Suedehead2's replacement chart service w/e 22/8/24

It’s Chase, Status and Stormzy at 1 on tracks, and beabadoobee on albums.

Backbone showed it had some debuting comfortably on top of the tracks chart, giving Chase & Status a first number one after almost 20 years of dropping dance tracks, and 15 years of top 40 hits - though there was 8-year lean period in between before 2023’s revival in fortunes with a harder-edge dance fusion with various current acts, predominantly t/rap acts. If you are going for British rap collabs Stormzy must be number one choice, what with his previous 4 number ones (if one includes the charity Grenfell single). So that makes 5 chart-toppers for Stormzy, and 17 top 10’s with Chase & Status on 8 top 10’s. That’s all bad news for Billie Eilish as she climbs to a new peak of 2 with the fab Birds Of A Feather following a live performance recoding at the closing of the Paris Olympic Games on Venice Beach in L.A. as a promo for the next games. Chappell Roan holds at 3 with Good Luck, Babe, as Charli xcx and Billie Eilish make a swift drop to 4 - I Guess it won’t be remembered as well as Birds Of A Feather in the long run, but Billie’s other solo track, Wildflower, climbs to 36. Stargazing also holds at 5 for Myles Smith.

Madonna’s back with her first solo top 40 hit of this decade at 27, and her first in 9 years! And it’s Like A Prayer, starting it’s second top 40 chart run 35 years after the first one finished. This is due to two reasons: featuring in a key spot in Deadpool & Wolverine, and a new EP of various new remixes, notably the The one showcased in the movie with full-on choir (that’ll be the one I’m buying in about an hour as I type, then) which has led to an OCC re-set quite deservedly. The only other new entry is at 38, as Gracie Abrams cracks the 40 with I Love You, I’m Sorry. The American Singer-songwriter supported Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift on tour and grabbed a second top 40 this year with Taylor Swift on Us. So that’ll be three in a row then. She’s also the daughter of movie Director J.J. Abrams, who I still thank for the Star Trek revamp, and two of the 2010’s Star Wars sequels - some hold other views on their merits or lack of, but I rate all three.

Back on the rest of the top 10 and climbers, BL3SS & CamrinWatsin Kisses with bbyclose hits a new peak of 6, Austin drops to 7 for Dasha, and JordanAdetunji holds at 9 with Kehlani, Apple is static at 8 for Charli xcx, and JADE climbs back into the top 10 with her Puppet On A String intro. Other trickle climbers to new peaks include Adam Port & his host of thousands taking Move to 11. I look forward to pub quiz questions asking who had a hit in 2024 with Move, and nobody knowing the answer. I just looked at the list of acts and forgot them all within 10 seconds which doesn’t bode well. I think it might be Adam Port, presumably the first-ever Port, Strive, Einekleinenachtmusik, Orson, and Malachalilli but I may be wrong. Which reminds me that I still remain disappointed that comic/actor Omid Djalili didn’t in fact try to start-up a business selling Djalili Piccalilli on Would I Lie To You. Chappell Roan is Hot To Go at 12 and also a new peak of 31 for her Red Wine Supernova. Sonny Fodera, Jazzy & D.O.D. climb up at 19 with Somedays, Hanumankind & Kalmi’s Big Dawgs lap it up to 21, and Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding are as Free as Mr. Humphries used to be, at a new peak of 35.

There’s a bit more activity on albums, though, as beabadoobee debuts at 1 with This Is How Tomorrow Moves after her two previous top 10 albums in 2020 and 2022 peaked at 8 and 4. Beatrice, as she is better known to family, is a Filipino-born British singer-songwriter who for some reason decided a name that sounded like a Jazz vocal warm-up would be a great fun challenge for chart commenters’ spelling skills for the foreseeable future. Or is that foreseeabeabadoobeedoobedo? New at 5 is Will Young’s new album, Light It Up, and although Will hasn’t troubled the single-track charts for 12 years, he’s generally been pretty good since his post-Evergreen stuff started coming out, with several chart-topping singles and 4 number one albums starting with From Now On in 2002. Those that didn’t top the chart all have hit number two, bar the last 2021 album which peaked at 3. So that’s 22 years, 9 consecutive studio album top 3’s, and 3 number 2’s, with 3 compilation albums all going top 20, too, but sadly a new chart peak low of 5 for a studio album.

Chappell Roan’s Midwestern Princess drops from the top spot to 2, Charli xcx is also Brat down, to 3, and Taylor Swift poetically slides to 4. Elles Bailey is new at 12 with Beneath The Neon Glow, the Americana Blues singer-songwriter is actually English, and is on her 4th studio album and the first to crack the top 40. Just ahead at 11, Calvin Harris enters at a surprisingly low position with 96 months, though it is, granted, a compilation of non-studio album tracks from mid-2015 onwards (hence the title, I presume), but it has One Kiss, This Is What You Came For, Promises, Giant, and Miracle amongst the other lesser tracks, so one might expect better!

Asake brings Lungu Boy in at 15. A quick google tells me it’s the 3rd studio album from the afrobeats pioneering International Superstar Asake, who hails from Nigeria, and features a host of features on the album, not least Travis Scott, Stormzy, Central Cee - so I’m guessing not going to be my cup of tea based on two of those three. Lungu Boy is the highest-charting of his three UK top 30 albums to date. Finally, Billy Joel’s 20-year-old Piano Man: The Very Best Of Billy Joel pops back into the top 40 at 32 for a 265th chart week following his sell-out date at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium last Friday night. I was there following 5 hours of gridlocked traffic across the South-West and South Wales region, and 2 hours getting out of the car park and Cardiff. Got home at 3.30 am. Totally worth it! Billy hasn’t done a studio album in 30 years, and he didn’t even play the one fabulous new track he released this year, and has just the one UK date, so it was an occasion and back catalogue and a host of covers he loves too, from classical to rock via jazz, blues, gospel, surf and doo-wop with a bit opera thrown in for good measure. My teen-ish niece and nephew knew all the words, which is more than I do! Apart from Uptown Girl and Just The way You Are. My last concert there was Madonna’s Confessions tour in 2006, so I’ll pencil in summer 2042 in my diary for a Taylor Swift Hits Cardiff tour date and bring my zimmer-frame for the standing floor. It’ll be more comfortable than the rock-hard child-size swing-seats, at least.