Once the release date of Harry Styles’ new album Kiss All The Time. Disco Occasionally was announced, there was no doubt that this particular Friday the thirteenth would not be unlucky for him. There was no prospect of there being anything resembling a race, just a complete walkover. Let’s leave aside the fact that the people responsible for the title seem to have been determined to make some of us type a supposed sentence that makes no sense.

Just a couple days after Harry Styles released his new album, a concert promoting the album appeared on Netflix. That was convenient, wasn’t it? His choice to dress up like the Ukrainian flag might have helped his sales there, and if that led to reduced sales in Russia, who cares? It was possibly the first live set I have seen that has started and ended with the same song. As that song was the rather brilliant Aperture, I’m not going to complain. Styles used the opportunity to play the album in full before a five-song encore comprising songs from earlier in his solo career. The repeat performance of Aperture formed the second encore.

Overall, the album demonstrates Harry Styles’ welcome willingness to experiment. He has come a long way since his days in One Direction. He has been rewarded with a third number one album. His second solo album Fine Line missed out On its release just before Christmas 2019 it finished behind a Rod Stewart compilation and Stormzy’s new album. It eventually climbed to number two at the beginning of 2021, behind a Taylor Swift album. The new album notched up 183,000 “sales” in its first week, the biggest weekly sales of the year so far. 

Harry Styles’ previous albums have all received a boost. Harry’s House benefits the most and re-enters at number 31.

In the singles chart, Harry Styles inevitably has three songs riding high. In the midweek updates, American Girls was showing as a new entry at number one, but by Wednesday its lead over Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In was a narrow one. A second number one from this album would give Styles his second chart double. Harry’s House was the number one for two weeks while As It Was topped the singles chart.

American Girls held on to finish the week at the top of the chart giving Harry Styles a fourth number one single and a second chart double. Aperture is at number four, one place ahead of another newcomer Ready, Steady, Go!

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In slips to number two after three weeks at number one. Bella Kay’s Iloveitiloveitiloveit is at number three.

Returning to the albums chart, Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving gets a thirteenth week at number two. It has been in the top two since last November. Fleetwood Mac’s compilation 50 Years: Don’t Stop oss at number four. Bruno Mars falls to number five with The Romantic. :asy week’s number one, Gorillaz’ splendid The Mountain, falls to number ten.

Morrissey has long been a controversial figure. From his days in The Smiths he has been passionate about his vegetarianism but alienated some with his comments about omnivores.However, as time has gone on, his comments have become increasingly bizarre and unpleasant. He has compounded that by calling off several dates on his current tour at short notice.

Morrissey’s behaviour has made him a classic case of “Great music, shame about the man”, As the years have passed, an increasing number of people have let their views about the man override their thoughts on his music and their willingness even to listen to any new material. He hasn’t had a number one album for twenty years. This week Make-Up Is A Lie, his fourteenth solo album and the first for six years lands at number three.

Since making their chart debut in 1979, Squeeze have had twelve top forty albums and twelve top forty albums. Coincidentally, they have accumulated a total of 57 weeks in both top forties. They have never had a number one in either chart and their three top ten albums have all been singles compilations. Their new album, Trixies, enters at number fifteen. It is their first album for eight-and-a-half years.

British folk singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy gets her first top forty album with These Frightening Machines at number 21.

Finally, many thanks to popchartfreak for stepping in for me at very short notice last week. I had received some bad news at work which had come as a massive shock. I struggled through the rest of the day at work, but couldn’t face writing a light-hearted chart commentary.

Simon is unable to do the commentary today and this is a shoddy replacement bus service, so there may be errors. Or not!

Brits winner for Song Of The Year Rein Me In gets a post-win boost to hold at one for a 3rd week for Sam Fender and Olivia Dean as it faced strong competition from Alex Warren’s new track Fever Dream. I downloaded both so neither benefitted from my purchase! Alex Warren has to make do with number 3 for now, with Ordinary also going up a few spots and showing no sign of exiting anytime soon. Number 2 and up 2 is Bella Kay and iloveitiloveitiloveit. That’s the song not me commenting, I actually haven’t heard it yet being in New Zealand for a month and all.  Pink Pantheress drops 1 to 4 with Stateside and Olivia Dean is down 3 with So Easy despite dominating the awards on Sunday, but bonus she enters at 19 with yet another track at 19 - The Hardest Part an old track from 2020. 

Bruno Mars is back up 2 with an album boost for I Just Might at 6, as he enters with the more laid-back track Risk It All at 15. Harry Styles did a great performance of Aperture and is rewarded with a Brits boost to 10. I may be biased - OK I am biased - but one week on top is not enough for this fabulous record. Dominic Fike is up to 14 with Babydoll and also has a new entry joining it lower down at 27: White Keys.

Tame Impala rise 4 to 22, almost matching the 2025 peak of 21, and it was sounding fab in an Auckland pub bar last week. Dracula still bites! RAYE joins the theme of the week with another new release joining the existing hit, Nightingale Lane at 20 is quite tastefully nice, following in the tradition of A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square. See Tori Amos for a good version of that one.

Who had Madonna’s 1985 smash number one back in the charts this week at 40? No, me neither, even if Into The Groove is still fab over 40 years on! Tikkety Tokkety or something I expect. Meanwhile Scottish DJ Ewan McVicar debuts Share The House at 38, his 2nd top 40 in 6 years.

Gorillaz debut comfortably at 1 with The Mountain, their 3rd number one from 9 studio albums. Damon Albarn certainly stays busy. The animated band is seeing off a Brits boosted Olivia Dean at 2 and Bruno Mars’ surprisingly low entry at 3 for The Romantic. Given his Gaga and ROSE hits one might have expected more fanbase anticipation. US Singer-songwriter Mitski debuts Nothing’s About To Happen To Me at 4, her 8th album, and PinkPantheress re-enters at 5 with Fancy That for a busy top 5.

Elsewhere K-pop girl group Blackpink debut at 11 with 3rd Mini Album (Deadline) for a 5th charting hit as the Brits Effect pulls in re-entries for Sam Fender at 28 People Watching, Rosalia’ Lux at 37 following a great show stopper on Berghain, and The 1975’s I Like It….etc at 40. That leaves Paul McCartney extending his album career to a whopping Beatles-inclusive 63 years as Man On The Run OST album pops in at 35. I haven’t seen the streaming TV documentary yet. It’s Macca’s 5th hits compilation. 

After completing a marathon journey to the top of the chart last week, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In gets a second week at number one. The song first appeared on Fender’s People Watching album released early last year. Dean was invited to choose a song from the album to sing as a duet. She chose Rein Me In and Fender has been rewarded with his first number one single.

Olivia Dean can also be found at number two with So Easy (To Fall In Love). Pink Pantheress jumps six places to number three with Stateside. It is her second top three single after Boy’s A Liar in 2023. Bella Kay climbs a massive 22 places to number four with Iloveitiloveitiloveit. Sombr’s Homewrecker climbs two places to number five.

As origins of band names go, the story behind the choice of Twenty One Pilots is one of the more bizarre. American playwright Arthur Miller’s All My Sons is based on a true story about am American company which, knowingly, sent defective aircraft to Europe for military use. This resulted in the death of 21 pilots. The band have a new entry at number 23 with Drag Path. By a neat coincidence, a revival of the play is currently being performed in London’s West End.

Drag Path is the only new entry in the chart, but there is also a very welcome re-entry. Charli XCX’s soundtrack for the new Wuthering Heights film falls to number eight this week after a week at number one. The original musical Wuthering Heights, Kate Bush’s brilliant debut single, re-enters at number 40.

In April last year, the music world’s favourite removals firm Mumford And Sons released their first album for seven years. It matched two of its predecessors by going to number one. However, while one of those number ones and the number two album Sigh No More enjoyed lengthy runs in the chart, Rushmere did something that has happened to so many albums in the 2020s. It dropped straight out of the chart the following week. Less than a year later, they have released another album, Prizefighter. It too has gone straight to number one, giving them a fourth chart-topping album. It would not be a surprise if it is nowhere to be seen in next week’s chart.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving remains at number two.

Lovers of coincidences will enjoy the fact that former Little Mix member Leigh-Anne’s debut solo album My Ego Told Me To is at number three. That means that it has matched the albums chart peak achieved by each of her two former bandmates.

So far this year, we have already been reminded of the tenth anniversary of David Bowie’s death. In the rest of 2016 the music world also lost Prince, Greg Lake, Keith Emerson, the whole of promising indie band Viola Beach and , on Christmas Day, George Michael. In the wider world of entertainment, we also lost two brilliantly funny women Victoria Wood and Caroline Aherne. In the USA Debbie Reynolds died just a day after the death of her daughter Carrie Fisher.

George Michael had made his name with Wham, alongside his childhood friend Andrew Ridgeley. When Wham split up Michael pursued a solo career, Ridgeley chose to enjoy the fact that he could do what he liked having with a combination of the money he had already made and ongoing royalties. This includes income from Michael’s Careless Whisper on which he receives a writing credit although there has always been a suspicion that the credit was a characteristic act of generosity by Michael. 

Faith was George Michael’s first solo album. It included the song I Want Your Sex which was banned from radio and television. Broadcasters claimed that the song promoted promiscuity at a time when the government was trying to combat the spread of Aids. Michael gave interviews in which he said that that was the opposite of the message he was trying to convey. Careless Whisper was not on the album as it had already appeared on a Wham album.

Faith has now been made available on vinyl for the first time in many years. The album spent a week at number one when it was first released in 1987 and was last seen in the top forty in 2011 following the release of a remastered edition. This latest reissue sees it back in the chart at number four.

The Official Charts Company (ICC) hasn’t published its albums chart write-up at the time of writing this, but I’m willing to guess that they will describe Hilary Duff as a multihyphenate. As we;; as being a singer and actor, she also hs five books published in her name. While she has enjoyed several top ten albums in her native USA, her achievements in the UK have been rather more modest. Just one of her previous studio albums troubled the top forty. Dignity reached number 25 in 2007. Luck…. Or Something has fared rather better as her first album for eleven years enters at number five. (The OCC’s write-up has just appeared,and the word multihyphenate is nowhere to be seen.)

To accompany the release of an Elvis Presley concert film, there is also an album, EPiC - Elvis Presley in Concert. It enters at number seventeen and is Presley's 96th top forty album. Will his record company find a way of getting that figure up to 100 in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his death next year?

If Baby Keem manages to get 100 top forty albums in the UK, I don't expect to be around to see it. His tally currently stands at one, thanks to Ca$ino entering at number 29.

Olivia Dean battles against herself for the number one single, and against Charli XCX in the albums chart.

There was a close race at the top of the singles chart this week. There was no real doubt that Olivia Dean would be getting her second number one single. The question was whether Sam Fender would get his first.

Back in the days when the singles chart measured physical sales only (because that was all that was available), it was relatively unusual for a single to fall down the chart and then climb back up again. It was even more unusual for a single to yo-yo up and down over a prolonged period. The inclusion of streaming, and the various changes to the rules to try to speed up the chart, has made a yo-yo chart run very common.

One of the clearest examples of the yo-yo phenomenon is Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In which has had seven runs in the top ten since it first entered the upper tier last October. Four of those runs have been just a single week at number ten. The longest run in the top ten started at the beginning of the year and reached seven weeks last week when it climbed to its peak of number five for the third time.

In the midweek updates, Rein Me In was at number one, but with a slender lead over the number two. The opposition came from another Olivia Dean song, So  Easy (To Fall In Love). That song was at number six last week, having peaked at number three. Both songs, then, were heading for new peaks. It was just a matter of which song would get the higher peak. Regardless of which song won, Sam Fender would be able to celebrate a new singles chart high, beating the number three peak achieved by Seventeen Going Under. A win for Rein Me In would also set a new record for the longest time taken for a song to get to number one in a single chart run. Rein Me In’s 36-week path to the top would easily outstrip the relatively swift 19 weeks taken by Ed Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud.

In the end, victory went to Rein Me In which means that Olivia Dean’s second number one is also Sam Fender's first. After waiting two-and-a-half years from his first top 100 to get into the top forty for the first time, he has had another fairly lengthy wait to get a deserved number one. Dean has a third song in the top five as Man I Need, her previous number one, climbs back up to number four.

Zara Larsson’s Lush Life climbs to number three, matching its peak from almost exactly a decade ago. Bad Bunny falls one place to number five with DtMF. He also gets a fourth hit from his current album as Titi Me Pregunto enters at number eighteen. Under the three-song limit Baile Inolvidable drops out to make way for it.

Last week’s number one, Taylor Swift’s Opalite drops to number eight after a week at the top. It just about avoids the fate of Lewis Capaldi’s Pointless which climbed to the top from number fifteen (as Swift did last week) before dropping straight back out of the top ten.

Central Cee’s new single Iceman Freestyle gets off to a great start with a brief clip of Albinoni’s familiar Adagio in D Minor. Sadly, it goes rapidly downhill when Mr Cee’s vocals start. The wait for a song of his that I like goes on. Iceman Freestyle, a title which could have been used for a song about the Winter Olympics, is at number 37 giving Central Cee a 34th top forty single since his 2002 debut.

Sean Paul and Keyshia Cole’s (When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me was a number 31 hit in 2006. Thanks to Tik Tok, it is a re-entry at number 38, Oh joy. After spending the first six weeks of the year in the lower reaches of the top forty Sombr’s Back To Friends dropped out last week. This week it returns at number 40. His Homewrecker enters the top ten at number seven. If it goes no higher, it will be the third of his five top forty hits to peak in that position.

There are two more new entries and a re-entry in the singles chart which will be recorded in the upcoming albums chart section.

While Olivia Dean was almost guaranteed to have the number one single as her main opponent was herself, in the albums chart, the competition came from fellow Briton Charli XCX with her soundtrack for the new Wuthering Heights film. Most soundtrack albums are now consigned to the separate compilations chart (a move that came after soundtrack albums - particularly The Greatest Showman - spent a large part of 2018 at number one) but this qualifies as it is credited to Charli XCX alone.

