The latest Top 25 Dance Chart was up a day late this week (oops), but here’s a quick look at the notables.

Britney’s Break the Ice moved up to the #1 spot. I’ve mentioned it before, but she can be as much of a mess as she wants if this is what her producers and handlers manage to come-up with after her day in the studio. Eye Witness feat. Charlene Oliver continues moving up with I’ve Never Been to Me. And Elena leaps-up to #3 with the beautiful but lyrically heart-wrenching Before I Sleep.

It seems there are a number of tracks on the chart that are losing steam at the same time. Ron Perkov, Idina Menzel, OneRepublic, Basshunter and Jesse McCartney among them.

One interesting item here is that Jordin Sparks’ No Air makes a new entry at the very bottom of the chart. This is an anomaly of the approach I use to make these charts (which I’ve written about before and won’t dive into again now). But the bottom line is that other songs have more total plays in the period covered, despite No Air being hot right now and played a lot. This causes a sort of damping effect, but in general, it’s one I’m not disappointed about because it prevents the “flave of the week” effect (songs debuting at #1 or #2 like you see in so many other charts, notably Billboard and BBC Radio 1).

Another anomaly of the approach is that songs that fall off can quickly re-debut with just a few spins, like Filo & Peri who are back at #13. Of course, Anthem is not a new entry at all.

But enough database head scratching. Velvet’s Fix Me, a strong new release from Robbins, popped-in at #12, and Natasha Bedingfield at #21 with her latest. The rest of the new entries have bubbled-up from recent Hot Adds. A few of those are worth mentioning too.

Sam Sparro’s Black and Gold is a strong new track that once again, through a set of superb remixes, brings a non-dance artist into the dance realm. I’d never heard of him, but Sam is apparently a soulful singer-songwriter, and while he currently calls L.A. home, the Brits in particular seem to really be digging him right now. Speaking of the UK… UK-based producers H ‘Two’ O got added with What’s it Gonna Be, an R&B infused gem that’s getting a lot of attention on their home turf.

As usual, you can check it out on my web site, and click to buy tracks if so inclined as well. Enjoy.

This week’s chart is a little early since I will be out of town tomorrow, Friday, the date I normally cut over the new ones.

Before I get into any observations, I should note that I retroactively corrected a track naming error that resulted in Nicole Scherzinger’s track, Baby Love, not getting ranked properly. (Damned typos!) In any case, she would have been #18 last week.

I know I’m obsessing a bit about the chart, but now that it’s been running awhile, I’m fascinated by the results one gets when the chart is basically a data report, the result of a query, and not something I make by hand. Case in point: Filo & Peri hovered around the top position on the chart with Anthem, and then precipitously fell off completely, only to be added back this week as a “new entry.” In looking at the underlying data, it’s high chart position was really due to a huge amount of play frequency back in January, and spotty play since. While I play a lot of gigs each week, I think the fact that I often get new music and play it frequently when it’s new will inevitably cause both huge leaps up and down, and likely will also cause certain tracks to hover around the top and then fall dramatically, as I saw with Filo & Peri.

Call me a data geek. I’m often fascinated by minutia like this.

Anyway, in terms of observations, no surprises that Ron Perkov and Idina Menzel held their same positions this week. In fact, there’s not many surprises at all on the chart, except, perhaps, that Tony Moran and Martha Wash popped-in at #17 with a song that’s actually been out and that I’ve been playing consistently for months. (Another one of those results of basing the chart on play frequency.)

Among the hot adds this week are a few I really like:

• Romanian Elena Baltagan (or just “Elena” according to the record label) makes a strong appearance with Before I Sleep. The available mixes are strong, the vocal is good, and I suspect that this one will end-up being a big hit for Robbins given the range of radio-friendly and DJ-friendly mixes.
• Toby Emerson’s Rapture is a new release from System, and the response has been very favorable. The two club-length remixes are both really hot; one is more general, and the other very much trancey, but I like the production work, and the vocals, on both. System pumps out a lot of music, and I’ve not really embraced all that much of it personally, but this one’s a winner in my book.

Turn it up…

Wes