Last week’s Surge Chart countdown was exciting for three reasons: there were six new entries in the top 20, two songs by the same artist in the running for the top spot, and a brand new number one. To see the full chart, check out the Surge website. You can also listen to the full podcast on The Official Surge Chart Show page, or check out the 20 to 11 and 10 to 2 rundowns right here.
We kicked off the October 30th edition of The Official Surge Chart Show, as usual, with a few predictions as to what we thought might make #1, as well as the midweek chart update. New song ‘Princess of China’ (featuring Rihanna) and ‘Paradise’ (midweek #1) by Coldplay, midweek #2 Ed Sheeran’s ‘Lego House’, the super-chilled ‘Video Games’ by Lana Del Rey, and the previous week’s #1 ‘Stereo Hearts’ by Gym Class Heroes featuring Adam Levine were our predictions.
After looking ahead, we play the new entries outside of the top 20, which this week were David Guetta’s new single ‘Without You’ featuring Usher (#28) and M83’s ‘Midnight City’ (#22), both pretty mediocre in my opinion. I then forced the third single from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’ debut album into the show: ‘If I Had a Gun…’ has just been added to our system, and it could well make the top 20 next week after ‘AKA… What a Life!’ spent a few weeks in the chart.
Into the top 20, we kicked off with Foster the People’s newest (and in my opinion best) single ‘Call It What You Want’, which moved up one place. Three new entries took the positions of #19, #18 and #17: Cobra Starship’s ‘You Make Me Feel…’, Noah and the Whale’s ‘Waiting for My Chance to Come’ and Kasabian’s ‘Re-Wired’ (after ‘Days Are Forgotten’ made #5), respectively. Other songs of note were former Surge Chart #1 ‘Moves Like Jagger’ by Maroon 5 down at #16, Bombay Bicycle Club’s ‘Lights Out, Words Gone’ dropping 13 places to #15, ‘Video Games’ at #13, and a new entry from Labrinth featuring Tinie Tempah with ‘Earthquake’ at #12.
The top ten wasn’t too extravagant, although there were a few surprises. One Direction’s debut single was down five places at #8, followed by Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs’ new entry ‘Garden’ and the 14-place climber ‘This Isn’t Everything You Are’ by Snow Patrol at #7 and #6, respectively. Last week’s #1, and probably my favourite song of the top ten, ‘Stereo Hearts’ was at #5, followed by former #1 ‘We Found Love’ at #4. Ed Sheeran climbed up to #3, which meant that Coldplay took the top two spots on Sunday. Midweek chart-topper ‘Paradise’, the second single from the band’s UK #1 album Mylo Xyloto came in at #2, and the brand new song ‘Princess of China’ topped the Surge Chart.
Once we’ve looked at the top 20 songs of the week, we play a few songs as ‘potential hits’ for the following week. After successfully predicting ‘Princess of China’, we identified Professor Green’s ‘Read All About It’ as a potential #1 for next week (after it topped the UK Singles Chart on Sunday), and we also played Taio Cruz’s new single ‘Hangover’, which to be honest I wasn’t all that impressed with (which has nothing to do with the fact that the chords used in the song are exactly the same as one of my proudest songwriting achievements!). Personally, I don’t think either song will be hugely popular among students, so my official prediction for next week’s show (November 6th) is that ‘Princess of China’ will make it two weeks at #1. I’d love for Labrinth’s track to climb up, and it might make the top ten, but I can’t see it knocking Coldplay off the top.