In musical terms, Wuthering Heights is, of course, mostly associated with the sublime debut single from Kate Bush. When agreeing to do the soundtrack for the new film, it is unlikely that Charli XCX had any illusions that that was likely to change. Still, if she could get the number one album, Wuthering Heights would be arguably the most unusual title of a number one single and album by different artists. On the other hand, if Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving held on, it would match the three-week run by the same album in the first three charts of the year.

In Wednesday’s update Wuthering Heights was still at number one, albeit with a fairly narrow lead over The Art Of Loving. By the end of the week, it held on at the top, thereby denying Olivia Dean a chart double. It is Charli XCX’s third number one album and the first of those three to have a second word in the title.

And those three remaining singles? All three are from Wuthering Heights. Chains Of Love spent a week in the top forty last November. It now returns at a new peak of number seventeen. Dying For You is at number 27. The glorious Always Everywhere is at number 33.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving, then, slips one place to number two. It has spent seven weeks at the top in four separate runs. Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years: Don’t Stop is at number three, one place ahead of another compilation, The Weeknd’s Highlights. Bad Bunny is at number five with Debi Tirar Mas Fotos.

In between releasing Tension and Tension II, Kylie Minogue embarked on a 66-show world tour. A live album, recorded on the tour, was released last September, but was initially only available to stream. The lack of the opportunity to buy the album meant that it failed to enter the chart in the UK. With physical copies now on sale, it enters at number nineteen.

Fred Again’s USB re-enters at number 31 after he performed for four nights at one of my least favourite London venues, Alexandra Palace.Another album about a stick. Noah Kahan’s Stick Season continues to do well.

In October last year Taylor Swift became the first artist to reach number one with a song that had the name Ophelia in its title. Now she has become the first artist to top the chart with a song called Opalite.The song originally reached number two, behind The fate Of Ophelia, and spent eight weeks in the top ten. Last week it was at number fifteen. Its promotion as an official single, along with a vinyl release, sees it climb all the way to the top. It is Swift’s sixth number one single and the second from her latest album.

Dave and Tems slip to number two with Raindance. Readers in Aberdeen (home of the wonderful Annie Lennox) will have been surprised (or confused) when they finally saw some sunshine yesterday afternoon (Thursday) for the first time since 21 January.

Raye drops to number three with Where Is My Husband. This week she was named as one of the headline acts for this year’s Brighton Pride in August. She will appear on the Saturday while Diana Ross will headline Sunday’s show. If Raye has found her husband by then, she can bring him along.

Shane Boose, under the name Sombr, has had three top ten hits from his debut album I Baqerly Know Her, released last August. Now he has already moved on to songs from his next album with the release of Homewrecker. It is a new entry at number fourteen, complete with  its Beach Boys-y beginning and end.

Just two weeks after former members of One Direction topped the singles and albums charts, another former member has landed in the charts. This time it is the turn of Niall Horan who has temed up with Myles Smith to record a song called Drive Safe, sound advice in the rubbish weather we have been having. Each singer has two top ten singles to his name with Smith charting higher than Horan. Their perfectly decent joint venture is at number 27.

Two acts whose age would generally make them unlikely visitors to the singles chart enter at number 37 with a song called Release The Pressure. Forty-two-year-old Harris has been having hits consistently for nearly twenty years, including eleven number ones. Leicester band Kasabian last had a top forty single in 2014. Kasabian seem to have decided that the best way to get back in the singles chart is to play second fiddle to Harris as this sounds far more like a Calvin Harris song than a Kasabian one.

American singer-songwriter Dominic Fike is at number 30 with Babydoll, a song originally released in 2018 before it became a minor (non-top forty) hit in 2023.

There are several re-entries in the chart this week, one of which is covered in the albums chart round-up. Tame Impala’s Dracula, a surprisingly long-lasting hit last year, is back at number 25. Justin Bieber’s Yukon reached number twelve last summer. It is now at number 29.

If he had stuck to the original release date, Robbie Williams would have been celebrating his 52nd birthday today with a record-breaking number one album. As it is, Britpop has already been to number one (two weeks ago) and left the top forty. That means another week at the top for the Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving which has become the “default” number one whenever there are no major releases.

On one Sunday evening every January, tens of millions of Americans spend several hours watching two teams of men in armour playing a glorified version of catch. Most of the time is occupied by adverts with brief interruptions for “action”, but Americans lap it up. While the men in armour have a slightly longer break than the ones for adverts, there is a live musical act. This year, the performer was Puerto Rican Bad Bunny who recently became the first act to win the Grammy award for best album with a release entirely in Spanish.

Donald Trump once described the president of Puerto Rico as terrible for his inadequate response to a natural disaster there. Pity the poor person who had to explain that the president of Puerto Rico at the time was one Donald J Trump. Whether that contributed to Bad Bunny’s antipathy towards Trump, I don’t know. However, it was no surprise that Trump was not a fan of the Superbowl performance.

Because of the lateness of the show, the UK audience for the quasi-sporting event is relatively low. However, the controversial choice of half-time performer generated more than the usual amount of publicity, increasing the gap between the number of people who know about that and those who know the result.

The publicity surrounding Bad Bunny’s performance has had an impact on the UK charts. The now award-winning album Debi Tirar Mas Fotos reached number thirteen in January last year. Now it is back at number two, easily his best position in the UK charts. DtMF, a number 26 hit early last year, returns to the singles chart at number four. Nuevayol is a hit for the first time at number fifteen. As is Baile Inolvidable at number twenty.

J Cole is at number three with The Fall-Off. Cole has said that this will be his final album. However, as he is only 41, he has plenty of time to change his mind. If not, he finishes his career with a fifth top ten album from seven releases. In Monday’s update J Cole was sitting neatly at number 26 with a song called Two Six. Some of us might have hoped he had recorded a song called Six Seven instead. Those people will have been relieved to see the song miss the top forty by the end of the week.

Even if he wasn’t Japanese, the man known as Joji might have decided that his birth name of George Miller didn’t exactly catch the eye. It certainly isn’t a name that would lead to the assumption that he is from eastern Asia. Under his chosen moniker he gets a fourth top forty album this week with the delightfully-titled Piss In The Wind at number six. It matches the peak achieved by the sweeter sounding Nectar in 2020.

Still on names that might mislead people about the origin of the act, the band Ist Ist come from Manchester rather than a German-speaking country. Their first four albums all fell well short of the top forty. The best they managed was number 87 with The Art Of Lying in 2021. Thankfully, their record label has been patient enough to allow them to release a fifth studio album. That patience has paid off as Dagger is a new entry at number 21.

French composer Lorien Testard won awards last year for the music he wrote for the video game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The soundtrack album reached number six in the soundtrack albums chart, but was placed nowhere in the main albums chart. Following a release on vinyl, it lands at number sixteen this week.

The list of famous musicians from Portsmouth is relatively short although the city has at least had a hit single named after it. Roland Orzabal of Tears For Fears comes from there as does former Dr Who composer Murray Gold. It was also the home of the intentionally terrible Portsmouth Sinfonia. The band Crystal Tides were formed in the city eight years ago. This week they make their chart debut with Toothpaste at number 37.

Jamaican-British singer Marnz Malone is at number 36 with Yaqeen.

After a week when it never seemed to stop raining, Dave and Tems climb back to the top of the singles chart with Raindance. The song’s last spell at number one lasted just a single week. Time will tell whether it falls so soon this time.

Raye climbs back up to number two with Where Is My Husband. Djo’s End Of beginning remains at number three. Harry Style’s Aperture drops to number four after a week at the summit. Taylor Swift is at number five with The Fate Of Ophelia. Like last week, all of the top five singles have spent at least a week at number one.

Noah Kahan’s Stick Season was very much a slow burner. It entered the singles chart in October 2023, over a year after it was released. It climbed to number one at the beginning of the following year and stayed there for eight weeks. It stuck around in the top forty for many months.

Since Stick Season, Noah Kahan’s subsequent single releases have had mixed fortunes. Some have been hits while others have been less popular. His latest single, The Great Divide (not a tribute to an Ed Sheeran album) was at number one in Sunday’s initial update. However, by the following day it had already fallen to number five. It finishes the week as a new entry at number ten.

Country music has never been particularly popular in the UK. Even country singers who have scored hit singles here have generally done so with songs that lean some way towards pop. Ella Langley’s Choosin’ Texas, a new entry at number 38, is more like what we expect American country music to sound like. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is a matter of personal taste.

There are four re-entries in the top forty. Three of them were in the top forty recently, but the other is from 2002. Italian production group Milky reached the top ten that year with Just The Way You Are (not the Billy Joel song or a time warp-enhanced version of the Bruno Mars song). Thanks to a new remix, it returns at number 35.

Billy Eilish’s Wildflower is back at number 32. It peaked at number seven in 2024 and was last in the top forty in March 2025. Tate McRae’s Tit For tat is back at number 39 after leaving the top forty last week. Fred Again, Sammy Virji and Reggie’s Talk Of The Town also dropped out last week. This week it returns at number 40.

When Lily Allen’s West End Girl reached the top five last year, it was tempting to predict that it would climb to number one when physical copies were released as it was scheduled for a week lacking in major releases. However, I reckoned without the enduring popularity of Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving. The album received an additional boost when Dean won the Best New Artist award at last weekend’s Grammys ceremony. That boost sees the album reclaim the top spot, bringing its total time at number one up to six weeks.

The success of West End Girl led to tickets for Lily Allen’s tour selling out very quickly, despite some eye-watering prices. Fresh dates added to the tour, including three nights at the London Palladium, also sold out quickly. She narrowly misses out on being able to say that the tour is promoting a number one album as the physical release helps it to return to the chart at number two, matching its peak position last year.

Liverpool band The Molotovs were formed in 2020 by brother and sister Matthew and Issey Cartlidge. Their debut album Wasted On Youth enters at number three. Maybe they will celebrate with a few cocktails tonight.

On one of the occasions I saw Oasis live, they were supported by The La’s who had re-formed not long before. At the time they were known for There She Does and little else. That song had been a hit in 1990, two years after its original release. Not long after their time supporting Oasis, the band split up for a second time and backing vocalist and guitarist John Power went back to Cast., the band having been formed after The La’s split up for the first time. Thirty-odd years later, Cast supported Oasis on their reunion tour. They are the second Liverpool act to enter the top ten as their eighth studio album Yeah Yeah Yeah lands at number eight.

Texan Don Toliver’s first three albums peaked at steadily lower positions. If that trend had continued, his fourth offering would probably have missed the top forty. However, the trend went into reverse and it reached number 27. The reversal in fortune continues in style this week as he bags his first top ten album with Octane at number four.

Despite the lack of any chart history, in either the singles or albums chart, Reading band Only The Poets managed to sell out a gig at the Brixton Academy recently. They have now broken their chart duck by reaching number nine with their debut album And I’d Do It Again.

Cast are not the only band never regarded as particularly cool to have a new album in the charts this week. They were briefly popular as a result of their psychedelic-sounding singles Tattvah and Govinda, but lost any coolness they had when the best-known thing about the band was the fact that singer Crispin Mills was a member of the Mills acting dynasty rather than any of their songs. A Nepo band before the term was invented.

It, therefore, came as something of a surprise when people started to hear songs from Kula Shaker’s new album and found that they were rather good. As a result, Wormslayer is at number thirteen. It is their highest charting album since their second set Peasants, Pigs And Astronauts reached number nine in 1999.

While Status Quo have enjoyed sustained success over many decades, their singer Francis Rossi’s solo career has been less than stellar. That continues this week as The Accidental enters at number 25. He can at least console himself with the fact that it has performed better than his previous solo efforts.

Michael Jackson’s Number Ones collection was released on vinyl for the first time lsat week, coinciding with a new biopic about him. It returns to the top ten at number seven. Chart rules dictate that streams of a song can only contribute towards “sales” of one compilation album. Therefore, The Essential Michael Jackson drops out of the chart from last week’s number ten position.

Phil Collins also returns to the top forty with a hits collection. A coloured vinyl; edition of The Singles was released last week to mark his 75th birthday. The album is at number 37, its first appearance in the top forty for a little over nine years. Last week he reached a total of 800 weeks in the UK albums chart from 20 albums. He has another 479 weeks as a member of Genesis.

As mentioned in last week’s commentary, Harry Styles is the nearest current equivalent to Robbie Williams, someone who started life in a boyband and who has then achieved huge success as a solo artist. Like Williams with Take That, Styles was just sixteen when he became part of One Direction.

Any member of a band who starts a solo career faces a difficult choice. They can continue with songs in a similar style to those released by their band, or they can do something different. As a boyband’s fanbase’s musical taste is likely to change as they get older, the latter route makes a great deal of sense. Even so, the contrast between One Direction’s output and Sign Of The Times, Harry Styles solo debut, was something of a surprise.

Harry Styles has continued to explore different musical styles (sorry), and that continues with his new single Aperture. It uses its near six-minute runtime well, gradually building into a really good song. Not surprisingly, it has gone straight to number one, becoming Styles’ third chart-topping single. Sign Of the Times spent just a week at the top while As It Was had a marathon ten-week run. Time will show whether Aperture comes close to one of those extremes, or sits somewhere in the middle. It is the first song with the word Aperture in its title to reach the UK singles chart.

The release of a new Harry Styles single saved us from a completely static top five. Instead, last week’s top four have all fallen one place. Dave and tens’ Raindance falls to number two after a week at the top. Djo’s End Of Beginning is at number three, one place ahead of Raye’s Where Is My Husband. Taylor Swift, once romantically involved with Harry Styles, is at number five with The Fate Of Ophelia.

It is twenty years since Arctic Monkeys released Whatever You Say I Am That’s What I’m Not. It received rave reviews and became the fastest-selling debut album in British music history, selling over 360,000 copies in its first week. Singer and lead songwriter Alex Turner celebrated his 40th birthday earlier this month, so he has been in the band for over half of his life.

There is currently no news of a new Arctic Monkeys album, but they have released a new single. Opening Night will appear on Help 2, an album to be released on ^ March to raise funds for the War Child charity which works to help children who are affected by war. The first Help album was released in 1995 and featured songs from acts such as Suede, Blur and a band calling themselves Smokin’ Mojo Filters whose members were Paul McCartney, Paul Weller and Noel Gasllagher. The original album was put together so quickly that the CD cover art didn’t have a track listing.

