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Four weeks at the top for Adele
Adele gets a fourth week at the top of the singles chart with Easy On Me. Abba top the albums chart with the best first-week sales of the year.

Adele holds on at the top of the singles chart. Abba’s first album for forty years goes to number one.

This week’s chart, as last week, featured a close contest in the singles chart but a runaway winner in the albums chart. The differences were that there were only two singles in contention at the top of the chart rather than three, and that a different album destroyed all opposition.

While the number of singles battling it out for supremacy fell from three to two this week, they were both songs that had been involved in last week’s race. As happened last week, Ed Sheeran took an early lead but Adele’s Easy On Me took over later in the week. Last week Sheeran’s new song Overpass Graffiti was the early leader before Shivers took over with Adele taking over by Friday. This time Overpass Graffiti was never in the running. Regardless of the outcome, the one certainty was that the two biggest British singer-songwriters of the day would extend their run at the top of the singles chart to nineteen weeks.

By Wednesday’s update Adele’s lead was beginning to look like it would mean Adele was heading for a fourth week at number one and that is how it ended up. Shivers, then, gets another week at number two.

Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits remains at number three. Overpass Graffiti has already left the top five, making it a flop by his standards. Perhaps the writing is on the underpass wall for his career. Elton John and Dua Lipa are at number four with Cold Heart.

Arrdee gets his fourth top forty (and third top ten) hit of the year with Flowers (Say My Name) at number five. Once again, the video for the song was filmed in his natove Brighton. Once again, the video is the best thing about it.

American rapper Travis Scott has been in the news this week following the tragic deaths of nine people at a festival last weekend (the ninth victim was reported last night). Inevitably, there has been a lot of speculation about what happened but, at the time of writing, speculation is all we really have. Therefore, it would not be appropriate to comment on who, if anyone, should be blamed.

One thing that can be said about Travis Scott is that last Friday proved to be an unfortunate time to release a song called Escape Plan. Nevertheless, it happened and the song is a new entry at number 23, giving him a fourteenth top forty hit.

Just two weeks after featuring on Swedish House mafia’s comeback single Moth To A Flame, The Weeknd turns up again, at number twenty, with a featured artist credit on Post Malone's One Right Now. Regular readers might expect me to say that the presence of The Weeknd makes it one of Post Malone’s best singles. It does, so here goes. The presence of The Weeknd makes it one of Post Malone’s best singles.

Summer Walker and SZA have teamed up to create No Love, a new entry at number 24. Unfortunately, their combined efforts have produced something mind-crushingly dull.

It has been stated many times that most singles artists achieve their greatest success near the start of their career, although there are, of course, plenty of counter-examples. One artist who conforms to that generalisation is Bruno Mars. In the first half of the 2010s he notched up five number one singles but has not returned to the top of the chart since then. His last top forty hit came earlier this year when he reached number 20 with Leave The Door Open, a song which featured Anderso. Paak and Silk Sonic. He has collaborated with the same artists again on Smokin Out The Window (with Silk Sonic as the lead artist), a new entry at number 28.

While Slade made a habit of mis-spelling words in the titles of their songs, at least the songs themselves were fun. The same cannot be said of Sad Girlz Luv Money, the debut hit for Amaarae and Molly. We can only hope that its week at number 29 is its one and only week in the chart.

Arcraze’s Spotify biography is not exactly enlightening. It tells us how old he is, 26 (unless he has had a birthday since it was written), and that he is a DJ. It even tells us that he grew up “grinding the DJ circuit across the country” without telling us which country that is. Judging by his forthcoming live dates, I’m guessing he’s American. This week he makes his UK chart debut at number 36 with Do It To It. It features Cherish whose original version of the song was in the charts in 2006.

Sam Fender’s Seventeen Going Under is a welcome re-entry at number 22, its highest position to date.

As stated at the start of this commentary, there was nothing remotely resembling a race at the top of the albums chart. From the moment it was announced that Abba’s comeback would feature a whole album rather than just a couple new songs, it was fairly obvious that, unless the songs released before the album were utterly atrocious, the Swedish band (with one Norwegian) would be heading to the top of the chart. Even a release date one week after a new Ed Sheeran set was unlikely to stop them getting their tenth number one album. And so it has proved, in spectacular fashion.

