CHARTS ANALYSIS: Nutini - a victory for Scottish men.

Alan Jones

After two weeks at the top of their respective charts, Eminem's Relapse album and Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden's Bonkers single are both toppled this week. Eminem loses his throne to Scottish singer/songwriter Paolo Nutini, while Bonkers is replaced at number one by the very single it toppled, Black Eyed Peas' Boom Boom Pow.

Britain's Got Talent brought in the highest TV audiences since 2004 and a guest appearance on the penultimate night by of the show by its first champion Paul Potts was expected to unleash massive demand for his second album, Passione, sung entirely in Italian. But the album has to settle for a number five debut on sales of 17,921 copies.

Potts' debut album One Chance sold 128,315 copies to enter at number one nearly two years ago, and spent three weeks at the charts summit. Potts was never in with a chance with Passione and was well beaten by someone - Paolo Nutini, the 22-year-old from Paisley whose family is from Tuscany - who is probably more at home with Italian but sings his new album in English.

Nutini's Sunny Side Up shone brightly at retail and debuts at number one on sales of 62,937 copies. It is Nutini's second album, following 2006's These Streets, which debuted at number three on sales of 35,213 and never climbed higher, though it spun off four Top 30 hits and has gone on to sell 1,061,486 copies, including 5,654 last week. Perhaps surprisingly, although groups and female soloists from Scotland have been regular visitors to the top of the album chart, Nutini is the first Scottish male solo artist ever to reach the summit.

Nutini's fast start condemns Daniel Merriweather to a number two debut with his introductory album, Love & War (41,807 sales). Australian Merriweather featured on hits by Mark Ronson and Wiley, before chalking up back-to-back Top 10 hits with Change and Red, the first two singles from Love & War, which is the highest charting album yet on the J Records imprint. Set up by Clive Davis on his return to the Sony BMG camp in 2000, J initially served as a home to his own acts - Alicia Keys and Luther Vandross among them - and its previous highest charting albums were Rod Stewart's Stardust: The Great American Songbook III and Thanks For The Memory: The Great American Songbook IV, number three in 2004 and 2005, respectively.

Last week's number one, Relapse by Eminem, dips to number three (31,985 sales).