Smokin’ Mojo Filters’ version of the Beatles song Come Together reached the top twenty. Arctic Monkeys have chosen to release an original song and it enters at number sixteen.

Lil Uzi Vert came very close to entering the top forty last week with What You Saying. Instead, it fell just short, leaving us with a grand total of zero new entries. This week, it has climbed into the top forty at number 27.

Louis Tomlinson’s solo career away from One Direction started with two top ten singles, but only one more single has even reached the top forty. He has, however, continued to enjoy success in the albums chart. Faith In The Future (2022) reached number one and he has now done the same with his third solo album, How Did I Get Here. Whether this week’s chart double (the number one single and album being by former members of the same band) is unique, I don’t know. If I had a super-sophisticated database linking people to their former bands, I could find out. Sadly, I don’t have such a database.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving remains at number two. Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years Don’t Stop compilation stops at number five.

The delightfully-named Megadeth (guess what their genre is) released their first album in 1985. They had to wait until the release of their sixteenth studio album in 2022 to reach the top three for the first time. They have now matched it with album number seventeen which has also reached number three. They seem to have run out of inspiration for album titles. This one is called Megadeth.

Callum Beattie was born in Scotland in 1989, some four years after Megadeth released their first album. His first two albums topped the Scottish albums chart, but performed less well in the UK as a whole. A;bum number three has done a lot better. Indi is at number four.

Lebanese-born Mika (aka Michael Penniman) made a big impact with his first hit single, Grace Kelly. He had a few more top ten singles but has never matched the success of that song. Hyperlove, a new entry at number fourteen, is his first appearance in the top twenty for over a decade.

New Rose by The Damned is generally regarded as the first single released by a UK punk band. Even with a cover of Help by The Beatles (linking back to War Child) as the b-side it wasn’t a hit, but it does have its place in UK music history. They did go on to have a number of hit singles, including a fabulous version of Barry Ryan’s Eloise. The follow-up to that was a reissue of New Rose but it only reached number 81. The Damned’s last two albums both reached the top ten. Their thirteenth studio album, Not Like Everybody Else, is at number 23.

Dave’s Raindance entered the top ten last November and was one of the few non-festive songs to remain in the top forty for the whole of December. After climbing to number three last week, it now climbs to the summit to give him a fourth number one single. It also helps Tems, the featured artist, to get her first chart-topping single. Solder readers will remember that the UK experienced a lot of rainfall throughout Rihanna’s ten-week stay at number one with Umbrella. Judging by this week’s weather, Raindance is threatening to repeat the trick.

Djo’s End Of The Beginning slips to number two after a fortnight at the top. Raye’s search for her husband goes on. She climbs to number three in Where Is My Husband’s sixteenth week in the top ten. Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia is at number four. Bruno Mars climbs to number five with I Just Might.

There is a distinct lack of new entries this week, but there is a re=entry for a particularly brilliant song which is over 45 years old. The Cure released Boys Don’t Cry in 1979, but it wasn’t a hit. They had to wait until the following year for A Forest to see them in the top forty for the first time. In 1986, they released a new recording of Boys Don’t Cry. By this time they had become regular visitors to the singles chart and the remix reached number 22. A video accompanied by the song has become popular on TikTok which means that it is back in the chart at number 39.

The week’s other re-entry is a song that entered the chart last summer. Gunna and Burna Boy went on to spend two weeks at number 22 with Wgft before it fell out of the chart along with almost everything else at the end of the year. It is now back in the top forty at number 30.

The story of Robbie Williams’ solo career has been recounted many times. After leaving Take That he reached number two with his first two solo singles in 1996 and ‘97. The next two singles did less well, suggesting that he might struggle to achieve a successful solo career. Indeed, I was able to get a ticket to see him at the 1,700- capacity Southampton Guildhall just a few days before the date of the gig. By the day  itself, it was not a sell-out.

Everything changed for Robbie Williams when he released Angels as a single in December 1997. While it didn’t get to number one, it became a massive hit, spending twelve weeks in the top ten. The host album, Life Thru A Lens, had only reached number eleven and soon left the chart. The success of Angels gave the album a major boost, sending it into the top ten for the first time and, eventually, to number one in April 1998.

Since Life Thru A Lens, Robbie Williams has notched up a further fourteen number one albums, the most recent of which was the Better Man soundtrack last year. That fifteenth number one album saw him draw level with The Beatles as the artist with the most number one albums. At the time, he made no secret of the fact that he wanted to beat the record.

The first reports of Robbie Williams latest album, Britpop, suggested that it was due for release last autumn. The existence of a Taylor Swift release has been suggested as a reason for its delay, although there was never an official autumn release date. Until last week, the album was expected on 6 February, but Williams sprung a surprise by releasing it last Friday (16 January). He has described the album as the one he would have liked to release as his solo debut, and there are certainly strong mid- to late 1990s indie vibes on many tracks. The album has been written without his regular writing partner Guy Chambers. Instead, Williams has collaborated with a number of writers including his former bandmate Gary Barlow and Gaz Coombes of Supergrass.

There was never any real doubt that Robbie Williams would succeed in his aim of getting a record-breaking sixteenth number one album. There was simply no serious opposition to overcome. The artist best placed to take his record is the aforementioned Taylor Swift who has, so far, had fourteen chart-topping albums.

Singer-songwriter Madison Beer’s first two albums both entered the chart at number 28 before dropping straight back out again, never to return. Her third set, Locket, has already outperformed them by entering at number three. Whether this one gets a second week in the chart remains to be seen.

Nathan Evans remains best-known for his unexpected number one single Wellerman in 2021. He now gets his most successful album with Angels’ Share, a collaboration with Saint Phnx Band, at number four. It is at number one in the Scottish Albums Chart.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving falls to number two after spending the last three weeks at the summit. Fleetwood Mac’s 50 Years: Don’t Stop collection is at number five.

As misleading band names go, Sleaford Mods is up (or should it be down) there with the best. They aren’t really a mod band at all. They are at number six with The Demise Of Planet X.

Still on the subject of misleading names, ASAP Rocky doesn’t make rock music, although he has given the writer Official Chart Company’s summary the chance to use their favourite word - multi-hyphenate - again. He is at number eight with Don’t Be Dumb.

Bristolian singer Elles Bailey got to number twelve in 2024 with her seventh album Beneath The Neon Glow. Its predecessor, Shining In The Half Light, was her first album to reach the chart but it fell just short of the top forty. She is now back in the chart with her latest album, Can’t Take My Story Away, at number fourteen.

Following the announcement of a new album and tour, two old Harry Styles albums return to the top forty. The most obvious successor to Robbie Williams as a former boyband member enjoying a hugely successful solo career is at number 32 with Harry’s House and number 37 with Fine Line.

After climbing to the summit last week, Djo gets a second week at number one with End Of Beginning. It is the first song to get a second consecutive week at number one since Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia which topped the chart for four successive weeks last November and December. That song is at number three this week, continuing its annoying habit of finishing the week one place below where it was in the midweek updates.

Dave and Tems move up to number two with Raindance, a song that would sound a lot better if Tems was the sole vocalist. Raye slips to number four with Where Is My Husband. Olivia Dean’s So Easy (To Fall In Love) stays at number five.

While Bruno Mars had two number two hits in 2024 and ‘25 in collaborations with Lady Gaga and Rose, he hasn’t had a solo hit since That’s What I Like in 2017. That isn’t to say he has been idle; he has had several other hits alongside a variety of artists. That ends this week with the arrival of I Just Might at number six. It is the 24th top forty hit for the man born Peter Hernandez in Hawaii forty years ago. 

One of Bruno Mars’ aforementioned number two hits, Lady Gaga collaboration Die With A Smile returns to the chart at number 28. His 2012 number two hit Locked Out Of Heaven is back at number 36. His 2010 album Doo-Wop and Hooligans re-enters the chart at number 31.

American singer-songwriter Zach Bryan had two top forty hits in 2024, including one that had originally charted the previous year. Now he is back, at number 29, with Plastic Cigarette.There have been a few top forty singles with the word cigarettes in the title, most famously Oasis’s Cigarettes and alcohol but this is the first with just a single gasper in the title.

The Land Of The Midnight Sun is a term usually used for the area within the Arctic Circle which has constant daylight for part of the summer. That means that the release of Zara Larsson’s single Midnight Sun last June made some sense. However, it has taken until now (when people in that part of the world haven’t seen daylight for a while) for it to be a hit. It is a new entry at number 39.

On Saturday 13 December 2003, I was part of the audience for Suede’s final gig before they split up. The 27-song set proved to be an emotional occasion for many of those attending. Elsewhere in London on the same night, Blue played to an audience of adoring fans. The following year, they announced that they were going on hiatus.

Waelier in 2003, Blue had their third number one album in three releases with Guilty. The hiatus for both Suede and Blue lasted for a similar time. Suede re-formed in 2010, initially to play a benefit concert for the Teenage Cancer Trust, but they have stayed together ever since. Blue re-formed the following year in order to represent the UK at the Eurovision Song Contest.

Blue’s first three albums after re-forming performed fairly modestly in the charts. However, their latest set, Reflections, has done rather better. It was at number one in the midweek updates, albeit with a fairly narrow lead. A string of promotional events and the availability of umpteen versions of each physical format made them definite contenders for the top spot at the end of the week. 

In the end, though, they didn’t quite make it. Reflections enters at number two, still their best showing since re-forming. There is still no sign of Blue collaborating with Pink to form Notso Deep Purple.

Blue’s narrow miss means that Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving gets a third consecutive week at number one. The last album to spend three consecutive weeks at the top was Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl in October last year.

As well as getting his third top forty single this week, Zach Bryan also gets a third top forty album. The two earlier releases peaked at numbers sixteen and 22. With Heaven On Top easily outperforms them both by entering at number three.

Indie band The Cribs also get a new albums chart peak, although in their case they have had to wait 25 years to reach the top five for the first time. Selling A Vibe is at number five. It is at number one in the vinyl albums chart.

South London band Dry Cleaning are particularly notable for the fact that vocalist Florence Shaw speaks most of the lyrics rather than singing. Their debut album New Long Leg (not about cricket) deservedly reached the top five in 2021 but, sadly, the next release Stumpwork, also not about cricket, fell just short of the top ten. This week they have fallen just short of the top ten again as Secret Love enters at number twelve.

The Kid Laroi (born with the posher-sounding name Charlton Howard) included the word Love in the title of a mixtape that reached the top forty albums chart. Thankfully, I can quote the title of his latest album, Before I Forget, in full. It enters at number 22.

American rock band Alter Bridge reached the top ten with each of their last five studio albums. That run comes to an abrupt end this week as their latest set, unimaginatively titled Alter Bridge, can only get to number twenty.

After missing out on a return to the top spot last week by a mere 500 “sales”, Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia made another attempt to get an eighth week at number one. In the four weeks since the song fell from the top, there has been a new number one each week although that included two non-consecutive weeks for Wham’s Last Christmas. 

However, Taylor Swift faced opposition from Djo’s End Of Everything. There are a lot of Stranger Things=related songs in the chart this week (more on that later), but the highest doesn’t actually appear in the show. Joseph Kerry is an actor in the show but released End Of Beginning under the name Djo as a separate project. The song reached number four last March in a seven-week run in the top ten. It returned to the top ten last week and this week it climbs to a very top to give the 33-year-old his first number one single with a song first released in September 2022.

Taylor Swift, therefore, has another week in the runner-up spot with The Fate Of Ophelia.

Raye’s Where Is My Husband falls to number three after completing a thirteen-week climb to the summit last week. 

Dave and Tems are at number four with Raindance. Two more songs about rain will be along later. Olivia Dean’s So Easy (To Fall In Love) is down one place to number five. She is also at number six with Sam Fender collaboration Rein Me In and at seven with Man I Need.

Thanks to his presence on YouTube and elsewhere James Marriott has two top twenty albums to his name, including a number one with Don’t Tell The Dog last year. He now has his first hit single with California Rain at number 22. 

Apple Music describes Katseye as some sort of cross between K-Pop, the Spice Girls and Pussycat Dolls. That isn’t exactly a description that inspires me but, in the interests of fairness, I have listened to Internet Girl. While I wouldn’t exactly go out of my way to hear it again, I did at least get to the end of the song that is a new entry at number 24. It is the first top forty hit to include the word internet in the title.

Sienna Spiro enters at number 37 with You Stole The Show, following her top ten hit last year with Die On This Hill. It sounds like an attempt at an Amy Winehouse song, with an inferior voice and without the same songwriting talent. A chart showing the progress of Sienna Spiro’s singles is known as a Spirograph.

The highest entry into the chart was last in the top forty in 2016 following the death of Prince. Purple Rain jumped back in at number six, beating its original 1984 peak by two places. Thanks to Stranger Things, it is the second rain-related song to enter this week and it lands at number twelve. It was played in all its nine-minute glory on the Radio 1 Chart Show in 2016, but they omitted it this week.

Every Breath You Take became The Police’s fifth number one single in 1983. I was to be their final chart-topper; indeed, they only had one more top ten single. It entered the lower reaches of the chart after the first batch of the final series of Stranger Things was released in October. Now it crashes back into the top forty at number seventeen.

Fleetwood Mac’s singles chart history is a rather odd one for one of the biggest acts of the last 50-60 years. Albatross is one of their best-known tracks and remains their only number one. However, other well-known songs by them have done rather less well. Go Your Own Way and Don’t Stop both reached the top 40 without advancing into the top 30. Dreams did make the top 30 but Rhiannon din’t even get into the top 40. The Chain was never released as a single but has made the lower reaches of the charts since the addition of streaming. That chart history gets another twist this week with the arrival at number twenty of Landslide from their eponymous album released in 1975. Stranger  Things has helped one of the bands lesser-known songs get to number twenty.

Some good news regarding Stranger Things is still to come but first it’s time for some standard eighties disco dross. Diana Ross made her name in the 1960s as part of The Supremes who had classic hits with songs such as Where Did Our Love Go and Stop In The Name Of Love. The Supremes were then rebranded as Diana Ross and The Supremes before Ross left to pursue a solo career. Her willingness to embrace various musical styles of the day meant that her singles chart career extended into the 1980s. I wasn’t a fan of her collaborations with Chic but they were one of the biggest acts of the day and they gave her a number of hits including Upside Down. The song reached number two in 1980 and it is back in the top forty this week at number 26.

