A View From The Top #14

When I was young, I liked Strepsils so much that I ate them like sweets to the point where I made myself really ill. This goes to show - as well as the fact that my parents really shouldn’t have been buying so many lozenges - that there can be too much of a good thing. I hate to say it, but I’ve reached that point with Bieber. Seven out of the thirteen weeks this column has been running have been dominated by Bieber, and no surprise, so will this one.

Not only that, this week he’s become the first person ever to hold the Number 1, 2 and 3 spots in the UK Charts. And, all three of those songs (What Do You Mean?, Sorry, and Love Yourself) have been Number 1. This is insanity! I wasn’t a huge fan of the album anyway, although I respected it as a great pop record which did exactly what it aimed to do. So almost two months on, I’m bored of hearing just how well he’s doing. Admittedly, I still get excited when Sorry comes on (and I’m much like Matt Hacke in trying and failing to recreate the video’s choreography) but seriously? Enough is enough.

This week’s number one, Love Yourself, has taken the nation by storm, creating the perfect soundtrack to the exploits of a passive aggressive youth: mellow vibes, plucked guitars, smooth trumpets, and insulting lyrics. As Harry Williams pointed out a few weeks ago, once you know that Ed Sheeran wrote this song, it’s so obvious that Ed Sheeran wrote this song. Personally, I really dislike Sheeran’s music, which probably meant I was biased against this from the get go. I just think, after listening to the album as a whole, that this was a pleasant enough interlude, but really isn’t worth the hype it’s getting as a single. But then again, I don’t like What Do You Mean? either, so maybe I’m just wrong.

Straying away from He Who Must Not Be Named, further down the charts, I have to say that I’m unimpressed. There is nothing in the Top 10 which has any real originality; Coldplay are at Number 9 with a track as bland as they are, Shawn Mendes is trying to be Ed Sheeran with his Number 4 song Stitches, and Adele is still trying to get some phone signal at Number 5.

It’s all a bit same-old same-old, really. In fact, in the Top 20 songs, the shortest amount of weeks on the chart is a whopping seven (One Direction, Sigala, Grace) proving with real life maths that there is nothing new worth listening to. With the exception of Motörhead’s Ace Of Spades (RIP Lemmy) every song is either pop or dance, or a mixture of the two. I’m not trying to be a music snob here (I genuinely love pop music and think it’s important) but I seriously think the charts need some fresh blood to liven things up. Come on Kanye, save us all.

In conclusion, until Zayn Malik releases his first single (which is due any day now) to show us what a comeback really looks like, this is Justin Bieber’s world, and we’re all just living in it.