Suedehead2

Friday 24th October Leeds United 3-1 West Ham United (20:00) Saturday 25th October Chelsea 2-0 Sunderland Newcastle United 2-0 Fulham Manchester United 2-2 Brighton & Hove Albion (17:30) Brentford 0-2 Liverpool (20:00) Sunday 26th October AFC Bournemouth 2-0 Nottingham Forest (14:00) Arsenal 4-1 Crystal Palace (14:00) Aston Villa 2-2 Manchester City (14:00) Wolverhampton Wanderers 2-1 Burnley (14:00) Everton 1-0 Tottenham Hotspur (16:30)

Tie break - incredibly difficult, bit I'll go for Fade To Grey Best The Teardrop Explodes - Reward Visage - Mind Of A Toy New Order - Ceremony Dave Stewart With Colin Blunstone - What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted Hazel O'Connor - D-Days Worst Children Of Tansley School - My Mum Is One In A Million Status Quo - Something 'Bout You Baby I Like The Nolans - Attention To Me

Saturday 18th October Nottingham Forest 2-2 Chelsea (12:30) Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Newcastle United Burnley 1-2 Leeds United Crystal Palace 1-2 AFC Bournemouth Manchester City 3-1 Everton Sunderland 1-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers Fulham 0-1 Arsenal (17:30) Sunday 19th October Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Aston Villa (14:00) Liverpool 3-1 Manchester United (16:30) Monday 20th October West Ham United 0-1 Brentford (20:00)

This week's musings, with a belated mention of tame Impala, can be found from the Blogs section and the Forums index page.

With such a big lead in last week’s singles chart, it is no surprise that Taylor Swift gets a second week at number one with The Fate Of Ophelia. Her five UK number one singles have now spent a total of twelve weeks at the summit, almost as long as Alex Warren’s Ordinary managed earlier this year. While remaining at number one, Taylor Swift has not repeated last week’s feat of occupying the whole of the top three. She does, though, still have three songs in the top six which isn’t bad going. Opalite is at number four with Elizabeth Taylor at six. HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast climb back up to number three with Golden. Olivia Dean’s Man I Need is at number two where it took up near-permanent residency for so long. While the three-song rule is usually applied to the lead artist, all the songs from the KPop Demon Hunters cast which include the cast among the credited artists have been subject to this rule. The fact that some have HUNTR/X as the first-named artist while others have Saja Boys listed first has been deemed irrelevant. Some people will have been very grateful. This week, one of the Saja Boys songs has fallen below How It’s Done, another song credited to HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast. Therefore, Soda Pop drops out (from last week’s number seven) while How It’s Done is a new entry at number twelve. The soundtrack album is consigned to the compilations chart where it is number one for a seventeenth week this week. TikTok continues to help launch the careers of singer-songwriters. This week it’s the turn of 20-year-old Londoner Sienna Spiro. She has released a string of singles since the beginning of last year, but without any chart success (apart from reaching number 89 in Ireland). This week she breaks her duck as Die On This Hill enters at number 26. Over the last few years, we have been treated(ish) to multiple hits from former members of One Direction and members of various KPop bands. This week we get a double whammy as Blackpink’s Jisoo has teamed up[ with former One Directioner Zayn Malik to create Eyes Closed, a song which is rather better than I expected. It is a new entry at number 37. Last week Taylor Swift topped the albums chart with over 400,000 sales of her new album The Life Of A Showgirl. It was always highly likely that she would get a second week, and so it has come to pass. Her fourteen number one albums have now spent a combined 34 weeks at the top. However, her chart sales have fallen somewhat faster than might have been expected. It is still likely to spend several more weeks at number one between now and next January, but perhaps she will be beaten more times than I thought last week. Richard Ashcroft, formerly of The Verve, enters at number three with his latest solo album Lovin’ You. He will shortly be resuming his role as support act for Oasis on their reunion tour. Olivia Dean achieves a chart double of her own (after completing a more conventional one two weeks ago) by sitting at number two on both charts. The Art Of Loving is back up one place to the runner-up spot. Sabrina Carpenter is still at number four with Man’s Best Friend. The Weeknd’s Highlights compilation is at number five. That album has now spent 173 weeks (well over three years) in the top ten without ever quite getting to number one. The only other new entry in the top forty is Calum Scott’s Avenoir at number 31. Three hits compilations re-enter the top forty. Best Of 50 Cent is at number 34, Maroon 5’s is at 37, one place below The Best Of Pitbull. Finally, I owe an apology to fans of Tame Impala. The band, basically Australian multi-instrumentalist Kevin Harper with other musicians joining him on tour, had a new entry at number 40 in the singles chart with the rather marvellous Dracula, but I missed it. This is Tame Impala’s first UK top forty single some sixteen years after debut single Sundown Syndrome.