Ten years ago tomorrow (10 January) David Bowie died after being diagnosed with cancer. As he had chosen to keep his condition private, the news came as a huge shock to the music world. In a clear sign that his music lives on, he is back in the top forty this week. Peter Gabriel's excellent version of Bowie’s classic song Heroes was used in earlier series of Stranger Things, but the original version was used over the credits of the final episode which was released last week. Bowie’s version therefore makes a welcome return to the top forty at number 34. It reached number 24 in 1977 before reaching a new peak of number twelve immediately after Bowie’s death. It is back this week at number 34. His Legacy compilation returns to the albums chart at number 30.

The final Stranger Things-related song in the chart is the wonderful Should I Stay Or Should I Go by The Clash. The band emerged in 1977 as part of the punk wave of the period. While much of their later material veered towards reggae in style, Should I Stay Or Should I Go  still owed a lot to their punk roots. The song was first released as part of a double A-side with Straight To Hell in 1982 when it reached number seventeen. The song was reissued in its own right in 1991 after its use in a jeans commercial and it spent two weeks at number one. Now it is a hit for a third time, re-entering the chart at number 40.

The two Stranger Things tracks in last week’s chart both climb. Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now climbs two places to number 27. Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill also climbs two places, to number fourteen.

As mentioned last week, we are now in a very quiet period for new album releases which leaves the way open for older albums to grab a week or two at the top. Last week Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving took advantage and it remains at number one this week, giving it a total of four weeks at the summit.

Sabrina Carpenter is still at number two with Man’s Best Friend. In the week that Fleetwood Mac get their eleventh top twenty hit single, their 50 Years - Don’t Stop collection, released in 2018. reaches a new high of number three. Taylor Swift falls to number four with Life Of A Showgirl. The Weeknd’s Highlights compilation is at number five.

There are no new entries this week.

The Christmas period has been a problem for the Official Charts Company (OCC) since streaming was included in the calculations for the chart. This became more pronounced when they introduced the Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR) whereby the value of a song’s streams was downgraded if streams were declining for three weeks and the song had been in the chart for ten weeks. Because streamers started listening mostly to Christmas songs, almost all other songs saw their streaming figures decline.

Songs on ACR that experience a substantial increase in streams, relative to the market, can be reset to the standard ratio. However, that would apply to all Christmas songs so the OCC introduced a rule that all songs over three years old were on ACR permanently (with some exceptions which we will come to later). However, this still meant that songs in the chart towards the end of the year were treated unfairly simply because of the dominance of Christmas songs.

The OCC had a number of options to tackle this. Doing nothing would arguably have deterred record companies from releasing singles at a time when they would be adversely affected by the rules, so that was not an attractive option. They could have suspended the ACR rule in December which would have allowed more non-Christmas songs to remain in the chart in that month. They chose an alternative approach, resetting all songs that went on to ACR in December to the standard ratio in January. That seemed like a reasonable compromise. Applying the normal rules (only resetting songs that had significantly outperformed the market) would have meant that very few songs would be reset. Again, that would have deterred record companies from releasing songs for several weeks in the autumn.

That long ramble explains why many songs that dropped out of the chart in December have returned to the top forty while songs that dropped out before then remain outside.

Raye’s Where Is My Husband had dropped out of the top forty, to number 48  last week when the number of Christmas songs peaked. This week she rebounds all the way to number one to grab her second chart-topping single after Escapism almost exactly three years ago.

The chart published immediately after Christmas did, as ever, include a handful of non-Christmas songs. Among them was Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia which just about clung on at number 40. This week it climbs all the way back to number two.

Taylor Swift almost set a record that can never be broken by getting the biggest rise within the top forty. However, there is still an opportunity to climb from the bottom position to the top. Maybe after next Christmas In 2011 Adele’s Someone Like You climbed back up to number one from number 47 after a stunning performance at the Brit Awards ceremony, a climb now beaten by Raye. Other songs have climbed from a lower position, but generally because copies were sold before the official release date.

Dave and Tems climb to number three with Raindance. 

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean are at number five with Rein Me In. The song first entered the top ten in July 2025. Since then it has remained in the top forty, one of the few survivors of the Christmas onslaught. However, it has spent most of that time outside the top ten. This week is the seventh time the song has entered the top ten, a record for a song in a single chart run. Thanks to Jimwatts at Buzzjack for that information. Dean is on her own at number four with So Easy (To Fall In Love).

As well as all the re-entries there are four new entries. Two of them are songs that were performing relatively strongly in December. For the last two weeks they have been two of the highest placed non-Christmas songs which hadn’t yet made the top forty. The first comes from South African singer-songwriter Tyla whose choice of song title, Chanel, may - or may not - be a desperate plea for some freebies. If so, she has raised her sights since her debut hit Water in 2023. Chanel is a new entry at number fifteen.

Kato’s Turn The Lights Off came very close to being a new entry in the Christmas chart before falling back last week. This week, it climbs into the top forty at number 33. It marks a top forty debut for the Danish producer and for Jon, whoever he is. The song was originally released in 2010 when it failed to chart.

While the concept of choosing a new track as a single from an already-released album is somewhat outdated in the streaming era, it can still do enough to promote a song sufficiently to get it into the chart. Such is the case with Sabrina Carpenter’s Such A Funny Way  from her Man’s Best Friend album. This week it enters the chart for the first time at number 37. It is still behind her former number one Manchild which re-enters at number 36.

After having a number two hit in 2022 with Boy’s A Liar, Pinkpantheress has struggled to achieve consistent success. She had two top forty hits last year, but neither of them advanced into the top twenty. She is now having another go with Stateside which is a new entry at number 40.

Among the notable re-entries is Alex Warren’s Ordinary at number thirteen. It spent thirteen weeks at number one last year and was named as the biggest song of the year last week. It had a record run of 39 weeks in the top twenty before being forced out by festive songs. Because it went on to ACR many months before December, its streams are still being counted at the harsher conversion rate.

Sonny Fodera, DOD and Poppy Baskcomb reached number 30 in November with Think About Us. Now that most of the Christmas songs are gone, it is back at number 24. EsDeeKid’s 4 Raws also hits a new peak by re-entering at number 23. The rather ludicrous rumours that the Liverpudlian rapper was actually American actor Timothee Chalamet should have been consigned to the bin this week with their apparent joint appearance to perform together.

While debate continues over whether AI-generated songs should be allowed to qualify for the chart Haven and Kaitlin Aragon’s I Run enters the top ten for the first time at number ten.

Four of the Christmas songs in last week’s chart have survived for another week. The highest placed is Wham’s last Christmas which topped the chart again last week. It is now down to number 21.

And so to the exception to the three-year rule. While this was largely done to downplay the impact of Christmas songs (that worked well, didn’t it?), it could be seen as unfair to songs that saw an increase in streams for other reasons. The most glaring example, and the one that led the OCC to change their rules, was Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill. The increase in streams for the song after it was used in Netflix drama Stranger Things would have been enough to see it go to number one in 2022. This was so obviously absurd that the OCC changed the rules so that older songs could be reset in certain circumstances. As a result, the song deservedly topped the chart the following week. The same rule change has allowed a reset for Tiffany’s I Think We’re Alone Now. The song spent three wells at number one in 1988. Almost four decades on, it is at number 29.

Running Up That Hill returned to the chart last year when the final season of Stranger Things (or, rather, the first batch thereof) was released. It is back at number sixteen. I’ve never seen Stranger Things, but anything that gets Kate Bush back in the chart has at least something going for it.

The turn of the year has always been a quiet period for album releases, and this year is no exception. The release schedule for the rest of the month is fairly thin. This means that new entries will be very limited for the next few weeks, and that the chart will often be topped by an album from last year.

The first beneficiary is Olivia Dean, one of the biggest stars of 2025. At the beginning of the year, she had one hit single to her name, dating from 2021. She had a top five album in 2023 but it had no long-term impact on the chart. By the end of 2025, she had notched up a further four top forty singles, all of them reaching the top ten. One of them, Man I Need spent a week at number one. Therefore, by the time she released her second album, The Art Of Loving, in September expectations were high. It duly went to number one and spent the rest of the year in the top five, including a further week at the top in December. It is now back for a third week at the summit.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is at number two. Taylor Swift is still at number three with The Life Of A Showgirl. The top five is completed by two hits collections, from Fleetwood Mac at number four and The Weeknd at five.

Michael Buble’s Christmas album is still in the top forty, at number 29.

Over the festive period, Channel 5 showed a programme attempting to compare Abba and Queen. The concept was rather odd and the choice of criteria totally arbitrary, but it was still an entertaining programme. This week Abba Gold climbs to number twelve and Queen’s Greatest Hits is up to number 30.

The race for the Christmsa number one this year was complicated by the way streaming platforms report their figures. The updates on Monday and Wednesday both showed Kylie Minogue’s Xmas with a clear lead over Wham’s Last Christmas. However, it wasn’t as simple as that.

The sales for Kylie Minogue’s single were from a combination of multiple physical formats and streams. However, those streams came from one platform only, and it just happened to be the only one which seems to have worked out how to report its figures in a timely manner. Therefore, all of the streams for Xmas were included, but only some of those for Last Christmas. In the final chart, Thursday’s streams for most platforms are estimated based on streams over the previous six days. This means that Last Christmas would benefit from a boost which might be enough to keep it at the top of the chart.

In the end, Kylie Minogue held off Wham’s challenge to get her eight number one single, a full 22 years after her seventh (Slow) and nearly 38 years after her first (I Should Be So Lucky). It is also her first Christmas number one and she is the first female artist to have a number one single in each of four decades. Cliff Richard is the only artist to have had number one singles in five different decades.

Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You (with the last two words being stretched to approximately 27 syllables) is at number three. Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree stays at number four. The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl (who died 25 years ago this week) are at number six with the ever-brilliant Fairytale Of New York.

A reference to the length of the credit for I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday has become an annual event in my commentaries. This week Nai Barghouti, Leigh-Anne, Neneh Cherry & Together For Palestine feat. Amena, Bastille, Brian Eno, Celeste, Kieran Brunt, Lana Lubany, London Community Gospel Choir, Mabel, Nadine Shah, Sura Abdo, TYSON, Yasmeen Ayyashi & Ysee outdo Wizzard and co by a long way with Lullaby.

Lullaby is based on a Palestinian song with some additional English-language parts written by Peter Gabriel who has been working with musicians from around the world for decades. It has been released to highlight the plight of Palestinians living in Gaza and to raise funds for charities working in the area. It enters at number five.

Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody is the highest festive re-entry at number 36. Leona Lewis’s One More Sleep is back at number 38.

In 1973 Pink Floyd released Dark Side Of The Moon. While it didn’t quite make it to number one (thanks to the inclusion of compilation albums in the chart), it was a huge hit and made the band one of the biggest acts of the time. Their problem, as with any act that has a massively successful album, was how to follow it up. For a band that had stopped releasing singles, thereby missing out on some of the pre-release promotion that most albums by major acts enjoy, they made their task even more difficult. 

Two years after Pink Floyd released Dark Side Of The Moon, they delivered Wish You Were Here, an album every bit as good as its predecessor. It entered at number three before climbing to the top the following week. To mark its half-century, a new deluxe edition has been released. It includes demos (including instrumental versions), a version of the title track featuring jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, a 1975 live concert and other extras. Deluxe editions of Dark Side Of The Moon have failed to put right a historic wrong by topping the chart, but the Wish You Were Here release has returned the band to number one. They top the chart at Christmas for the first time since Another Brick In The Wall (Part II) was the Christmas number one single in 1979.

The number of brand new albums entering the chart this week is a big fat zero. This is nothing new for the Christmas chart. Even in the days when physical copies were either the only way of listening to an album or the dominant method, there were very few major releases in December. There are, however, some other reissues and compilations as well as Wish You Were Here.

Wish You Were Here is Pink Floyd’s second number one album of 2025, following a live album earlier in the year. The 50-year gap between the album’s first run at the top and the latest is a new record, beating the previous one set by The Beatles’ Abbey Road.

Olivi Dean’s The Art Of Loving is at number two. Taylor Swift is at number three with The Life Of A Showgirl. Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is at number five.

Last week, I posed the question of whether Kylie Minogue's Christmas album might prevent Michael Buble’s festive collection topping the chart once again. I got it wrong in two ways. Minogue’s album has tumbled to number 29 while Buble is at number four. 

The year 2025 has been the one that finally saw Oasis reunite for a series of live gigs. As well as the proceeds from the tour, the band has benefitted from an increase in sales of their albums. Someone at their record company seems to have decided that this would be a good time to exploit the increase in interest by releasing another anniversary edition. This time, it is not a reissue of a studio album, but a new edition of the (What’s The Story) Morning Glory Singles Collection. The original version contained the singles from the band’s second album along with b-sides and a live recording of Live Forever. This new edition also includes some demos and live recordings from the mid-1990s. The original version got to number 24. The reissue, released only as a 7” vinyl box-set, is one place higher. The original album re-enters the top ten at number ten.

Oasis have stated that they will not be performing any live shows next year. They have not yet said whether they will do any in 2027. There is no Glastonbury Festival next year. It will return in 2027. Whether those facts are related remains to be seen.

As in previous years, there will be no Suedehead Chart Commentary next week. The next commentary will be posted on Friday 2 January when there will be a flood of re-entries to replace the Christmas songs.

Happy Christmas 

Nadolig Llawen

Feliĉan Kristnaskon

Joyeux Noel 

Fröhe Weinachten

Hyvää Joulua 

Häid Jõule 

Nollaig Shona 

Su Kalėdomis 

Feliz Navidad

Vesel Božič

Весела Коледа

Crăciun fericit

Καλή Χριστούγεννα

Счастливые Рождество

Linksmų Kalėdų

Wesołych Świąt

Boldog Karácsonyt

Vrolijk Kerstfeest

Nadelik Lowen

щасливого Різдва

عيد ميلاد مجيد

聖誕快樂

One of the consequences of the singles chart being dominated by streams, specifically songs from playlists, is that the same songs dominate the chart every December. One of those songs is, of course, Wham’s Last Christmas which climbs to number one for the fifth time this week. Its first two runs at the top lasted for just one week but it has spent rather longer there for the last two years. Thus, this is its tenth week at the top in total. For many years, Last Christmas was the UK’s best-selling single not to have reached number one, having been beaten by Do They Know It’s Christmas in 1984. Now it is threatening the granddaddy of all chart records - the total of eighteen weeks at number one accumulated by Frankie Laine’s I Believe way back in 1953. At its current rate it could surpass that total next year or in 2027.

