Spirit

I have quite a cautious approach to 'reality TV' music talent searches, although I must admit that there have already been some genuine artists therefrom. That said, I really wonder if even those in control really thought this could actually happen. Début single at #1 in the UK was a pushover and that the album did the same on its week of release was, in the event, and following the success of the single, not very surprising either. The real test would certainly be in America...

When her first single 'Bleeding Heart' went to the top of the 'Billboard 100 Singles' it was an incredible feat for a new UK artist, the first by any solo UK female artist to do so since 1987.

The "last one to do it" aspect now matters no longer!

Spirit has just become the first début album by a UK solo artist, male or female, ever to reach #1 in the US chart on the week of release - a record that belongs to Leona Lewis in perpetuity - and she did it in style. Spirit sold 205,000 copies against her nearest chart rival, George Strait, whose album Troubadour sold 59,000 copies. It is however not a patch on the first-week UK sales of Spirit, for which it currently holds the all time record of 375,000 copies in the week of release, a record not just for a début album but for any artist studio album.

If you think I may have fallen into some kind of idolatry here please see the 'I've just listened to...' list on the side-bar. I'm now trying to include links in it, particularly within this blog, and also now have increased the entries displayed from ten to fifteen. It these have fallen off the bottom by the time you read this, I suggest Passionoia - Black Box Recorder and Heavy Horses - Jethro Tull as two apparently very different albums that embody many of my thoughts on music that is quintissentially British and, in the case of Black Box Recorder, specifically a certain kind of English.

This is the week this is...

'That Was the Week That Was' was a BBC radio production featuring many of the great names of radio in its time, which was about that when The Beatles were heading for domination of the music world in a way previously unimaginable but, some 46 years later, this is the week that has created some, admittedly 'red-top', newspaper headlines that echo through the decades:

• Sir Paul McCartney (a certified "National Treasure", as several of the cast of the BBC radio show were, or later became) was finally divorced from Heather Mills.

• Carla Bruni-Sarkozy made a state trip to Britain and she was of course accompanied by her husband Nicolas, who just happens to be the President of France. Truth to tell they both played their parts brilliantly: Gordon Brown talked about a new political entente formidable and the next morning, while on a boat trip down the Thames, the newly-weds played the UK media thing to perfection with an entente à deux as they shrugged off the fact that one UK tabloid paper had reprised an old picture of Mme. Bruni-Sarkozy, sans vêtements and taken on a modelling shoot in the early 1990s, by sharing a snog in front of the media cameras. She has also recorded two albums (one in French and one in English) that have had some critical acclaim. French politics has had its fair share of scandal but never has it been quite so honest, transparent and legal!

• This week UK music has done a remarkable thing. To paraphrase the 1988 single by Sting (and without any mercy on my part) West Londoner in New York, Estelle, displaced Duffy at the top of the UK single chart with the single 'American Boy', sung with Kanye West. That is not very remarkable but simultaneously East Londoner, and winner of X-Factor 2006, Leona Lewis is at #1 in the US singles chart with the single 'Bleeding Love' - and she only the third UK solo female artist to take a début single to #1 in the US.