It was no surprise last week when Ed Sheeran’s = notched up the largest first-week sales figure of the year so far. By Tuesday, Abba had not only surpassed Ed Sheeran’s first-week sales, they had sold more copies than =’s total sales in its first week-and-a-half. The only question that remained was whether they would managed to break through the 200,000 barrier. To put that figure in context, only two albums have accumulated total sales of 200,000+ so far this year. Abba were in with a chance of reaching that figure in a single week. Furthermore, most of that figure was made up of actual sales rather than stream-equivalent sales. When the final figures were revealed, they had indeed made it with sales of around 204,000.

Abba’s last album, The Visitors, was released in 1981. At that time, Mrs Thatcher had been Prime Minister for just two-and-a-half years, we only had three television channels to choose from ()Channel 4’s launch was still a year away) and even laptops were the stuff of science fiction with the idea of a smart phone being pure fantasy. All the initial sales of the album were on vinyl and cassette; the CD was introduced in 1982.

Only seven acts have had more number one albums than Abba. Just two, Elvis Presley and The Beatles, have spent longer at the top of the albums chart than Abba’s 58 weeks.

Ed Sheeran’s = falls to number two after just one week at the top. While his sales for the week are a lot lower than last week’s figure, it is worth pointing out that this week’s figure would have been high enough to top the chart in most weeks this year.

Any casual observer of the music scene asked to name the most successful X Factor winners would probably name Leona Lewis, Little Mix, maybe Alexandra Burke and, perhaps, various acts such as JLS and One Direction who didn’t actually win. It is less likely that they would name James Arthur. Nevertheless, he has three top two albums and seven top ten singles to his name and this week sees his fourth album, It’ll All Make Sense In The End enter at number three. Meanwhile, Lewis and Burke have almost disappeared.

After achieving modest success with their first two albums Pablo Honey and The Bends, Radiohead became major stars with their first number one, OK Computer. That, of course, increased the pressure on them to come up with an equally successful follow-up. However, never one to be conventional, Thom Yorke spent the next three years writing songs that nobody could describe as commercial. While the two resultant albums, Kid A and Amnesia, both went to number one, neither of them produced hit singles as memorable as Paranoid Android or Street Spirit (Fade Out). The two albums have now been reissued under the collective title Kid A Mnesia and they land at number four.

As mentioned above, Summer Walker has a new single in the top forty. It comes from her new album, Still Over It, which enters at number five.

By the time Abba achieved their breakthrough by winning the Eurovision Song Contest in the magnificent Brighton Dome, Diana Ross was already roughly a decade into her chart career, first as a member of the Supremes and latterly as a solo artist. The group had their first UK hit with Where Did Our Love Go (later to be covered brilliantly by Soft Cell on their Tainted Love single) in 1964 before topping the chart later that year with Baby Love.

As a solo artist Diana Ross had two number one singles, a full fifteen years apart. I’m Still Waiting reached the top in 1971 and Chain Reaction (written by the Bee Gees) got there in 1986. She had been due to fill the “Legends Spot” at last year’s Glastonbury Festival before that event was cancelled. The announcement that she will now be performing at next year’s festival was conveniently timed to coincide with Her 25th studio album Thank You, fifteen years after her last release. The title track was released as a single earlier this year and reached the top forty sales-only chart although it didn’t get anywhere near the main top forty. The album enters at number seven, giving her a first top ten album since 1995.

After dreaming up names for their first six albums, Welsh metal band Bullet For My Valentine couldn’t be bothered this time around so their seventh album is called Bullet For My Valentine. It enters at number thirteen. It is not the only album with Valentine in the name to enter this week. Lindsey Jordan, aka Snail Mail, is at number 35 with her second album Valentine.
Published on: 2021-11-12 by BuzzJack.com Suedehead2 || 2850 Views
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Adele
12 Nov 2021 - 18:22
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