The first old Christmas song to top the chart thanks to streams was Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You. Like Last Christmas, it didn’t top the chart first time round. In 1994 it was beaten by East 17’s Stay Another Day. It finally got to the top in 2020, just a few weeks before Last Christmas made it. It returned to number one two years later. This week it climbs to number three.

One of the clearest beneficiaries of the American dominance of streaming playlists is Brenda Lee's Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree. It reached number six in 1962. After downloads was included in the chart it spent time in the very lower reaches of the chart as British buyers continued largely to ignore it. It didn’t reach the top forty until 2017 (three years after streams were first included), but has now become a regular visitor to the top ten. It climbs to number four this week, matching its peak reached in 2022 and ‘24. Oh, and a belated Happy Birthday to Brenda Lee who was 81 on Thursday (11 December).

Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath The Tree, which only reached number 30 when it was released in 2013, climbs to number five, a new peak. The one non-Christmas song in the top five is Raye’s Where Is My Husband at number two.

A combination of the dominance of Christmas songs and the fact that it has gone on to the Accelerated Chart  Ratio (ACR), whereby the value of its streams are halved, sees Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia slump from the top of the chart to number seventeen. It is worth noting that the Christmas songs are also subject to ACR.

There is a new Christmas song amidst all the oldies, albeit just sneaking in at number 40. Gwen Stefani gets her first top forty hit since summer 2007 with Shake The Snow Globe. 

This is the week when I go to a commentary from last year so that I can copy and paste the credits for a particular Christmas song. Yes, Wizzard featuring Vocal backing By The Suedettes Plus The Stockland Green Bilateral School Choir With Additional Noises By Miss Snob And Class 3C with their 1973 offering I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day is a re-entry at number 32.

Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree may be over 60 years old, but at least it is possible to understand people of all ages enjoying listening to it. It is rather harder to believe that significant numbers of people are actively selecting some of the other songs that enter the chart every year. Included in this week’s batch of re-entries are Dean Martin’s Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It  Snow at number 22 and Nat ‘King’ Cole’s version of The Christmas Song at 39.

Kylie Minogue released her seasonal Kylie Christmas album in 2012. It peaked at number twelve. Now, on its tenth anniversary, there is a new version available. Special CD and vinyl versions are not released until today (Friday), but it has been streamed in enough numbers for it to enter at number one. Could this be the album that keeps Michael Buble off the top in the Christmas chart, at least for one year? This week that album is at number five. Kylie Christmas is her eleventh number one album, 27 years after her first.

Sam Fender’s People Watching re-entered the top forty last week, on the day that a new deluxe version was released. That new version helps the album to climb to number three.

Olivia Dean is at number two with The Art Of Loving. Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl is at number four.

There are no fewer than three live albums entering the chart this week, all of them recorded relatively recently. The most recent is also the highest-placed. After a highly successful 2023, Olivia Rodrigo was chosen as one of the headliners for this year’s Glastonbury Festival. She delivered a highly-praised set which is now available as an album. It enters this week at number twelve.

In 1993 Depeche Mode released Songs Of Faith And Devotion Live, a live version of their chart-topping Songs Of Faith And Devotion which had been released earlier that year. Now they have done the same with their Memento Mori album, released in 22023 when it reached number two. Memento Mori - Mexico City is at number 22.

Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds’ live album is also based on a recent studio album. Wild God reached the top five last year. Live God is at number 33.

Rotherham band The Reytons are at number 27 with Roll The Dice. Their last three albums all entered the top five with What’s Rock ‘n’ Roll going to number one in 2023.

Radiohead’s European tour is currently underway. Their classic OK Computer album is back in the chart at number 40. It spent two weeks at number one when it was released in 1997 and spent its first fifteen weeks in the top ten.

Taylor Swift spends a fourth consecutive week at number one with The Fate Of Ophelia. It has now spent a total of seven weeks at the summit, making it Swift’s longest-running chart-topping single.

Raye remains at number two with Where Is My Husband. A clear sign that Taylor Swift may well be in her last week at the top (at least until next year) is that Wham’s Last Christmas is at number three with Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You at five. Brenda Lee is at number six with Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree.

With the release of the first part of the final series of Stranger Things, some people have clearly gone back to watch the previous series. That, in turn, has led them to start streaming Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill again. That excellent judgement sees the song back in the chart at number 37.

Still on the subject of Stranger Things, Djo - who, apparently is in it - has a re-entry at number 34 with End Of Beginning. It reached number four last year.

Those two songs are, of course, not the only re-entries this week. Yes, there is a whole bunch of Christmas songs returning to the chart as well. One of the consequences of the Christmas takeover is that Alex Warren’s Ordinary has dropped out of the top twenty for the first time after 42 weeks.

Before we get to those re-entries, there is actually one brand new entry. As usual, one of the streaming sites has a song that is only available on their site. This year it is Xmas by Australian singer Kylie Minogue. Isn’t it great to see new artists being given a boost? Well, it would be if that happened. As it is, Minogue gets her 54th top forty hit with a new entry at number 24. Last week’s Christmas exclusive, Laufey’s version of Winter Wonderland re-enters at number eighteen, gaining a new peak now that it is available more widely.

Here we go then. I shall simply list this week’s festive re-entries.

Step Into Christmas - Elton John, number twenty.

Do They Know It’s Christmas - Band Aid, 22.

Andy Williams - It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year, 23.

Wonderful Christmastime - Paul McCartney, 25.

Sleigh Ride - The Ronettes, 28.

It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas, Michael Buble, 29.

Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) - Darlene Love, 31.

Snowman - Sia, 32.

Feliz Navidad - Jose Feliciano, 33.

Happy Christmas (War Is Over) - John Lennon, Yoko Ono and the Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir, 34.

Mistletoe - Justin Bieber, 36.

Holly Jolly Christmas - Michael Buble, 38.

Driving Home For Christmas - Chris Rea, 40.

Over half of the top forty is now made up of Christmas songs.

As the albums market enters a quiet period with very few new releases, Olivia Dean returns to number one with The Art Of Loving.

Taylor Swift is at number two with The Life Of A Showgirl. Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is at number three and Tate McRae is at five with So Close To What. The album preventing another all female top five is Michael Buble’s perennial; Christmas album at number four.

Since the release of her last full studio album in 2014, Jessie J has had a very traumatic time. She has suffered a miscarriage, been diagnosed with a disease affecting her hearing, and been treated for breast cancer. On a much happier note, she has also given birth to her first child. All these events have influenced the lyrics of her fourth album Don’t Tease Me With A Good Time. Her previous studio albums all reached the top five - a Christmas album in 2018 failed to reach the chart at all. This one is a new entry at number nineteen.

As far as new entries go, that’s it for this week. We can expect a similar pattern until the new year. There are, however, some re-entries. Teddy Swims is at number 25 with I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy - The Complete Edition. It reached number thirteen in the summer. Chappell Roan is back at number 29 with The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess. Sam Fender’s People Watching returned at number 34 while Fontaines DC’s brilliant 2024 album Romance is at 37.

Next Friday (12 December) is the day of my departmental Christmas meal. Therefore, next week’s commentary may be delayed until Saturday. Alternatively, I could just repost my commentary from the same week last year and see whether anyone notices!

Taylor Swift gets a sixth week at number one with The Fate Of Ophelia. Swift has now spent a total of sixteen weeks at the top of the singles chart. Combined with her 36 weeks atop the albums chart, she has now accumulated a combined total of 52 weeks (one year) at number one in the two main UK charts. Only ten artists have spent more weeks at number one. Of those ten, only two - The Beatles and Elvis Presley - have spent at least a year at the top of each chart. When Ed Sheeran spends another week at number one in the albums chart, he will become the third act to top both charts for a year. Thanks to Colin (a Buzzjack and Haven member) for that information.

Raye’s Where Is My Husband is still at number two. Her best hope of getting to number one may now come in the New Year when all the Christmas songs drop out. Two Olivia Dean songs each climb one place. So Easy (To Fall In Love) is at number three and Man I Need is at four. She is also at number five alongside Sam Fender with Rein Me In. As she is credited second on Rein Me In, it doesn’t count towards her limit of three songs. As a result, Let Alone The One You Love is allowed to enter at number 21.

Korean band Stray Kids get their third top forty hit with Do It at number 35. Neither of their two previous top forty hits has advanced further than number 30. This unlikely to outdo that any time this year, if ever.

The background to Haven’s I Run was chronicled here a few weeks ago. It looked set to be a high new entry, but was excluded from the final chart. The issues which caused it to be disqualified have now been resolved and, with an additional credit for Kaitlin Aragon, it is at number 37. 

Time for another film spot. This week we have three new entries from the soundtrack to the latest Wicked film, all of them with Cynthia Erivo as the lead artist. For Good, which includes Ariana Grande, is at number fourteen, three places ahead of No Good Deed on which Erivo is the sole credited artist. She is joined on As Long As You’re Mine by Jonathan Bailey, not previously known for his singing talents.

Tate McRae has two new entries to join Tit For tat which falls to number nineteen. Nobody’s Girl is at number sixteen and Anything But Love is at 25.

It may still be November, but we already have the second “festive update” of the year. Wham’s Last Christmas is at number nine  while Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas is You is at number thirteen.

Then, of course, there is a batch of re-entries. Once again, they show the influence of American-curated streaming playlists on what many people listen to. Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath The Tree is at number 24, one place behind Brenda Lee's Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree which entered the top forty last week. Ariana Grande is at number 28 with her version of Santa Tell Me. Jingle Bell Rock by Bobby Helms is at number34.

Some British and Irish Christmas songs have also made it. The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl are at number 33 with the ever-brilliant Fairytaler Of New York. Shakin’ Stevens rather less good merry Christmas Everyone is at number 40. Oh, and Michale Buble’s Christmasis at number 24 in the albums chart.

Rock band Aerosmith made their UK chart debut in 1986 when their Walk This Way, a collaboration with Run DMC made the top ten. They entered the albums chart for the first time the following year. They have had fourteen top forty albums, but none of them have gone all the way to the top.

Yungblud wasn’t even born until 1997 when he was given the name Dominic Harrison. He made his chart debut in 2019 when The Underrated Youth reached the top ten in the albums chart. He had his first top forty single the following year with Obey, a collaboration with Bring Me The Horizon. The next three albums all topped the chart, including Idols earlier this year.

That history makes a collaboration between Aerosmith and Yungblud seem a relatively logical development. It has happened and the result, One More Time, is at number one.

In interviews he has given to promote his latest album, Olly Murs has lamented that his background as a former talent show contestant means that he hasn’t been taken seriously by the music industry. There may be some element of truth in that, but singers such as Harry Styles have thrived following their talent show career. Perhaps Murs has found it more difficult to get out of that shadow because his television success came after several years trying to make a breakthrough. Knees Up is Murs’ eighth album and it enters at number five.

Two Greatest Hits sets enter the top ten. Madness made their chart debut in 1979 and had a string of hits in the 1980s. They have released a number of compilations, two of which topped the chart. Their only studio album to reach number one was Theatre Of The Absurd Presents C’est La Vie just two years ago. The latest compilation, Hit Parade, is at number eight.

James were formed in Manchester in 1982 but didn’t achieve any significant chart success until 1990. They went on to become one of the most successful bands of the 1990s. They too have released a number of compilations with the most recent (apart from a collection of their earlier recordings) being Fresh As A Daisy in 2007. The new release, Nothing But Love - The Definitive Best Of is at number six.

Two more of the biggest bands of the 1990s were The Stone Roses, another Manchester band, and Primal Scream. Much of the Stone Roses’ success was down to the distinctive bass lines played by Gary Mounfield, known as Mani, who died last week. He joined Primal Scream after The Stone Roses split up. The Stone Roses’ debut album was not an instant success. It didn’t enter the chart at all until two months after its release in June 1994 and that was at a rather unimpressive number 82. It reached the top forty for a single week three years after its release but didn’t reach the top ten until its twentieth anniversary. Nevertheless, it is widely regarded as one of the best debut albums of all-time. Unsurprisingly, it is back in the chart at number 25 this week. The Stone Roses only released two studio albums, but there have been six compilations. One of those, The Very Best of The Stone Roses is at number 37.

In 1995, ITV showed Anthology, a documentary series about The Beatles. It featured interviews with all three surviving band members (John Lennon had been assassinated fifteen years earlier) who acknowledged that the series should perhaps have been made earlier. However, they had spent far too long suing each other. Three albums were released to accompany the series and they each reached the top five. Now, the series is being reshown on a streaming service with an additional episode and an additional album. Anthology 4 is at number nine with The Anthology Collection (all four albums) twenty places lower.The albums include recordings of Lennon and McCartney’s first band The Quarrymen, remastered recordings, BBC sessions and a whole lot more.

British DJ and producer Sub Focus gets his first top ten album with Contact at number ten.

There was another close battle at the top of the singles chart. In Wednesday's update Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia had a lead of under 300 over Golden by HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast. This week they were joined by Raye’s Where Is My Husband. That was a few thousand behind, but the song had a physical release this week. It was unclear how many of those physical sales had been included in the update.

By Friday, the top three were in the same order as on Wednesday. Therefore, Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia gets a fifth non-consecutive week at number one. If it holds on next week it will equal Anti-Hero as her longest-running chart-topper.

Golden spends another week at number two while Raye is still searching for her husband at number three.

Olivia Dean still has two songs in the top five, but they have swapped places. So Easy (To Fall In Love) is now at number four with Man I Need one place below.

As well as the KPop Demon Hunters, we now have a second set of songs by an animated band, albeit only one of them in the top forty. Hazbin Hotel is an animated comedy musical show aimed at an adult audience, it says here. The first series didn’t provide any top forty entries but this week we have one from the second series. Just like the KPop stuff, these songs come with a long credit, albeit shorter than the upcoming cast list on Wizzard’s perennial hit. The cheerful Love In A Bottle, by Keith David, Lilli Cooper, Kimiko Glenn, Krystina Alabado, Sam Haft & Andrew Underberg is at number 29.

