Eric_Blob

I feel like Avril Lavigne is a big act amongst like 25-40 year-olds. Someone like Amy Winehouse for example crossed over amongst different generations more so I would say that counts as bigger.

OH MY GOD, YOU WERE SO RIGHT! 🎧✨ I am literally obsessed! Audrey is an absolute genius, and her sound is completely out of this world. The Vocals? Pure perfection. The Vibe? Absolutely immaculate. The Production? Mind-blowing. I’ve had her tracks on repeat non-stop, and my mood has officially skyrocketed by like 1000%. Thank you for blessing my ears with this masterpiece—thank you so much, what a wonderful gift you have given to me 🙌🔥

The DaBaby version of Levitating had a different (but better) instrumental to the original. It's subtle but if you notice it you can hear it. I don't know if they made a version of the solo version with that instrumental, but if they haven't, they should.

That's all true. But with their AI playlists, if you do a generic "I want house songs from 2026" it will just give you an American playlist (probably house songs that are popular on the New York scene this year lol). You have to be specific (this means probably writing a long paragraph and giving context as to being in the UK, etc). But it does work if you say the right things, I've experimented with it a LOT. It is quite good. And you'd get better and faster responses than just asking on here honestly lol.

Spotify has a new feature. If you go on "Create" then "Prompted Playlist" you can ask it to make a playlist of songs from 2026 of your favourite genres (and you can add it to take your listening history into account so it will try to guess ones you might like). It will be automatically US centric. If you don't want it to be you have to directly specify you want songs popular in the UK not the US.

To be fair, some of her songs DO have loads of remixes. There's like 14 versions of Only Girl, around 10 of We Found Love, Diamonds, Work, etc.

Radio 1 does this too. I think they have to play at least 50% British music. But they have a microscopic effect on the charts these days so it doesn't help in that respect. As for streaming, what I'm pretty sure is happening is, because we're so outnumbered by Americans, it interprets all the local UK artists as basically "flops" or unpopular, and therefore not prioritised in the algorithm. For example, if you play Poker Face and it goes on autoplay, for a British user it SHOULD know to include songs like The Fear, Bad Boys, Fight For This Love, etc. But instead it plays Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato (yeah, they ARE popular here, and should come up on autoplay every now and then, but still...). As far as the Spotify algorithm knows, it just sees "Knock You Down by Keri Hilson has 400 million streams, Fight For This Love has 100 million, so I'll add Knock You Down to the autoplay queue as it's massively more popular". So yeah a lot of the British artists that didn't crack the US have been massively screwed over and it's had a snowball effect as because the algorithm doesn't play them it hurts their streams even more and then it doesn't want to autoplay new releases by the same artist (which the algorithm thinks is either niche or a flop) and it gets worse and worse. I'm just astonished that record labels with non-Internationally-famous UK artists haven't tried to solve this issue years ago. They've probably missed out on a lot of money.

It's not just those, apparently also: Basement Jaxx/Gorgon City Bob Sinclar Tiesto Nathan Dawe PNAU Eliza Rose Dasha Ravyn Lenae Dvbss ft. Nelly Furtado Future ft. Tyla Tyla, Ravyn Lenae, Dasha had big hits recently. Eliza Rose and PNAU even had #1s recently. People like Lily Allen, Basement Jaxx, Tiesto, Nelly Furtado, David Guetta, etc, are super famous in this country. But it's no surprise. This happens every single week. Look through previous weeks from the past few years and you'll see a couple dozen famous artists releasing songs every week and (almost) none of them ever chart. Most people just prefer to listen to songs they already know. In 2004 or whatever when the chart was basically ONLY recent releases I feel like most of these songs would've charted in the top 200.

Yeah that's pretty surprising actually. And given Rod Stewart's entry it's at least 1,947!

Should Cliff Richard be added?

Jessie J could be added as she is abrosexual.

Maybe but I think even with one of their old songs. They have a massive discography, broke through in the US, have done mostly dance-pop music and have a plethora of sassy/tongue-in-cheek lyrics which someone might want to use on TikTok one day lol. And yeah a modern dance artist remaking one of their songs and crediting them and making top 10 isn't impossible either.

I wouldn't be that surprised if Pet Shop Boys get in the top 10 again one day.

The David Guetta remix did so well. The original would have done nothing, especially in 2011.

I think Sabrina Carpenter herself is in trouble tbh. She debuted with 1.5 million first day on Spotify last October with her song The Life of a Showgirl, and went from that to barely scraping the top 40 with Such a Funny Way in the space of like 6 months. I'm worried for her.

If Sam Fender does get close to breaking the record like Drake did, it would probably get negative media coverage and probably prompt a rule change from the OCC for the chart. Which might be a good thing in the long run. Although I reckon the media and the public would probably be a lot friendlier to the concept of Sam Fender breaking the record than they were to Drake (he's British, he's crosses over to adult contemporary like Radio 2 so more of the older generations will actually know who he is, his songs use real instruments, etc).

Yeah, but I mean the remix is/was doing really well, I saw it in the top 200 on Spotify a lot so it's boosting the chart position every week.

I don't like that remix that much but at least its helping a lot for the charts.

Nobody would've believed Baby and Eenie Meenie would've been remembered past 2012 at the time, let alone that they'd re-enter the top 40 and be remembered fondly 15 years later. That was the big narrative about most pop songs at the time, let alone Justin Bieber. "Everybody will forget about this in a couple of years".

I used to follow it every week for a while in the late 00's/early 10's. And it absolutely 100% was calculated from real figures (at least back then). They got the sales data for iTunes directly from Apple, and the airplay data directly from themselves (Global). It was highly predictable, I knew roughly where every song would be charting each week. If the charts were made up it would be impossible to predict and I would have noticed glaring errors and inconsistencies every week. It was a completely harmless (and frankly meaningless) chart. Hundreds of radio stations all over the world do their own charts. Some simply rank their most spinned songs for the week, some go by number of requests from their listeners, some get their listeners to vote, some get their DJs to make their own. Given that some platforms like Spotify give out exact streaming figures, some stations now may even be using Spotify data for their own charts without needing a partnership! BBC have a partnership with the OCC so can air the official chart. Global had a partnership with Apple so they could make the Big Top 40 by combining their own airplay with the iTunes sales figures each week. All that said, I have absolutely NO idea how they are calculating it today. Maybe it truly is just made up now (do they even still have the partnership with Apple?).

Well if it's going to be a fan-driven week 1 peak then yeah that might have been better to attain a higher chart position. But if it's going to be an actual hit song I don't think it will matter very much in the long run. Songs like I'm Good by David Guetta or I Had Some Help by Post Malone just continuously built more and more hype while they were unavailable to stream, rather than the opposite.

New songs can and do stick but they don't normally debut at #1 first week. Like Man I Need, Rein Me In, Where is my Husband, Rain Dance. If you debut at #1 it's normally fanbase-driven.

Yeah. I'm absolutely devastated that a straight white male is doing well in the charts. Glad to see someone else on the same page! It's a difficult time for both of us. Stay strong my friend. 😊

That really surprises me. I would have thought it would have done better the first time round if it got so much airplay (at a time when it actually mattered).

Yeah Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart blew me away the first time I heard it. Un-Thinkable was great too but wasn't released as a single here. This country was obsessed with Empire State of Mind Part II Broken Down. It was the most played song on UK radio in 2010 (and that was with the original also being played a lot too).