Sam Fender and Olivia Dean face competition at the top of the singles chart from a new Ariana Grande song. Paul McCartney has the number one album.

After finishing comfortably ahead of the field in the singles chart for several weeks, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In finally had some competition again this week. It came in the form of a new song from Ariana Grande, meaning that we could see the end of an eleven-week run oif number one singles by someone called Olivia.

Ariana Grande’s new single Hate That I Made You Love Me comes from her forthcoming album Petal, due to be released at the end of July. The song is pleasant enough, but I can’t say I will be making any great effort to hear it again. By entering the chart at number one, it becomes Grande’s eighth chart-topping single and her first since Positions spent six weeks at the summit at the end of 2020. 

Ariana Grande’s seven previous number ones have spent an average of three weeks there, so Rein Me In may face a struggle to become the first single to get four spells at the top  in the same chart run. For now, it falls back to number one having spent a total of thirteen weeks at number one.

Olivia Rodrigo’s The Cure falls one place to number three. Drake’s Janice STFU is back up to number four (why?) and Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is at number five.

According to Spotify, F3miii is pronounced Femi. Why didn’t he just spell it like that, then? Perhaps he was hoping that people might spend so much time ridiculing his moniker that they didn’t have time to mention how boring his song Noble is. That worked well. Weird spelling or not, he makes his UK top forty debut this week at number 34.

The steady flow of old songs returning to the chart continues. This week it is the turn of Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull’s 2011 number one On The Floor, back at number 35. More than one-quarter of the songs in this week’s top forty are at least a decade old. That includes four of the top ten.

Dungeon Lane is a lane in the Speke area of Liverpool where schoolboy Paul McCartney used to play with his friend George Harrison. It now lends its name to McCartney’s 20th solo album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane. The album is a very nostalgic collection, looking back to the days before he and Harrison formed the most successful band in UK chart history. It features a mixture of ballads and rockier songs, and demonstrates that McCartney can still write some cracking tunes at the age of nearly 83.

The Boys Of Dungeon Lane is Paul McCartney’s ninth number one album since he became an ex-Beatle. Including those with the Fab Four (starting with Please Please Me in 1963), he has now had 24 number one albums, more than anyone else in UK chart history.

The Essential Michael Jackson is at number two. One of the various editions of the album includes his duet with Paul McCartney, Say Say Say, a number two hit in 1983. Both Jackson and McCartney have now had a number one album this year.

Despite their name, Boards Of Canada are a Scottish duo who have been performing their electronic music since 1986. Since then, they have not exactly been prolific; Tomorrow’s Harvest, released in 2013, was only their fourth album. That album saw them make their top ten debut, but they haven't rushed the follow-up. It was released last week, thirteen years on. Inferno fires them into the top five for the first time, at number three.

Boards Of Canada may not be from Canada, but Drake is. Maybe he could have styled himself Boreds Of Canada. His album Iceman is at number four. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving is at number five.

Lovers of chart quirks might enjoy this bit. Skye Newman released SE9 Part 2 last week. However, it hasn’t charted in its own right. Instead, Part I is back in the chart. It reached number eighteen last year; now it is back at number eleven.

Kiefer Sutherland is best known as an actor, but has also carved out a music career. Naturally, the Official Charts Company (OCC) has seized on the chance to increase their number of uses of the word multihyphenate. I am pretty certain I have never seen the word used apart from on the OCC website and on the two sites that host this commentary. Grey is his fourth album and, as a new entry at number 31, the third to reach the top forty.

Freya Ridings is at number 26 with Mother Of Pearl. Dua Lipa celebrates her recent wedding with another top forty album as Live From Mexico lands at number 21. This means that the USA is the only one of the hosts of the World Cup starting next week not to feature in either the name of the act or title of the album in this week's new entries. The closest they get is Floridian band whose eighth album, Ei8ht, is - hurrah for coincidences - at number eight. All three of their charting albums have peaked at a multiple of four, all in an even year which is not a multiple of four.