In the week that news came that there is to be a film based around Charli XCX’s Brat album, Ms XCX herself has a new entry with Chains Of Love at number 26, comfortably one of her best chart hits. It is the second top forty hit with that title following one by Erasure in 1988. Other charting chains include Diana Ross’s Chain Reaction and Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue) by W.A.S.P.

That leads, rather unfortunately, to the title of Lewis Capaldi’s fourteenth top forty hit, The Day That I Die. Sorry. His previous single, Almost, didn’t quite make the top forty. This one is at number 27.

I’ve been delaying it for as long as possible, but the time has now come to announce that the same old Christmas songs have started to enter the top forty. Leading the way, as for the last few years are Mariah Carey and Wham. Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You is at number 22. It now has notched up 102 weeks in the top forty, so will reach the two-year mark at the beginning of December. Wham’s Last Christmas, back at number nineteen, has been in the top forty for 90 weeks. That is on target to get to 100 weeks in December next year.

There is one more festive song to mention. Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree is at number 38. At 80 (she will be 81 next month), Lee is the oldest person in this week’s chart.

Here in Brighton on Wednesday we had a little over 5 seconds of winter when it snowed briefly. That coincided with the first week on sale for Australian band 5 Seconds Of Summer’s sixth studio album Everyone’s A Star! Their first three albums all reached number one but the next two fell just short, both peaking at number two. Their new album gives them a fourth number one.

The summer theme continues at number thirteen in the shape of Summer Walker’s Finally Over It. It follows Over It and Still Over It. Maybe the next one will be called Really, Really Over It, Honestly.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving is at number two. Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl falls two places to number three.

The enduring popularity of D Block Europe continues to baffle many people. Their new album PTSD 2 is at number four. Readers can make their own jokes about the appropriateness of the title.

Time for a second mention of Brighton this week. Celeste spent her childhood in a village on the outskirts of the city and was educated at a school where I used to work. She is at number twelve with Woman Of Faces.

When a company launches a new brand with the intention of selling it worldwide, they generally go to great lengths to avoid a name that might cause difficulties in certain countries. Nathan Feuerstein clearly didn’t do his homework before dividing to use his initials as his stage name. He is at number fourteen with Fear.

That leads me nicely into the next new entry as the excellent There Goes The Fear, one of the highlights of their live shows, is one of the tracks on a new Doves compilation, So Here We Are: Best Of Doves. I still find it puzzling that Greatest Hits sets are still a thing, but they are so here we are. It is at number seventeen.

There are two anniversary editions in this week’s new entries. Songs From The Big Chair was Tears For Fears’ second album, released in February 1985. Several months late, there is now a fortieth anniversary edition. The album, which includes Shout and Everybody Wants To Rule The World, originally reached number two. The reissue is at number twenty.

The Rolling Stones reissue is several months early. Black And Blue, the band’s thirteenth studio album, was released in April 1976 but the fiftieth anniversary edition is here already. Like Songs From The Big Chair, this album also peaked at number two. The new edition is at number 40.

There was a close battle for the number one single this week between the two songs that have topped the chart for thirteen of the last fifteen weeks - Taylor Swift’s The Fate Of Ophelia and Golden by HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast. In Monday’s update Swift was ahead by just over 100 copies. By Wednesday she had extended her lead to around 1,000 chart sales.

By the end of the week Taylor Swift was still in front, so The Fate Of Ophelia returns to the top after two weeks behind Golden. That song slips back to number two.

Haven is an example of how acts can become successful while there is still very little known about him. The British producer, born Harrison Walker, has nearly four million listeners on Spotify, but the site has no biographical information for him. However, his single I Run has become popular enough for it to have been riding high in the chart in Wednesday's update. However, it is nowhere to be seen in the final top 100 chart published on Friday. It has to be assumed that it has been disqualified for some reason.

Spanish singer Rosalia has a strong following in her home country, but has yet to have a major hit in the UK. That may be about to change with the arrival of the rather wonderful Berghain in the top forty at number 36. It features the very distinctive vocals of Bjorl, who makes her first top forty appearance for twenty years, as well as a brief vocal contribution from Yves Tumor who makes his UK chart debut. The string section hasn’t been granted a credit.

Fred Again gets his second top forty hit of the year with Talk Of The Town at number 22. While it is not as good as the Pretenders song of the same name, it is still decent enough. It features Sammy Virji who had a chart hit earlier this year with Cops And Robbers.

Sonny Fodera had one top forty hit in 2023 and then two in 2024. Unless he has a surprise Christmas song ready for release, he is unlikely to make it three in 2025. At least the arrival of Think About Us at number 33 means he hasn’t slipped back to one top forty hit in a calendar year. The song features D.O.D and the splendidly-named Poppy Baskcomb.

The quality of this week’s new entries is relatively high, but there is an exception. Digga D’s DPMO, a new entry at number 31 is that exception.

When Goo Goo Dolls released Iris as a single in 1998 it was only a minor hit, missing the top forty. A year later, it did reach the top forty, but only for one week. It returned to the lower reaches of the chart several times, but only became a major hit in 2011 when it was featured on a talent show and it went to number three. It continues to notch up further weeks in the top 100 and has now become one of those songs which is almost always in the chart until the Christmas songs arrive. This week it returns to the top forty at number 39.

There are three other re-entries. Panic not, there aren’t any Christmas songs among them. Chappell Roan’s Pink Pony Club is at number 35. Sabrina Carpenter=s Manchild is back at number 38 and Ravyn Lenae’s Love Me Not returns at number 40.

On 31 October 1975 Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody as  a single. The general consensus was that they were mad. It was too long and, with its frequent changes of style, confusing. One prominent radio DJ believed in it. Kenny Everett, who had more say on what was played on his Capital Radio weekend show than weekday daytime DJs, loved it and played it, in full, regularly.

Most people at the time would have thought that Bohemian Rhapsody would do well to spend one week at number nine. In fact, it spent nine weeks at number one and sold a million copies. After Freddie Mercury died in 1991, a reissue spent another five weeks at the top of the chart, again selling a million copies. It is the only single to sell one million copies with two separate releases. 

In the half-a-century since it was released Bohemian Rhapsody has continued to sound unlike almost anything else. To mark its 50th anniversary, a new physical edition of the song has been released - yes, singles can get anniversary editions as well. It was number one last week in the singles sales chart, the physical singles chart and the vinyl singles chart.

As well as returning to the top of the singles chart, Taylor Swift does the same in the albums chart with Life Of A Showgirl. It may be the first time that an artist has had two separate runs with a chart double with the same pairing of song and album.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving climbs back up to number two. Lily Allen’s West End Girl falls one place to number three while Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is at number five.

As well as getting her second top forty single, Rosalia also has a big hit album on her hands. Lux is a new entry at number five which means that all of the top five albums are by female solo artists. Lux is the highest-charting album by a female Spanish singer.

To accompany a book about Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles band Wings, the man himself has overseen the compilation of a new Best Of album, simply titled Wings. Inevitably it includes Mull Of Kintyre, but it also includes far better songs such as Band On The Run, Bond theme Live And Let Die and Jet. It enters at number twelve.

Last weekend I was thinking about what to say about the new White Lies album. I was preparing for a disappointing chart position which I thought I might need to attribute to it sounding “just like any other White Lies album”. Then I listened to it, and was relieved to hear that it had far more variety than I was expecting.

Unfortunately, the other part of my prediction was all too accurate. In Monday’s update Night Light was just outside the top ten. That made it certain that it would be the band’s lowest charting album by the time Friday’s chart was published. Thankfully, it did at least hold on to a top forty place and it ends the week at number 29.

Paramore singer Hayley Williams is at number ten with her third solo album Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party.

I have in the past been critical of artists who have released a deluxe version of an album shortly after the original release. For consistency, I can’t exclude acts I like, so Jaker Bugg needs to spend some time on the naughty step. The new edition of his 2024 album A Modern Day Distraction is at number 37.

After climbing back to the top of the singles chart last week HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast get another week at number one with Golden. This brings its total number of weeks at the summit to ten. However, it is still not the longest-running number one of the year. That title is still held by ASlex Warren’s Ordinary which had a total of 13 weeks at the top. That song is in the top twenty for a 39th week, climbing two places to number fourteen. In the separate Streaming Chart, it has been in the top ten since March, apart from one week when it fell to number sixteen, behind the tracks fro, Taylor Swift’s album. It spent twenty of those weeks at number one.

Taylor Swift remains at number two with The Fate Of Ophelia and at number four with Opalite. In between the two Taylor Swift songs, as last week, is Raye’s Where Is My Husband. The only change in the top five is that Olivia Dean’s Man I Need climbs back up one place to number five. Dean also has a new entry at number 22 with A Couple Minutes, bringing her 2025 tally up to eight top forty singles.

There are many singles whose chart peak is lower than many music fans assume. One particularly extreme example is Bryan Adams’ Summer Of ‘69 which has never reached the top forty. For all its ubiquity, The Killers’ Mr Brightside has only spent one week in the top ten, at number ten. That is also its only week in the top twenty.

Similarly, one of Michael Jackson’s best-known songs, Thriller, also peaked at number ten although its initial chart run did include an additional eight weeks in the top twenty. It gained another top twenty week after Jackson’s death in 2009, but the predominance of streaming in the chart calculations means that it is now a regular visitor to the chart around Hallowe’en. This year, Hallowe’en was on a Thursday but it seems that many people chose to celebrate it over the weekend. As a result, Thriller climbs to a new peak of number nine.

Three other old songs re-enter the top forty. Ray Parker Jr’s theme song from the film Ghostbusters is at number seventeen, two places ahead of Rockwell’s Somebody’s Watching Me which features Michael Jackson on backing vocals. Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett gets his annual outing in the top forty with Monster Mash at number twenty.

We will soon reach the time of year when the influence that Christmas playlists on streaming sites have on the charts becomes an issue. Warning - Mariah Carey entered the top 100 this week. Now, the same thing is starting to happen around Hallowe'en. Whatever happened to Bonfire Night? The return of songs like Thriller to the chart is one thing, but now we are starting to see the appearance of random songs most people have never heard of.

Andrew Gold is best known for his marvellous 1977 hit Lonely Boy. Almost half-a-century later, and fourteen years after Gold died, he gets a fourth top forty hit with Spooky Scary Skeletons at number 30. Danny Elfman’s This Is Hallowe’en, from the 1993 film The Nightmare Before Christmas, reached number fourteen last year, but just missed out on a top forty place last year. This year it is back at number 31.

Rapper EsDeeKid is at number 40 with Century, a song that thankfully lasts a good deal less time than that. His other current hit Phantom hasn’t got a Hallowe’en boost; it stays at number 28. Presumably its title hasn’t got it added to any seasonal playlists yet.

Florence + The Machine’s fabulous debut album Lungs was, for some time, an exceptionally unlucky album in chart terms. It spent its first five weeks at number two behind a Michael Jasckson compilation in the immediate aftermath of Jackson’s death. After spending another week in the runner-up spot in January 2010, it finally ascended to the summit the following week and stayed there for two weeks. Three of the following four studio albums also went to number one.

Three years after Dance Fever, Florence + The Machine released their sixth studio album Everybody Scream, appropriately enough on Hallowe’en. It was written after Florence Welch suffered a serious miscarriage, threatening her own life. As a result, she has described the songs as her most personal songs to date. The album, another great offering, is this week’s number one.

Lily Allen’s West End Girl continues to be one of the most talked about albums of the year. The exposure sees it climb two places this week to number two. The three songs that entered the singles chart last week have all climbed. Pussy Palace climbs four places to number eight, giving her a first top ten single for fourteen years. The title track climbs to number fifteen with Madeline one place behind.

Taylor Swift remains at number three with The Life Of A Showgirl. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving climbs one place to number four.

The timing of the release of Cat Burns’ second studio album How To Be Human has been rather fortunate. It came near the end of a period where she has been on television every week on one of the most-watched shows for many years. Her reward is a number five start, completing an all-female top five (for vocalists at least).

Manchester band The Charlatans made their name thanks, in large part, to the distinctive keyboard skills of Rob Collins. When he was killed in a road accident shortly before the band had finished recording their fifth studio album Tellin’ Stories, many people assumed that that would be the end of the band. Just a few weeks after his death, the band were due to support Oasis at Knebworth. They chose to go ahead with Martin Duffy from Primal Scream replacing Collins. Tony Rogers then became the permanent replacement.

Last week The Charlatans released We Are Love, their fourteenth studio album, after a gap of eight years. It was recorded at the same studio as Tellin’s Stories, the first time the band had returned there since Collins’ death. It enters at number eight making it the ban’d eleventh top ten album.

In their 30+ years together, Radiohead have only released two live albums. I Might Be Wrong came out in 2001 and reached number 23 in the chart. Now they have released Hail To The Thief, a collection of live recordings of their 2003 album of the same name. The original release gave them a fourth number one album. This version is at number twelve.

The week’s “Does hat it says on the tin” award goes to an outfit calling themselves The Rock Orchestra. Their album Classics Volume 1 includes versions of Zombie, Paint It Black and Stairway To Heaven. It is a new entry at number fourteen.

Bob Dylan continues to release his Bootleg series. Volume 18, Through The Open Window, enters at number 28 to give him a 57th top forty album, winning him the Heinz Award. The album is made up of some of his earliest live recordings dating back as far as 1959.

Liverpudlian Sophie Morgan Howarth, recording as Luvcat, is at number 31 with Vicious Delicious.

There are two new editions of old albums in this week’s new entries. The Who released their eighth studio album Who Are You in 1978 when it reached number six. A Super Deluxe Edition enters at number 34. Their legendary drummer Keith Moon died just a few weeks after the original release.

K T Tunstall’s Eye To The Telescope joins the list of albums whose “Anniversary” edition is released in the wrong year. The album was released in 2004, but the 20th Anniversary Edition has only just landed. It is at number 35.

