Sam Fender and Olivia Dean still reign supreme in the singles chart. Maisie Peters wins a tight battle at the top of the albums chart.

There is still no catching Sam Fender and Olivia Dean at the top of the singles chart as Rein Me in gets a thirteenth week at the top. It matches the thirteen weeks at the top achieved by Alex Warren’s Ordinary last year.

Rein Me In’s thirteen weeks at the top has been split across three separate runs, each interrupted by a one-week number one. Its current run now stands at five weeks, matching the previous run. Sandwiched between these two runs was a seven-day spell at the top for Olivia Rodrigo’s Drop Dead.

At the start of the week, there was the prospect of Olivia Rodrigo toppling Sam Fender and Olivia Dean once again, which would have meant a third successive swap of Olivias at the top. However, by Wednesday, Rein Me In had established a healthy lead over Rodrigo’s The Cure. It would be good to think that Rodrigo is paying tribute to the best band Crawley has ever produced, However, the only reference to Robert Smith and co comes at the very beginning of the video when the name of the song is spelled out in a typeface close to one used by the band. The song is at number two.

Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is at number three. The Chemical Brothers are at number four with Go. Tame Impala’s Dracula stays at number five.

In a further indication of Drake’s declining popularity, the three songs of his that entered the chart last week have dropped significantly this week. One of them has fallen so far that it is no longer one of his three most popular songs. His third most popular song is now Shabang which is a new entry at number 25.

Everywhere was the fifth, and most successful, single in the UK from Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 album Tango In The Night. It has been hovering around the lower reaches of the chart for much of the last three years. For all that time it has been on the Accelerated Chart Ratio as it is over three years old. Now, for no obvious reason, it is back on the standard ratio. The consequent doubling of the value of its streams sees it back in the chart at number 24.

There’s more. Dreams was a single from Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 album Rumours. While the album did very well in the UK, and even better in the USA, it didn’t spawn any major hit singles. Dreams, probably one of the best known songs on the album only got to number 24. Like Everywhere, it has been in the lower reaches of the chart for three years. Now, it to has returned to the Standard Chart ratio and enters at a new peak position of number eighteen. 

Clementine Douglas was among the acts performing at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland last weekend. She reached number three last year as the vocalist on Calvim Harris’s Blessings. The song is back in the top forty at number 27.

Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten was a top ten hit in 2004. Twenty years later, it returned to the chart for an extended run. Now it is back for another go at number 40. Pinkpantheress’s Stateside re-enters at number 38.

Singer-songwriter Maisie Peters was born in Steyning, a few miles north of Shoreham, and is now based in Brighton. In 2021 she became the first act to join the record label set up by Ed Sheeran and she released her debut album You Signed Up For This. That album debuted at number two, but its successor The Good Witch went one place higher. Album number three, Florescence, started the week at number one, but its lead over The Essential Michael Jackson halved between Tuesday’s update and Wednesday’s.

In the end, Maisie Peters did enough to grab herself a second number one album with The Essential Michael Jackson in second place, just 250 “sales” behind.. He is also at number five with Thriller.

Darke’s Iceman falls two places to number three. His other two new albums suffer more drastic falls. Olivia Dean is at number four with The Art Of Loving.

Michael Ball is at number nine with his latest album Glow. Ball has had two top ten singles, 31 years apart. His debut hit Love Changes Everything reached number two in 1989. He famously topped the chart in 2020 with a version of You’ll Never Walk Alone, accompanied by charity fundraiser Tom Moore who was approaching his 100th birthday. 

American rock band finally got a deserved hit album in the UK when their fourth studio set reached number five in 2024. They now have a second hit to their name as Everyone For ten Minutes lands at number ??? Their singer, and main songwriter, Jack Antonoff, is more widely known as a co-writer with the likes of Taylor Swift, Lana del Rey, Pink and Florence Welch.

In the early days of search engines, it would probably have been quite hard to find information on a band called A. However, they are now more sophisticated and can take into account a user’s previous searches. Therefore, someone who looks up a lot of musical acts only has to type a few letters of “A band” to find them. We can soon find that the band were formed in Lowestoft, a coastal town between Ipswich and Norwich, and the birthplace of Benjamin Britten as well as three members of The Darkness. Only one of their four previous albums reached the top forty. Album number five nearly gave them a second top forty hit, but they just missed out. Prang is at number 42. It is at number one on the Rock and Metal albums chart.

Dominic Harrison, better known as Yungblud, had two number one albums last year - Idols and One More Time, the latter recorded with Aerosmith. Two new physical editions of Idols were released last week, allowing the album to return to the chart at number seventeen.