And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #112: The Enemy v the charts

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 1 June 2012

The Enemy released their third album, ‘Streets In The Sky’, last week. It went to number nine, which isn’t bad.

Especially in a week when they were up against BRITs Critics Choice winner Emeli Sande, The Bee Gees the week that Robin Gibb died, American mega-success fun., and ‘The Voice’ judge Tom Jones, all over whom charted higher than The Enemy. Throw John Mayer, Keane and highly regarded blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa into the mix and I’d say The Enemy’s placing was pretty respectable.

It’s no use telling The Enemy’s frontman Tom Clarke that though. He doesn’t care. The charts, he says, are “full of shit”.

Speaking to The Sun ahead of the chart countdown on Sunday, Clarke said: “Kind of whatever to the charts, it’s full of shit anyway. We took time off and we knew we were coming back into a completely different marketplace. It’s the wild west at the moment, it could do anything. The UK music chart at the moment is who’s got the biggest bank. We all know Simon Cowell has, if you’ve got ‘X-Factor’ TV money to put behind it, it’s a bonus”.

He wasn’t even going to listen to Reggie Yates revealing the Official Chart results on Sunday, because what’s the point? “I’m not going to get too excited, I’m just going to see what happens. I’ll look it up on Google or wait for my mum to text me. I’m not sure if I can deal with listening to the rest of the shit just to see where we chart”.

Of course, it would be easier for Clarke to maintain his nonchalant stance over the charts had he not tweeted over and over and over and over and over and over and over again when he discovered last Friday that ‘Streets In The Sky’ was apparently only 3000 sales off the top spot. Just being in the top ten, he said, was “amazing”, but added that it would be great if his fans could “get it to number one and show everyone guitars are alive and well”.

To be fair, I think the news that his record was close to number one even took him by surprise, but when he heard, boy did he make it known. In a series of tweets he excitedly wrote: “I NEVER thought we’d be in this position! But for fuck’s sake, tell all your mates! Go and buy another copy and I’ll come round and press play on your CD player personally! It’s incredible that you lot have got the album so close! Just that final push if you wanna show radio and the charts what you want! Show them that you control the charts not them! Can’t believe we’re SO close, yet it seems so far away!”

Sadly it wasn’t to be, and the number one was snatched from their grasp by Emeli Sande. Guitar music, it seems, would have to wait for another chance to fight its corner. Though I suppose that guitar music fans can take some solace in the fact that a blues album went to number two. Oh, and another blues album was at number four. And Tom Jones’ bluesy new album was just ahead of The Enemy at eight. Come to think of it, fun. are quite guitary. And Ben Howard, Ed Sheeran, The Temper Trap, The Cult, Coldplay, Tenacious D, Slash, Jack White, The Script, and Train all have albums in the top 40. They’re all quite heavy on guitar use.

Apart from them though, The Enemy are basically the only band representing ‘guitar music’ in the UK charts right now. Which is why they didn’t go top, because of all the pop shite.