After three weeks topping the singles and albums charts, Taylor Swift has been toppled from the summit of both of them. Her successor in the singles chart is not exactly new. It is the song toppled by Olivia Dean the week before Swift took over. The third run at the top for Golden by HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast brings its total up to nine weeks at the top.

Taylor Swift's The Fate Of Ophelia slips to number two, one place ahead of Raye’s Where Is My Husband. Raye had her car stolen last year. This week it was found, complete with the songbooks left in it. The loss of those songbooks had led to the postponement of her second album. She is now in a much better position to work on that project. Swift is also at number four with Opalite.

There are three new entries from each of two new albums this week, so it makes sense to talk about both charts together for a while.

The multihyphenate is back! The Official Charts Company used the term to describe Dave in their write-up of Wednesday’s midweek update. As per normal, they are being a little generous. He is a rapper who has done a bit of acting. Alternatively, he is a part-time actor who is also a very successful rapper. 

After modest success with an EP, Dave’s first two full-length albums topped the chart - Psychodrama in 2019 and We’re All Alone In This Together in 2021. Now, after a four-year absence, he has completed a hat-trick with The Boy Who Played The Harp. For the record, there is a harpist on three of the tracks, but she is a woman.

The highest of the three tracks from the album in the singles chart is Raindance, which features Tems, at number five. History, featuring James Blake, is at nine giving Blake a first top ten single credit fifteen years after his only other top forty single. Chapter 16, with added Kano, is at number eleven.

Albums whose songs are largely influenced by the break-up of a relationship are not exactly unusual. However, the lyrics are generally relatively subtle. Lily Allen has chosen to eschew that approach with her new album West End Girl, her first for over seven years. The lyrics are full of outright contempt for her former husband. Oh, hang on. I don’t want to be sued. She doesn’t name anyone, but the assumption is that it is about her former spouse who I won’t name - not that I’d heard of him until this album was released.

Lily Allen does depart from the central theme on one track. At least I assume that Pussy Palace is about a luxury home for stray cats (not to be confused with Brian Seltzer’s band). That song is at number twelve in the singles chart. The title track is at number seventeen and Madeline is at number nineteen. She has now had sixteen top twenty singles. The album itself is at number four. It doesn’t yet have a physical release - the album was written and recorded very quickly, not leaving enough time for CDs and vinyls to be pressed. A physical release is likely to give it a new lease of life, perhaps taking it to number one if it happens in a quiet week. It should certainly beat the one week in the top forty managed by its immediate predecessor.

After my comments on the charting tracks from Taylor Swift’s album a few weeks ago, it is worth acknowledging that only one of the tracks from each of Dave and Lily Allen’s releases are among the three opening tracks.

Returning to the singles chart, there is one more new entry to report. Skye Newman gets her third top forty hit of the year at number eighteen with FU & UF, which I think stands for Fed Up and Under Fire. She made her chart debut earlier this year with Hairdresser and followed it up with the number five hit Family Matters which has returned at number 25..

Today is Hallowe’en which means that people have been streaming songs associated with the supernatural. Today’s streams will, of course, count towards next week’s chart which may mean some of them are in that chart. In this week’s top forty we have Michael Jackson’s classic song Thriller at number 33.

Alex Warren’s Ordinary remains in the top twenty for a 38th successive week. It breaks the record set way back in 1962 by Mr ‘Acker’ Bilk’s Stranger On The Shore. That song does still hold the record for an instrumental.

Taylor Swift’s The Life Of A Showgirl slips to number three in the albums chart. Olivia Dean is at number five with The Art Of Loving.

Bon Jovi last week joined the list of acts shameless enough to release a deluxe edition of an album only a year or so after the original release. Forever reached number three when it was released in June last year. It now gets a second week in the top forty, at number two.

Last week’s commentary contained an oblique reference to a 1970s Elton John album, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player.. This week’s has a rather more direct reference to another 1970s Elton John album. It is a sign of his longevity that it is now half-a-century since he released his ninth studio album Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy. By stalling at number two it brought an end to a run of three successive number one albums, beginning with the aforementioned Don’t Shoot Me.

In 2005, to mark the 30th anniversary of the album, Elton John played most of the album live in a series of concerts in the US. Some of those performances are included on this new edition, along with a number of demos. The 50th anniversary edition is at number 24.

Elton John had a number one album earlier this year in collaboration with Brandi Carlile. She gets her first top forty solo album at number 30 with Returning To Myself.

Bruce Springsteen recorded his sixth studio album Nebraska in a bedroom at home. The intention was to add backing from the E Street band as usual, but that didn’t happen. He released the original recordings in September 1981 and the album spent two weeks in the top ten. The follow-up, Born In The USA, was his first really big hit album in the UK.

Earlier this month, a film based on the recording of the album, Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, was released. Naturally his record company has seized the opportunity to release a new edition of the album, complete with “the Electric Nebraska recordings” and a live performance of the  album in full. This release is at number fourteen.

This still isn’t the end of the anniversary editions. Pulp released their fifth studio album Different Class in October 1995. Only one of their four previous albums had charted at all. Different Class went to number one and spent 23 of its first 25 chart weeks in the top ten. It won the Mercury Prize and is considered to be one of the defining albums of the Britpop era. Its third track, Common People, was the song that took them from being moderately successful to one of the biggest bands of the day. That and Jarvis Cocker’s overblown charisma. The reissue is at number 38.

Birmingham based The Clause make their chart debut at number nineteen with Victim Of A Casual Thing. It really is the epitome of a curate’s egg album for me. Some of the tracks are really good while others are decidedly mediocre. It is at number one in the Independent Albums Chart.

Sigrid is at number twelve with There’s Always More That I Could Say. Skye Newman’s EP SE9 Part 1 is at number nineteen. Twenty-one-year-old Guildfordian Henry Moodie makes his chart debut at number 31 with Mood Swings.

After topping both the singles and albums charts for the last two weeks, Taylor Swift started the week looking to perform the double for a third successive week. The midweek updates indicated that she would succeed in getting a third week at number one in the singles chart with The Fate Of Ophelia, but the albums chart was a different matter. Of her four previous number one singles, only Anti-Hero has spent longer at the top. Swift’s Opalite falls to number five this week.

HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast’s Golden is still at number three. Olivia Dean’s Man I Need remains at number two. Ray’s Where Is My Husband is at number four.

The top ten comprises three Taylor Swift songs, four featuring Olivia Dean and two from the KPop Demon Hunters film. Oh, and one song by Raye.

The reason Olivia Dean is able to feature on four songs in the chart, given that there is a three-song limit per artist, is that only the first named artist counts (although an exception has been made for the KPop Demon Hunters Cast). She takes second billing on her duet with Sam Fender, Rein Me In. Earlier this week Fender’s People watching album was awarded the Mercury Music Prize . That has led to Rein Me In climbing back in to the top ten at number ten.

Sam Fender’s Mercury Prize win has led to another duet entering the chart. His guest on Talk To You, a new entry at number twenty, is Elton John who gets his 71st top forty single, albeit this time as a piano player rather than as a vocalist. Don’t shoot him for it. His first hit, Your Song, was released in January 1970, 24 years before Fender was born. The album’s title track, People Watching is a re-entry at number 28. It reached number four last November.

As mentioned above, the KPop Demon Hunters cast are being counted as the lead artist on songs from the film, even though they are named last on the lengthy credits. As happened last week, one such song leaves the chart this week to be replaced by another. The replacement this week is What It Sounds Like which is credited to HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast , the same as Golden. What It Sounds Like is at number thirteen. What does it sound like? Surprisingly, it’s actually OK.

George Miller’s name doesn’t exactly sound like that of someone born in the Japanese city of Osaka. His chosen moniker Joji sounds a lot more like that of a Far Eastern artist. He gets his third top forty single this week with Pixelated Kisses at number 37. It is, unsurprisingly, the first song with any form of the word pixel in its title.

Just two weeks after getting his first top forty single, Kevin Parker, better known as Tame Impala, gets his second. My Own Way is a new entry at number 39, the position occupied by Dracula last week. That song jumps eighteen places to number 21.

Myles Smith re-enters t number 38 with Stay (If You Wanna Dance). Ed Sheeran’s Sapphire is a re-entry at number 40, two weeks after it slipped out.

I opened this week’s commentary by saying that Taylor Swift faced some stiff opposition at the top of the albums chart. The midweek updates suggested that she would be deprived of a third week at number one (for now at least) by Last Dinner Party’s From The Pyre. Their debut album Prelude To Ecstasy topped the chart and was nominated for the 2024 Mercury Prize. Had Swift’s release date been announced further in advance (it was only made public in August), perhaps the record company would have chosen to release From The Pyre at a different time.Sadly, Last Dinner Party have to be content with a number two debut as The Life Of A Showgirl gets a third week at number one.

In the week’s first update on Monday, Taylor Swift was at number three behind both Last Dinner Party and Tame Impala’s fifth studio album Deadbeat. However, the latter was only 164 sales ahead of The Life Of A Showgirl, so it was never going to be as high as number two by the end of the week. The last two Tame Impala albums have entered at number three.Deadbeat is at number four.

Olivia Dean is at number three with The Art Of Loving. Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend is at number five.

Judging by this year’s contest, Sam Ryder looks like retaining his status as the last UK act to finish in the top three at a Eurovision Song Contest for many years to come. His success in the 2022 contest helped his debut album, It’s Nothing But Space Man, get to number one. His second set Heartland is at number eleven.

Twenty years after I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor was at number one (eek!), Arctic Monkeys’ singer Alex Turner’s mate Miles Kane has a new album. Sadly there is no sign of a revival for their joint project Last Shadow Puppets. In the meantime, Sunlight In The Shadows, Kane’s sixth solo album, is at number thirteen.

A rather older solo artist known for his work as part of a band is at number twelve in the shape of Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour with his ninth solo top forty album The Luck And Strange Concerts.

Of Monsters And Men, the Icelandic band who aren’t Sigur Ros, are at number sixteen with All Is Love And Pain In The Mouse Parade. Swedish singer-songwriter Rianne Downey makes her chart debut with The Consequence Of Love at number eighteen. Ashnikko lands at number 32 with Smoochies.

We have already seen that Sam Fender’s Mercury Prize win has given a boost to some of the tracks from the album. Not surprisingly, the album itself has also benefitted. People Watching soars 58 places to return to the top forty at number seventeen, a number with a special meaning for him.

With such a big lead in last week’s singles chart, it is no surprise that Taylor Swift gets a second week at number one with The Fate Of Ophelia. Her five UK number one singles have now spent a total of twelve weeks at the summit, almost as long as Alex Warren’s Ordinary managed earlier this year.

While remaining at number one, Taylor Swift has not repeated last week’s feat of occupying the whole of the top three. She does, though, still have three songs in the top six which isn’t bad going. Opalite is at number four with Elizabeth Taylor at six.

HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast climb back up to number three with Golden. Olivia Dean’s Man I Need is at number two where it took up near-permanent residency for so long.

While the three-song rule is usually applied to the lead artist, all the songs from the KPop Demon  Hunters cast which include the cast among the credited artists have been subject to this rule. The fact that some have HUNTR/X as the first-named artist while others have Saja Boys listed first has been deemed irrelevant. Some people will have been very grateful. This week, one of the Saja Boys songs has fallen below How It’s Done, another song credited to HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast. Therefore, Soda Pop drops out (from last week’s number seven) while How It’s Done is a new entry at number twelve. The soundtrack album is consigned to the compilations chart where it is number one for a seventeenth week this week.

TikTok continues to help launch the careers of singer-songwriters. This week it’s the turn of 20-year-old Londoner Sienna Spiro. She has released a string of singles since the beginning of last year, but without any chart success (apart from reaching number 89 in Ireland). This week she breaks her duck as Die On This Hill enters at number 26.

Over the last few years, we have been treated(ish) to multiple hits from former members of One Direction and members of various KPop bands. This week we get a double whammy as Blackpink’s Jisoo has teamed up[ with former One Directioner Zayn Malik to create Eyes Closed, a song which is rather better than I expected. It is a new entry at number 37.

Last week Taylor Swift topped the albums chart with over 400,000 sales of her new album The Life Of A Showgirl. It was always highly likely that she would get a second week, and so it has come to pass. Her fourteen number one albums have now spent a combined 34 weeks at the top. However, her chart sales have fallen somewhat faster than might have been expected. It is still likely to spend several more weeks at number one between now and next January, but perhaps she will be beaten more times than I thought last week.

Richard Ashcroft, formerly of The Verve, enters at number three with his latest solo album Lovin’ You. He will shortly be resuming his role as support act for Oasis on their reunion tour.

Olivia Dean achieves a chart double of her own (after completing a more conventional one two weeks ago) by sitting at number two on both charts. The Art Of Loving is back up one place to the runner-up spot. Sabrina Carpenter is still at number four with Man’s Best Friend. The Weeknd’s Highlights compilation is at number five. That album has now spent 173 weeks (well over three years) in the top ten without ever quite getting to number one.

The only other new entry in the top forty is Calum Scott’s Avenoir at number 31. 

Three hits compilations re-enter the top forty. Best Of 50 Cent is at number 34, Maroon 5’s is at 37, one place below The Best Of Pitbull.

Finally, I owe an apology to fans of Tame Impala. The band, basically Australian multi-instrumentalist Kevin Harper with other musicians joining him on tour, had a new entry at number 40 in the singles chart with the rather marvellous Dracula, but I missed it. This is Tame Impala’s first UK top forty single some sixteen years after debut single Sundown Syndrome.

As referenced in last week’s commentary Taylor Swift released her twelfth studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl last week. Without the rule allowing only three tracks by a lead artist to appear in the chart simultaneously, the twelve tracks would probably occupy the top twelve positions. That would have knocked Olivia Dean right out of the top ten after climbing to number one last week.

The treatment of album streams for chart purposes has always been a difficult issue to resolve. The most controversial rule is probably the one that allows streams of a full album also to count as a stream of each individual track. Part of the problem is determining how much of an album needs to be streamed before it should count towards the albums chart but not the singles chart.

