "Ego Trippin".
Northern Irish veteran Van Morrison is in at #40 with "Keep It Simple", and one below enters the late French variété superstar Claude François, thirty years after his unfortunate death in his own bathroom. There has already been a plethora of 'Cloclo' compilations, but "30 ans - Edition anniversaire" uniquely collects all his hits under three different majors (Universal, Sony BMG and Warner). Forty-seven finally is a compilation which already hit the shops last October, but only now cracks the upper fifty, thanks to a few sold-out Sportpaleis concerts: the three-disc "Platinum Collection" of internationally hitmaking Flemish duo Soulsister. After a split of over a decade, Jan Leyers and Paul Michiels have recently got back together on tour, which will also lead them to the German-speaking countries where they were particularly popular in the early '90s.
Voor de rest vind ik dit programma niet echt een meerwaarde bieden boven drie reeksen Idool...
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Na een eerste luisterbeurt van de Joeroviezige dubbel-cd...
). En ons plastic fantastic Sjalotje verkoopt het geheel als de Number One verkoopster in de regionale vestiging van Shoe Discount! :su2: Helaas verwacht ik een Lena/Carola 2006-esque eindpositie in het allerbeste geval...
daarentegen wél, in tegenstelling tot met de vurig heteroseksuele Sarbel vorig jaar zou een top 10-finish dit jaar allerminst onverdiend zijn!