Sam Fender would have been third for ne, behind Pulp and Fontaines DC. Had they had the sense to put Suede on the shortlist, he would have been fourth.

Remember Lucy Connelly? She's the woman who was sentenced to 31 months in prison for calling for people to burned alive. Farage and his followers were outraged and called her a political prisoner. Someone who was convicted of threatening to kill Farage got a five year sentence. Farage said that wasn't enough.

I really don't get why so many countries are praising this supposed deal. The deal is full of holes. There is nothing about who will pay to reconstruct Gaza. There is no timescale for Israel to withdraw from Gaza. There is nothing about Israel's continued building of illegal settlements in the West Bank. Whatever Hamas says, there will be many Palestinians who want revenge against Israel for their genocidal acts over the last two years,.

Before the election, the Lib Dems attempted to get the government to improve the standard of accommodation for the armed services. The Tories ignored them. They continued their campaign after the election. Labour, to their credit, listened and are now taking action. This is an example of constructive opposition, and a government prepared to listen. Naturally, the press and broadcast media have largely ignored it. Of course, if Farage had suggested it and the government accepted it, there would have been page after page of coverage and an extended BBC news bulletin.

I assume this year's winner was decided before today, so he was never going to win it. As he has been sending troops into cities that dare to vote Democrat, I don't see why he should win next year's even if the ceasefire holds.

This week's meanderings can be found from theBlogs page or the Forums index.

As referenced in last week’s commentary Taylor Swift released her twelfth studio album, The Life Of A Showgirl last week. Without the rule allowing only three tracks by a lead artist to appear in the chart simultaneously, the twelve tracks would probably occupy the top twelve positions. That would have knocked Olivia Dean right out of the top ten after climbing to number one last week. The treatment of album streams for chart purposes has always been a difficult issue to resolve. The most controversial rule is probably the one that allows streams of a full album also to count as a stream of each individual track. Part of the problem is determining how much of an album needs to be streamed before it should count towards the albums chart but not the singles chart. When any new album is released, there are bound to be many people who give it a listen simply out of curiosity, particularly if it is one that has received a lot of hype. Not all of those people will make it to the end. There is strong evidence that this has happened in Taylor Swift’s case as the top three tracks are the first three tracks on the album, almost in the same order. That means that The Fate Of Ophelia becomes her fifth number one single. Opalite at number two and Elizabeth Taylor at number three bring her number of top ten singles up to 33. Ophelia was the name of a number 52 hit for Lumineers, but Opalite has never appeared in the title of a charting single for some reason. HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast have regained their lead over Olivia Dean. Their former number one Golden is at number four while Dean’s Man I Need falls four places to number five. Apparently Tkandz is a big name in the lofi drill scene. I must be getting old, as I didn’t even know there was a lofi drill scene. He has teamed up with Cxsper on a track called Now Or Never which is at number 30. The names, by the way, are not typos. Back, then, to Taylor Swift. The only questions about the chart performance of The Life Of A Showgirl in its first week were about how many sales and streams it would achieve. Even by Monday (when a lot of stream data from the weekend was missing) its “sales” had surpassed those of Sam Fender’s People Watching to become the best-selling album released this year. Some time next week it will take up position as the best-selling album overall in 2025 and will probably stay there for the rest of the year. The Life Of A Showgirl has opened with well over 400,000 “sales” in its first week, far more than any other Taylor Swift album. Its 126,000 vinyl sales is the most in a single week for any album this century. It has also picked up more sales from streams than any album since streaming figures were included in chart sales. Many critics of Taylor Swift have accused her of writing too many songs about break-ups. That isn’t the case this time as she wrote the album in the lead-up to announcing her engagement to someone who makes his living by playing a form of catch, one in which the participants have to dress up in a suit of armour (or something like it). With the re-recorded versions of her earlier albums being counted as separate releases, Taylor Swift has now had fourteen UK number one albums, behind only The Beatles and Robbie Williams who have each had fifteen. Both those artists are about to be mentioned again. The first time a chart double was followed by another double by a different act was in 1962 when Cliff Richard and the Shadows were replaced by Elvis Presley at the top of both charts. Presley had become the first act to achieve the chart double the previous year when he topped both the singles and albums charts simultaneously for a total of fourteen weeks. It next happened in 1964. Unsurprisingly, the acts involved were the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. In fact, it was so easy to guess the name of the second act that auto-suggestion offered it as the next word even before I typed the B. In 2012 a Robbie Williams double was immediately followed by one for One Direction. Thirteen years on, we have only our fourth example of this occurrence. Oasis’s second album (What’s The Story) Morning Glory is now thirty years old. To mark the occasion, yet another commemorative edition has been released. Without Taylor Swift, the album would have gained an eleventh week at number one. With Taylor Swift, it is at number two in its 1,068th week in the chart. Thanks to the band’s reunion tour, this is the album’s ninth week in the top ten this year. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving slips to number three after a week at the top. Sabrina Carpenter is at number four with Man’s Best Friend. This means that all of the top four albums have reached number one at some point. James Morrison gets his fifth top ten album with Fight Another Day at number five. It is the highest selling album of the week in independent record shops. The fresh-faced teenagers who were Ash when I first saw them live are now middle-aged men, but they are still capable of releasing great music. Last week they proved that by releasing their ninth studio album Ad Astra. The three original members of the band are joined on one track by Blur’s Graham Coxon, a rare use of a guest performer by the band from Downpatrick. In their early days Ash recorded a version of the Star Wars theme which was the B-side of their first major hit, Girl From Mars. All of the members are fans of the films and named their debut album, 1977, after the year the first one came out. It was also the year of birth of the band’s singer Tim Wheeler and bassist Mark Hamilton. They have now returned to the sci-fi theme by opening this album with Richard Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, best known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey. As we near the end of International Space Week, Ash’s Ad Astra is at number fifteen. Rapper EsDeeKid released his album Rebel a few weeks ago. It enters the top forty at number 36 in its fourth week in the top 100. He also makes his top forty singles chart debut this week with Phantom which matches the album position by reaching number 36. The remaining new entries include Idlewild at number sixteen with an eponymous album, their highest chart position for twenty years. Essex duo Good Neighbours are at number 24 with their debut album Blue Sky Mentality.

