Usher takes top spot from George.(The Market)

The only Sony album to record a weekly sale of above a quarter of a million in the 21st Century, George Michael's Patience's opening sales tally of 275,000 was achieved thanks to a double whammy of pent-up demand for a new album from Michael since 1999, and the fact its release coincided with Mother's Day gift-buying.

With these two factors not present in the market last week, it understandably lost 66% of its sales thrust, and recorded a second-week sale of a little over 92,000, allowing Usher's Confessions to take the number one slot with more than 6,000 sales to spare. Usher, incidentally, is the sixth solo artist in a row to top the chart in a ram that goes back to 13 December last year, when Will Young dethroned Westlife.

For some reason, groups have struggled all year to make an impression--Guns N' Roses were the only non-solo act in the Top 10 last week, though they are joined in the current Top 10 by NERD.

With the first 13 weeks of 2004 having passed, it is clear that although the singles market is declining more slowly than hitherto, it is still taking a beating. In the January-March period, OCC logged 6,704,437 singles sales, a 15.5% decrease on the same period in 2003. The one bright spot, ironically, is ...