It's all about sales, folks, and figures are just in, so here:
Lily Allen’s The Fear’s sales decline to 59,671, but that is enough to give it a third week at the top of the singles chart.
Meanwhile, Lady GaGa’s Just Dance spends its third consecutive week at number two, with sales of 41,602, raising its career tally to 412,878 while, having graduated to physical release, Alesha Dixon’s Breathe Slow climbs for the seventh week in a row, moving 5-3 (37,363 sales). It thus beats the number five peak of Dixon’s last hit The Boy Does Nothing.
Veteran dance doyens The Prodigy score the week’s highest new entry, debuting at number eight with Omen (23,307 sales) on their own Take Me To The Hospital label. It’s their 15th hit since 1991 debut Charly. They’re novices compared to Morrissey, a chart regular since 1983, who debuts at number 21 (9,978 sales) with I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris, the first single from his upcoming album, Years Of Refusal. It’s the 49 year old Mancunian’s 48th hit – 32 solo and 16 with the Smiths.
In the singles sector, the dominance of downloads is now almost total – it surpassed the 99% mark for the first time a fortnight ago, reaching 99.1%, with physical sales of just 20,408 CDs, 3,968 7-inch singles, 1,800 12-inch singles, 155 DVD videos and three cassettes. It also precipitated the first instance of the number one physical single – surprisingly, at this stage, Alexandra Burke’s Hallelujah - selling fewer than 2,000 copies. Burke’s single sold 1,981 copies on CD to dethrone The Fear (1,532 CD sales and 178 7-inch picture discs). This week, physical sales stage a rally, mostly thanks to Morrissey whose fans bought only 2,607 digital copies of his new hit I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris but shelled out for 5,396 CDs and 1,974 7-inchers, placing the track at number 79 on the download chart but number one on the CD, 7-inch and overall physical charts.
It – and the new St. Etienne release Method Of Modern Love, which also did well in both formats – helped the physical sector to gain 43.08% week-on-week to 37,679 sales, giving it a 1.44% share of the market. Overall singles sales of 2,611,939 were 4.4% down week-on-week, and 35.84% above same week 2008 sales of 1,922,803.
by Alan Jones (MW)
So Paris sold just under 10,000, which is really poor considering it being a lead-off single and it's huge airplay, by Morrissey standards.
It actually sold just about as much as the 2nd and 3rd singles off Ringleader.