Sam & Olivia make it a 20 week Rein reign, Ariana's 6th number 1 Petal blooms on Albums

Sam & Olivia make it a 20 week Rein reign, Ariana's 6th number 1 Petal blooms on Albums

After the headline news of last week, the number one record extends further to 20 weeks non-consecutive weeks on top. Stating the obvious but Sam Fender and Olivia Dean are only 6 weeks away from a full 6 months on top. Half a year! 5% of the decade. Dai Dai dies back a bit on combined sales but holds at 2 for Shakira and Burna Boy. I just bought it. You're welcome! 

Ariana Grande has a new album, and therefore has the allotted 3 tracks in the chart, headed by title track Petal at 4, with album track Kiss Me at 15 and ex-number-one Hate That I Made You Love Me back up at 3. I make that 46 top 40 tracks so far. There has been some media focus on Ariana as she has announced she is stepping away from the public eye after her UK tour. I'm pleased she is going to be focusing on herself, she's been through a lot all-in-all.

Elsewhere in the upper reaches, Choosin' Texas drops to 5, as the lovely Be Here falls short yet again of the top 40, doh!  HUGEL, Imael Angel and Ultra Nate stay at 7 with the very infectious Movin' To The Sun, presumably summing up everyone in the northern hemisphere's Summer Of '26, while Sienna Spiro makes it a second top 10 as Great Expectation goes where Die On This Hill has already been - albeit one slot lower than the former's number 9. 

In at 27, the rather good Loser finally charts for Tame Impala, after falling short of the top 75 last year before Dracula hit big, and all thanks to its inclusion in the new box-office monster Spiderman: Brand New Day, which I will see soon, after the previous triple-Spidey fab movie. I bought Loser when it first dropped, along with a lot of their stuff over the many, many years Kevin wasn't getting hit singles - Loser is the 3rd top 40, all off the current album Deadbeat. 

ADELA with an accent over the 'E' is new in at 32 with Ain't in LA, which 99.9% of the world can relate to (at least), debuting on the chart with a decent track I have heard once so far, the Slovakian electronic-pop act seems to have come out of nowhere suddenly, if only to prove that new acts can still break through where others with fan bases can drop great records for years on end without that elusive hit . That has to give cause for optmism amongst all the perma-charters. 

In at 37, it's a bit of a Country moment as Luke Combs enters with Where The Wild Things Are, grabbing Luke his 3rd top 40 hit after his Fast Car cover and 2024 collab with Post Malone, Guy For That. He's been getting a lot of support from Radio 2 to boot, but whether that is impacting much on sales improvements week on week, who knows! 

Finally, dance track On 2nite hits a new peak of 13 for Silva Bumpa, an act that needs grammar and spelling tutoring. Or should that be 2-2-rng? Temper City take Self Aware to a new peak of 26, and Audrey Hobert climbs 7 to 33 with Sue Me. Certain politicians might take that as an invitation, so fingers-crossed for Audrey! Other perma-charters shuffle about a bit without doing anything interestingly new, other than offering up a number of candidates for the "Surely It's Gone From The Charts Now!?" award of the week. Winner this week: Unwritten. I ironically just wrote it....

In albums, it's an easy win for Petal, Ariana Grande's 8th top 10 album in a row dating back to 2013's Yours Truly, and her 6th number one in a row. AI tells me that equals Arctic Monkeys, The Police, Pink Floyd, Lana Del Ray and assorted others inlcuding err, The Script, so it must be factual (NB, I checked, yes it is, I'm not stupid enough to believe anything AI tells me). Essential Michael Jackson is at 2, Olivia Rodrigo's You Seem Pretty Sad at 3. Olivia Dean's The Art Of Loving is at 4 leaving Sienna Spiro to take up spot number 5.

Katy Perry's HIts collection, The Ones That Got The Plays, hits a peak of 8 after 13 weeks on the chart - it sounds like her back catalogue will be doing the Biz as much as other acts hits collections do with streaming: Hang Around (not unreasonably). Her best album Teenage Dream, meanwhile continues to chart at 38. In other top 40 news....there isn't any. The Rolling Stones have managed a 4th week inside the 40, so that's notable for Foreign Tongues. All my other electrifying facts for mid-week albums entering are all but dust in the wind now. No Olivia Dean EP Growth (42), no Durutti Column (Renascent) grabbing a first-ever chart slot at 54 after 48 years on their first studio album in 15 years. No Davido, with Oriade at 98.