Olivia Dean’s chart double is followed immediately by one for Taylor Swift as her new album tops the chart and provides the top three singles.

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.