Single File : w/c 26/6

Let us consider the career of sometime Post Office salesman Elton John, and more precisely the seven number ones he has now put his name to. A duet with Kiki Dee, a song the label were going to abandon until Simon Bates started playing it, a duet with George Michael, Candle In The Wind 1997, a duet with Blue, a Norman Cook remix and now being sampled on a 2Pac record. Ghetto Gospel is the new number one, Mr Shakur's sixteenth posthumous top 75 single sampling Indian Sunset off Madman Across The Water, released in the same year our late man was born. Whether there's any extra significance there I don't know but 2005 now has four posthumous number ones to its name, albeit three by the same person.

A mixed bag among other top 10 new entries - Bobby Valentino stakes his R Kelly You Can Take Home To Introduce To Your Mum claims at 4 and comprehensively outdoes mentor Ludacris in the process, someone called MVP fills a video full of bikini'd ladies and gets to 5, Missy Elliott's at 7, Hard-Fi at 9 and 50 Cent makes it six top ten singles out of six at 10. This means the Stereophonics perhaps surprisingly only enter at 13, buyers possibly put off by Kelly Jones' falsetto. Bizarre, worthwhile as light relief but unsellable on his own, is at 17.

So how come the brothers in the Subways are called Billy Lunn and Josh Morgan? They and their denim skirt magnate of a bassist enter at 22, perhaps not the development the label were looking for, although maybe Lunn should have been quieter about Rock & Roll Queen being the first song he ever wrote as it sounds like it is too. Damien Rice is at 24 with a new song co-credited to long time vocal oppo Lisa Hannigan, not on O but selling about as well as the singles from that anyway. Erasure are at 25, actually something of a letdown by their quietly impressive standards, and Gavin De Graw's theme to something called One Tree Hill is at 38. The idea some bought it thinking it was a pseudonym for Maroon 5 cannot be ruled out. Some oddities in the album chart caused by this week's HMV sale (Sales Pitch on Monday), which don't affect Coldplay but do see Jem reach a high of 6, Razorlight climb 44 to 29 (my local store had a sticker on its stock of Up All Night reading 'ONLY ONE SOLD PER CUSTOMER' which suggests someone got to the counter with 500 on the first day of the sale) and the Jam's 1983 Aren't These CDs Wonderful Innovations You Can Spread Marmalade On Them And They'll Still Play Y'Know posthumous compilation Compact Snap re-enters at 39 with its new £1.99 sticker. This of course is the one that features the demo of That's Entertainment because it "has a certain quality that was never captured again". A certain comparatively shitty quality, yes.