Lola Young spends a third week at number one with Messy. The weeknd gets a fourth number one album.
Lola Young remains at the top of the singles chart. The Weeknd gets the number one album.
Lola Young gets a third week at number one in the singles chart with Messy. This means that new songs by British artists have already spent as long at number one in 2025 than in the whole of last year.
There is a familiar look to the rest of the top five. It contains the same songs as last week, and the week before, and in the same order. Apt by Rose and Bruno Mars gets a sixth successive week, and seventh in total, at number two. It is one of the longest runs in the runner-up spot for a song that hasn’t topped the chart. Gracie Abrams is at number three with That’s So True. Chrystal stays put at four with The Days and Gigi Perez’s Sailor Song is still at five. How exciting.
Lady Gaga, or her record company, chose to release her new single Abracadabra in the middle of the chart week rather than on the customary Friday date. That being so, it has done very well to enter as high as number six. Will it become her seventh number one in the coming weeks? It would be an impressive achievement for someone so far into their career.
The Weeknd released his latest album last week which means that tracks from it enter the singles chart this week. Sao Paulo, which reached number 22 last November, is at number 21. Cry For Me is at number eight. Timeless, featuring Playboy Carti, climbs back up to number seven. The Weeknd has now had 39 top forty singles with eighteen of them reaching the top ten.
The Gorillaz song Feel Good Inc is fabulous, Raving In The Studio by Aitch and Bou, which samples Feel Good Inc is not. It’s not truly terrible, but it is closer to that end of the scale than the fabulous end. Nonetheless, it is a new entry at number 40 to give Aitch a twentieth top forty hit. BVou was last seen as one of the featured artists on Chase & Status’s Baddadan in 2023, a song that managed to be both awful and quite good at the same time.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Taste re-enters at number 39. Benson Boone’s Beautiful Things returns at number 33. Charli XCX and Billie Eilish return at number 31 with the mess that is Guess. Kendrick Lemar’s awful Not Like Us returns like a bad smell at number 27.
Any artist who releases a critically acclaimed album then has the problem of trying to maintain the same quality for subsequent albums. Not many artists succeed. Among those who has yet to match his finest work is Abel Tesfaye, better known as The Weeknd. His 2020 album After Hours was rightly lauded for its high quality, including the excellent singles Blinding Lights, Save Your Tears and In Your Eyes.
The Weeknd’s follow-up Dawn Fm was a bit of a disappointment. Now we have Hurry Up Tomorrow to assess. Any album whose full-length version extends to 22 songs is likely to have some dud tracks, and this is no exception. At its best Hurry Up Tomorrow is great. Other tracks are less good, although there was only one that was bad enough for me to skip it part way through. As expected, it has followed After Hours and Dawn FM in topping the chart. His Highlights collection is at number four.
Central Cee’s Can’t Rush Greatness falls one place to number two. Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘n’ Sweet is back up to number three. Ed Sheeran’s Tour Collection is at number five.
Forty-year-old RØRY enters at number ten with her debut album Restoration. The rather more experienced Kim Wilde is at number 27 with her eighth top forty album Closer.
English duo Maribou State reach their highest ever chart position with Hallucinating Love at number nine. It is only their third studio album in a fourteen-year career.
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