Brit Sweep: June 23, 2013...

Hey gang, I'm back from the big city and under the "super moon" I'm ready to take a trip across the Atlantic to check out the new songs making the top-100 singles chart in the United Kingdom this week, as Robin Thicke commands a fourth week on top with "Blurred Lines"...

The top entry at #2 is American R&B singer Jason Derulo with "The Other Side". He's done really well in this country, as this is his sixth top-10 hit. He went to #1 in 2009 with "In My Head" and again two years later with "Don't Wanna Go Home"...

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Riding in at #5 is British rapper Dizzee Rascal, who is absolutely one of my top-5 rap artists of all time, along with Take That refugee Robbie Williams on "Goin' Crazy". This is Dizzee's 11th top-10 single - four of his tracks from his last full-length album Tongue N Cheek reached #1 on the UK chart...

Millennial indie-rock stars Arctic Monkeys return at #11 with their 11th top-40 hit "Do I Wanna Know?". The group topped the UK chart twice with their first two singles "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" and "When The Sun Goes Down"...

Newcomers London Grammar, who have worked with dance act Disclosure, debut at #31 with the ethereal "Wasting My Young Years"...

Well, The Voice has concluded in Britain, and while Andrea Begley took the prize, it's soulful singer Leah McFall that's had the most success on the charts, and her former top-10 rendition of "I Will Survive" is up at #15, while her semi-final performance of "Killing Me Softly" comes in at #36. Now, can we please have a moratorium for using the Fugees' version of this song on singing competitions and at least go back to Roberta Flack, for chrissakes!?!?!

Leah's "coach" on the voice, will.i.am, has an entry of his own at #42 with "Bang Bang" from the soundtrack to The Great Gatsby....

Kanye West has the biggest-selling record of the week in the UK with Yeezus, and the reality-show sideshow enters with two tracks that sell enough on their own to make the top-100. First at #48 is his "Black Skinhead"...

As Icona Pop's worldwide smash "I Love It" remains unavailable as a single in the UK, more "copycat tracks" emerge, and sell enough to make the chart. The "Remix Junkies" come in at #49, and the "Remix Chx" arrive at #61 with covers of the song, too low-rent to even have a YouTube clip up....

The other runner-up on The Voice (there were two) was my favorite Mike Ward (from Tom Jones' team), who parlayed a deep (if novice) booming voice and transformed pop hits into country bar-room weepers that was a real inventive side-step from the usual Voice karaoke. This time out his version of Paloma Faith's "Picking Up The Pieces" may have waivered a bit, but his recording sold enough to make #72 on the chart...

 The singer who did end up winning The Voice, Andrea Begley from Danny O'Donoghue's team, manages to pop in at #75 with the song she only performed yesterday - the finals performance of Evanescence's "My Immortal"...

Singer/songwriter Frank Turner is in at #79 with "The Way I Tend To Be". Frank had reached the top-40 here in 2010 with "I Still Believe"...

Andrea Begley's Voice win was a surprise to me, considering the US version's bastardization of the voting rules allowing "top-10" iTunes sales to count 10x towards the final vote. Leah McFall would certainly have been the preordained winner since three of her tracks are on this week's chart, and her (I think notsogreat) version of Dolly/Whitney's "I Will Always Love You" comes in at #85. (I think this song deserves the same fate as "Killing Me Softly" on these shows - use the Dolly template if you're gonna karaoke it!)...

Since most of the tracking week was before the final, a singer the actually missed the final four, Cleo Higgins from will.i.am's team (with Leah McFall), was able to sell enough to make the chart at #92 with her cover of En Vogue's classic "Don't Let Go (Love)" (which works better as a group number)...

The new Superman movie Man Of Steel debuted in the UK this week, and a track from the orchestral score, "What Are You Going To Do When You Are Not Saving The World" sells enough on its own to chart at #96....

The last debut of the week is the second of Kanye West's Yeezus to come in, "New Slaves" at #97...

That's it for tonight...I'll be back tomorrow with another Song of the Day, part 2 of this week's "album sweep", and my "robbed hit of the week"...