When any new album is released, there are bound to be many people who give it a listen simply out of curiosity, particularly if it is one that has received a lot of hype. Not all of those people will make it to the end. There is strong evidence that this has happened in Taylor Swift’s case as the top three tracks are the first three tracks on the album, almost in the same order. That means that The Fate Of Ophelia becomes her fifth number one single. Opalite at number two and Elizabeth Taylor at number three bring her number of top ten singles up to 33. Ophelia was the name of a number 52 hit for Lumineers, but Opalite has never appeared in the title of a charting single for some reason.

HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast have regained their lead over Olivia Dean. Their former number one Golden is at number four while Dean’s Man I Need falls four places to number five.

Apparently Tkandz is a big name in the lofi drill scene. I must be getting old, as I didn’t even know there was a lofi drill scene. He has teamed up with Cxsper on a track called Now Or Never which is at number 30. The names, by the way, are not typos.

Back, then, to Taylor Swift. The only questions about the chart performance of The Life Of A Showgirl in its first week were about how many sales and streams it would achieve. Even by Monday (when a lot of stream data from the weekend was missing) its “sales” had surpassed those of Sam Fender’s People Watching to become the best-selling album released this year. Some time next week it will take up position as the best-selling album overall in 2025 and will probably stay there for the rest of the year.

The Life Of A Showgirl has opened with well over 400,000 “sales” in its first week, far more than any other Taylor Swift album. Its 126,000 vinyl sales is the most in a single week for any album this century. It has also picked up more sales from streams than any album since streaming figures were included in chart sales.

Many critics of Taylor Swift have accused her of writing too many songs about break-ups. That isn’t the case this time as she wrote the album in the lead-up to announcing her engagement to someone who makes his living by playing a form of catch, one in which the participants have to dress up in a suit of armour (or something like it).

With the re-recorded versions of her earlier albums being counted as separate releases, Taylor Swift has now had fourteen UK number one albums, behind only The Beatles and Robbie Williams who have each had fifteen. Both those artists are about to be mentioned again.

The first time a chart double was followed by another double by a different act was in 1962 when Cliff Richard and the Shadows were replaced by Elvis Presley at the top of both charts. Presley had become the first act to achieve the chart double the previous year when he topped both the singles and albums charts simultaneously for a total of fourteen weeks. 

It next happened in 1964. Unsurprisingly, the acts involved were the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In fact, it was so easy to guess the name of the second act that auto-suggestion offered it as the next word even before I typed the B. In 2012 a Robbie Williams double was immediately followed by one for One Direction. Thirteen years on, we have only our fourth example of this occurrence.

Oasis’s second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is now thirty years old. To mark the occasion, yet another commemorative edition has been released. Without Taylor Swift, the album would have gained an eleventh week at number one. With Taylor Swift, it is at number two in its 1,068th week in the chart. Thanks to the band’s reunion tour, this is the album’s ninth week in the top ten this year.

Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving slips to number three after a week at the top. Sabrina Carpenter is at number four with Man’s Best Friend. This means that all of the top four albums have reached number one at some point.

James Morrison gets his fifth top ten album with Fight Another Day at number five. It is the highest selling album of the week in independent record shops.

The fresh-faced teenagers who were Ash when I first saw them live are now middle-aged men, but they are still capable of releasing great music. Last week they proved that by releasing their ninth studio album Ad Astra. The three original members of the band are joined on one track by Blur’s Graham Coxon, a rare use of a guest performer by the band from Downpatrick.

In their early days Ash recorded a version of the Star Wars theme which was the B-side of their first major hit, Girl From Mars. All of the members are fans of the films and named their debut album, 1977, after the year the first one came out. It was also the year of birth of the band’s singer Tim Wheeler and bassist Mark Hamilton. They have now returned to the sci-fi theme by opening this album with Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, best known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As we near the end of International Space Week, Ash’s Ad Astra is at number fifteen.

Rapper EsDeeKid released his album Rebel a few weeks ago. It enters the top forty at number 36 in its fourth week in the top 100. He also makes his top forty singles chart debut this week with Phantom which matches the album position by reaching number 36.

The remaining new entries include Idlewild at number sixteen with an eponymous album, their highest chart position for twenty years. Essex duo Good Neighbours are at number 24 with their debut album Blue Sky Mentality.

For the first time in several weeks, there was a genuine contest at the top of the singles chart. Would Hunter/X and co get yet another golden week at the top or would the release of her album help Olivia Dean rise to the top? Olivia Dean’s Man I Need was at number one in the midweek updates. In Wednesday’s update it held a lead of a little over 3,500 chart units over Golden.

There was, by contrast, never any real doubt about whether Olivia Dean’s album The Art Of Loving would top the chart. The singer-songwriter from London has had a very successful 2025. At the start of the year, she was still relatively unknown. Her only singles chart success had been with a version of The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) which charted for Christmas 2021, but hasn’t returned in subsequent years. Her debut album, Messy, reached number four when it was released in 2023, but spent just that one week in the top forty.

This year, Olivia Dean’s fortunes have improved dramatically. Last week, Man I Need was at number two for a fifth week while Nice To Each Other was also in the top ten. It is, therefore, not a surprise that The Art Of Loving has gone straight to number one. She is able to celebrate a chart double as Man I Need has at last made that final one place step up to become her first number one single. Nice To Each Other has climbed to number four. So Easy (To Fall In Love) is a new entry at number nine. Dive has plunged out of the chart from last week’s number eighteen position because of the limit of three songs by an artist in the singles chart.

The top five in the singles chart still has two songs from the XPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. Golden by HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast drops to number two after eight non-consecutive weeks at number one. Saja Boys, Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast are at number five with Soda Pop. The top five is completed by Raye’s Where Is My Husband at number three.

Olivia Dean’s closest rival for the top spot wasn’t close at all, but it is still technically accurate to use the term, or at least it was until the end of the week. The eventual number two is Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend. She also has a new entry in the singles chart with House Tour at number seventeen.

Some three years after Little Mix broke up (although, officially, they are “on hiatus”), Perrie Edwards has released her first solo album under the mononym  Perrie. The album, also called Perrie, is at number three having lost its status as the closest rival for the number one spot in the latter part of the week.

Hot on the heels of a Led Zeppelin live EP, Robert Plant is at number four with Saving Grace. Although he has been touring with a band called Saving Grace, the album is credited to Plant alone, making it his twelfth solo studio album. 

Doja Cat has a new entry at number five with her new album Vie. Two songs from the album are in the singles chart. Gorgeous is a new entry at number 34 and Jealous Type re-enters at number 30.

American band Geese are at number 26 with the cheerfully-titled Getting Killed. Mariah Carey has her twentieth top forty album with Here For It All at number 31. Genesis’s last album with Peter Gabriel on vocals, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, is at number 35 thanks to a “50th anniversary” edition. It peaked at number ten when it was released at then end of 1974.

Returning to the singles chart, there are new entries that are not from albums released last week. The highest of them comes from Tate McRae who is at number six with Tit For Tat. The phrase is the reason why a hat is known as a titfer in cockney rhyming slang. Myles Smith is at number 32 with Stay (If You Wanna Dance).

With the year now into its final quarter, the Official Charts Company has published a list of the top albums of 2025 so far. The list highlights just how much streaming of older albums influences the chart. The top album released in 2025 is Sam Fender’s People Watching, but it is only at number six overall. Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘n’ Sweet is at number one with Ed Sheeran’s Tour Collection at number two and the Oasis compilation at three. Compilations by Fleetwood Mac and The Weeknd are also ahead of Sam Fender. Fender’s time with the top-selling album released in 2025 will not last much longer as Taylor Swift released a new album today (Friday).

HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast extend their run at the top of the singles chart with Golden to an eighth week. Three-quarters of the way through 2025, we have had eleven number one singles of varying quality. Saja Boys, Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast are at number five with Soda Pop.

Once again the Demon Hunters have thwarted Olivia Dean’s Man I Need which is at number two for a fifth week.

This week’s highest new entry is the second single from Lewis Capaldi’s forthcoming third album. Probably - there is, as yet, no release date and no title. The first single, Survive, spent a week at number one. Something In The Heavens is at number three. His second album Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent re-enters at number 40.

Raye also has a new entry in the top five in the form of Where Is My Husband at number four. It is only the second top forty hit with the word husband in the title after Meghan Trainor’s Dear Future husband in 2015. There has never been a single anywhere in the chart with the word wife in the title although Next came close with Wifery, a number nineteen hit in 2000. Raye’s 2023 number one hit Escapism returns to the top forty at number 37.

There are no further new entries in the top forty, so let’s have a little diversion.

I don’t often mention a song at number 73. I also don’t generally mention something from last week’s chart. However, I am prepared to make an exception once in a while. Since Damon Albarn launched Gorillaz as, supposedly, a one-off project, his reputation as a musician has meant that many of the biggest names in music have accepted the opportunity to work with the world’s greatest virtual band. KPop Demon Hunters will never come even close.

Gorillaz will be releasing their ninth album next March, but the track listing is already available. The collaborators this time include Johnny Marr, the late Mark E Smith and Idles. Oh, and the ever-wonderful Sparks. The Sparks collaboration, The Happy Dictator, has been released as a single and was at number 73 last week. It is, obviously, a great track and has given Sparks a first top 75 single since a new version of their debut hit This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us (featuring Faith No More) in 1997. Their last top 75 hit with a new song was Now That I Own The BBC in 1995. Sparks did have a hit with Number One Song In Heaven, Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc is back in the charts and a Coldplay song called Sparks is also in the chart, so there are plenty of links to this week’s top forty.

Scottish band Biffy Clyro’s first three albums all failed to reach the top forty. Their fortunes changed with the release of Puzzle in 2016 which went to number two. The next five studio albums all reached the top five with three of them topping the chart. They continue that run with their fourth number one Futique.

Sabrina Carpenter is still at number two with Man’s Best Friend. Ed Sheeran’s Play falls to number five after a week at number one.

The title of Lola Young’s second album has a couple asterisks added in the chart listing so I will have to guess what its full title is. I think it is I’m Only Flaking Myself. It enters at number three to give her a first top ten album D£aler, the second single from the album, returns to the top forty at number 35.

Among the UK’s greatest lyricists is Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon whose talent for wit and story-telling has sustained the band for 35 years and thirteen albums. The fact that he is a pretty good tunesmith as well helps. The latest, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, is at number four, their highest position for a studio album. The album includes a song called The Man Who Turned Into A Chair and another called Mar-a-Lago By The Sea. I wonder what that might be about.

Before they joined Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks released an album together. The duo and the album were both called Buckingham Nicks. Not many people noticed; the album failed to chart in the UK. Fifty-two years on, it has been released and it enters the chart at number six.

The KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack album is ineligible for the main chart as the tracks are credited to a number of different lead artists. However, the soundtrack for the latest Tron film, Ares (*checks for an unfortunate typo*) are all credited to Nine Inch Nails, so the album is eligible. It is at number twelve.

There are four more new entries in the top forty. Joy Crookes is at number thirteen with Juniper. British DJ Sammy Virji’s Same Day Cleaning is at number 21 while Cardi B’s Am I The Drama is at 26. Octopus, Newton Faulkner’s first album for four years, is at number 27.

The appearance of an album called Octopus provides me with an opportunity to include another chapter in Suedehead’s Guide to the English Language. Octopus derives from Greek, not Latin, which means that the plural is definitely not octopi. If octopi is a word at all, it should mean eight times pi. Technically, and etymologically, the plural is octopodes, but octopuses is a perfectly acceptable anglicised version.

HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast continue their reign of terror at the top of the singles chart as Golden grabs a seventh week at number one. Saja Boys, Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast climb one place to number three with Soda Pop. The same combination are at number five with Your Idol.

Olivia Dean’s Man I Need is at number two for a fourth successive week. Sabrina Carpenter’s Tears fall to number four. 

Katseye are based in Los Angeles but their members hail from the Philippines, South Korea and Switzerland as well as the USA. Their single Gabriela entered the top 100 at the beginning of the summer, but it dropped out of the top chart after four weeks. However, it returned after a two-week absence and has now cracked the top forty for the first time at number 39.

Kehlani’s Folded has also taken its time to reach the top forty. It entered the top 100 in the same week as Gabriela’s return. This week, its seventh in the full chart, it climbs to number 33 to give her a first top forty hit since 2019.

Lola Young’s Messy returns at number 4- after a few weeks out of the broadcast part of the chart.

Even Suede’s biggest fans knew that their new album might not prevent Sabrina Carpenter getting a second week at number one, and so it proved last week. However, even Carpenter's biggest fans will have known that she had no chance of getting a third consecutive week. The reason? Ed Sheeran’s new album was released last week. Even though he is well short of his peak popularity, his albums still sell well and pick up a lot of streams.

Play is said to be the first of five albums named after symbols on devices such as DVD players (remember them?), following his five albums named after arithmetical symbols. The five arithmetically-themed albums all went to number one, and now the first of his new arithmetical quintology has done the same. Play is his ninth chart-topping album and is also the second album called Play to top the chart after Moby’s mega-seller from a quarter of a century ago.

Ed Sheeran’s nine number one albums matches the total accumulated by Bob Dylan. Only eleven solo artists have had more. Camera from the album is a new entry to the singles chart at number sixteen while A Little More re-enters at 32. Sapphire climbs to number 28. Camera is his 67th top forty single.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend drops to number two after a fortnight at number one.

Former Little Mix member Jade (Thirlwall) enters at number three with her debut solo album That’s Showbiz Baby. It has achieved the highest first-week sales for a debut album so far this year and tops the Official Record Store chart which uses sales from independent (non-chain) record shops.

Twenty One Pilots get a fifth top ten album with their eighth studio album Breach at number four.. It concludes their quintology of albums which started with Blurryface in 2015. It is this week’s best-selling album on vinyl.

Sophi Ellis-Bextor remains one top ten album ahead of Twenty One Pilots as Perimenopop (whatever that is) enters at number five. Selena Gomez and Nile Rogers are among the co-songwriters credited on the album.

Careful users of English would avoid the use of the word legendary to describe a band whose existence cannot be doubted. Using the looser definition of the word, it is reasonable to describe Led Zeppelin as a legendary rock band. They released nine studio albums in thirteen years, but there has also been a succession of live albums and other compilations. They have now been joined by a Live EP. The EP is the length of many of today’s full-length albums although it has only four tracks, including the classic Kashmir (but not Stairway To Heaven). It is a new entry at number sixteen.