Chase & Status, with some help from Stormzy top the singles chart for a second week. Post Malone has the number one album.

Chase & Status remain at the top of the singles chart, as does Stormzy. Post Malone gets his third number one album.

In the few weeks I have been away, two ancient chart traditions have enjoyed a bit of a revival. First, we have actually seen British artists at the top of the singles chart. Now that I am back, the updates at the start of the week showed that we would either get a second successive week with a British number one, or we would see another one-week chart-topper. Before I went on holiday, the last song to spend just a week at the top was Taylor Swift’s Fortnight which failed to live up to its name.

By Wednesday’s update, Chase & Status with additional input from Stormzy has opened up a healthier lead with their song Backbone. Therefore, by the end of the week, it was no surprise to see them get a second week at number one. The last new song by British artists to spend at least two weeks at the top was Kenya Grace’s Strangers which spent three weeks at number one in October and November last year.

For Chappell Roan, then, the wait for a first number one single goes on. Good Luck Babe moves back up to number two in its twentieth week in the chart. It entered the top forty around the time that this year’s GCSEs started and now returns to its peak position in the week that the results came out. She has a second top ten hit this week as Hot To Go has climbed to new peak of number ten in its tenth week in the top forty.

Billie Eilish is at number three with Birds Of A Feather, and also at number four as the featured artist on Charli XCX’s Guess. Bl3ss and CamrinWatsin are at number five with Kisses, a highly irritating song by people with irritating names. The irritating names include the featured artist bbyclose.

Fifty years ago Stephanie de Sykes had her first hit single Born With A Smile On My Face. She was the mother of Toby Slater whose band Catch had a hit with the glorious song Bing. Sadly, Tobey died in 2021 at the age of just 42. What has all this got to do with this week’s chart, you may ask. The answer is that it’s another of my rambling pieces about similar song titles as Die With A Smile is a new entry at number seven for Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars. Both Gaga and Mars were frequent visitors for around a decade up to 2018. Gaga was last in the top ten in 2020 with Rain On Me. Mars’ last top ten hit was Finesse in 2018.

Back to the mid-seventies again now. For those of us of a certain age, Sailor Song is more likely to mean Glass Of Champagne or Girls Girls Girls (another triple epizeuxis). For younger people, Sailor Song is the title of a new entry at number 35 for Gigi Perez.

Sailor’s only other hit was One Drink Too Many which, along with Glass Of Champagne leads us to Post Malone and Blake Shelton’s Pour Me A Drink which is a re-entry at number 39.

Anyone following the midweek updates closely will have got a little confused about the contest at the top of the albums chart. Monday’s update showed The Script well ahead and on course for a seventh number one. However, by Wednesday their lead had fallen significantly. Furthermore, their sales figure had gone down by a few thousand. While returned copies do count as a negative sale, it seems unlikely that so many people had hated it so much that they took it back to the shop. It is safe to assume that either the Monday figure or the Wednesday figure was wrong. But which one?

The probable answer to that question is that Monday’s figure was wrong, with The Script’s lead a lot narrower than reported. Yes, that means that Satellites has entered at number two. The number one is Post Malone’s F1-Trillion. It is his third UK number one album following Beerbongs and Bentleys (2018) and Hollywood’s Bleeding (2019).

Taylor Swift is at number three with The Tortured Poets Department. This week she played the eighth and final Wembley show on her current tour, establishing a new record for a solo artist at the stadium. She was joined on stage by Florence Welch and a man who has co-written songs with both Swift and Welch, Jack Antonoff. Swift’s earlier albums have all received sales boosts.

Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess is at number four. Charli XCX’s Brat is at number five.

Lots of names sound much better when spoken by a fluent speaker of the relevant language. Nobody can say Leonardo Di Caprio as well as an Italian can. Similarly, attempts by the English to pronounceLlanelli are invariably bad. The members of Scarlet Rebels, who are based in the Welsh town, can surely say it a lot better. Their album Where The Colours Meet is at number fifteen.

Falling In Reverse get their highest charting album in the UK with Popular Monster at number 29/

Royal Blood’s eponymous debut album returns at number 21 following the release of a tenth anniversary edition.

If Scotland wanted their own version of Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy), they could do a lot worse than picking Hamish Hawk. After all, not many people would record a song called The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion 1973. Hawk’s voice also resembles Hannon’s and his songs are often stories set to music with some whimsical humour thrown in for good measure. Between 2014 and 2023 Hawk released four studio albums with no real success. That makes the appearance of A Firmer Hand at number 22 a very welcome surprise.

Just one last trip back to the mid-1970s. This was, of course, the era of punk. One of the most successful punk bands, including a decent post-punk career, were The Stranglers from the very un-punk Surrey town of Guildford. They are at number 36 with an album recorded on their fiftieth anniversary tour earlier this year.

Finally, many thanks to pochartfreak for his chart commentaries while I was enjoying some French sunshine.