Sienna Spiro wins the race to the top of the singles chart. Beabadoobee has the number one album.

For the third week in a row, there was a tight race at the top of the singles chart this week. However ,one of last week’s contenders has been removed from the battle. Streams of Hugel, Imarl Angel and Ultra Nate’s Movin’ To The Sun have been declining for the last three weeks. This means that it is moved on to the Accelerated Chart Ratio (ACR) and the value of the song’s streams are halved.

Sienna Spiro’s Great Expectation held a narrow lead in the midweek updates and duly gets a third week at number one. The last song to have a single run of exactly three weeks at number one was Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In and we know what eventually happened to that.

In Wednesday’s update Ella Langley’s Chasin’ Texas was ahead of Stella Lefty’s Boston by a little over 100 chart sales. Langley held off the challenge to spend another week at number two while Lefty takes advantage of Hugel’s banishment to move up to number three. Adela climbs eleven places to number four with Nicole Kidman. Dua Lipa’s Training Season remains at number five. Olivia Rodrigo’s The Cure completes an all female top six at number six. Three of those top six have titles which are also the name of a charting act.

Prospa and Cloonee entered the chart with Free Your Mind in April this year, eventually taking the song to number six. Almost six months on, it is still in the chart. Now the acts have collaborated again, albeit with the roles reversed. They have also brought on board singer-songwriter Tristan Henry to create Good Girl. The song, which is somewhat lacking in originality, is at number 29.

Hugel and Solto return at number 37 with Jamaican (Bam Bam). two much older songs which have already spent time in the top forty this year are back for another go. Robyn’s Dancing On My Own is at number 35 and Mr Brightside is back. The Killers’ signature song is at number 40.

Filippino/British singer Beabadoobee remains best known for her role on Powfu’s Death Bed (Coffee For Your Head) which featured her song Coffee. While Powfu seems to have disappeared without trace, Beadaboobee has had three top ten albums, including a number one with 2024’s This Is How Tomorrow Moves. Her success continues with album number four, Pylon, which also tops the chart.

The Essential Michael Jackson is at number two for the twelfth ime this year. Olivia Rodrigo remains at number three with You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love. Sienna Spiro’s Visitor is at number four, one place ahead of Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving which returns to the top five after a six-week absence.

In one of the weird coincidences that show up occasionally, two of the most successful bands of the 1980s - Queen (whose success began in the mid-1970s) and Duran Duran - both had a drummer called Roger Taylor. Even while working with Queen, the older Roger taylor was recording solo material, releasing his first album in 1981. None of his solo albums performed particularly well until his sixth collection, Outsider, reached number three in 2021. Now he has a second top ten solo album with Violence Insane In A Beautiful World (an incredibly clumsy title) at number six. An orchestral Queen’s most famous song Bohemian Rhapsody was played at a BBC Proms concert last year to mark the song’s half-century. Taylor came on stage to bang the gong at the end.

Five of Miley Cyrus’s last six albums all reached the top ten. She has dropped her surname for her new album Bass Persuades. It enters at a relatively modest number thirteen. Another mononymous American, Beck, is at number fifteen with Ride Lonesome.

There is still no sign of an end to the stock of unreleased David Bowie material.The Shel Talmy Recordings is a collection of songs recorded in 1965 when Bowie was still a teenager and known as Davie Jones. This new collection lands at number seventeen to give Bowie a 72nd top forty album.

Two Liverpudlian acts complete the list of new entries. Echo and the Bunnymen were formed in 1977 and had their greatest success in the 1980s with fabulous singles such as The Cutter, Seven Seas and The Killing Moon. They are at number nineteen with their thirteenth studio album (the first for twelve years) Apples For Isaac. Fellow Scousers Cheap Thrills are at number 23 with their debut album Keep Cheap.