Oh, and the worst three Yarbrough And Peoples - Don't Stop The Music Joe Dolce Music Theatre - Shaddap You Face Odyssey - Hang Together

Ultravox - Vienna Visage - Fade To Grey David Bowie - Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) Blondie - Rapture Adam And The Ants - Kings Of The Wild Frontier A really tough choice. I was tempted to avoid double Midge, but went for it in the end.

For the first time in several weeks, there was a genuine contest at the top of the singles chart. Would Hunter/X and co get yet another golden week at the top or would the release of her album help Olivia Dean rise to the top? Olivia Dean’s Man I Need was at number one in the midweek updates. In Wednesday’s update it held a lead of a little over 3,500 chart units over Golden. There was, by contrast, never any real doubt about whether Olivia Dean’s album The Art Of Loving would top the chart. The singer-songwriter from London has had a very successful 2025. At the start of the year, she was still relatively unknown. Her only singles chart success had been with a version of The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire) which charted for Christmas 2021, but hasn’t returned in subsequent years. Her debut album, Messy, reached number four when it was released in 2023, but spent just that one week in the top forty. This year, Olivia Dean’s fortunes have improved dramatically. Last week, Man I Need was at number two for a fifth week while Nice To Each Other was also in the top ten. It is, therefore, not a surprise that The Art Of Loving has gone straight to number one. She is able to celebrate a chart double as Man I Need has at last made that final one place step up to become her first number one single. Nice To Each Other has climbed to number four. So Easy (To Fall In Love) is a new entry at number nine. Dive has plunged out of the chart from last week’s number eighteen position because of the limit of three songs by an artist in the singles chart. The top five in the singles chart still has two songs from the XPop Demon Hunters soundtrack. Golden by HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast drops to number two after eight non-consecutive weeks at number one. Saja Boys, Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast are at number five with Soda Pop. The top five is completed by Raye’s Where Is My Husband at number three. Olivia Dean’s closest rival for the top spot wasn’t close at all, but it is still technically accurate to use the term, or at least it was until the end of the week. The eventual number two is Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend. She also has a new entry in the singles chart with House Tour at number seventeen. Some three years after Little Mix broke up (although, officially, they are “on hiatus”), Perrie Edwards has released her first solo album under the mononym Perrie. The album, also called Perrie, is at number three having lost its status as the closest rival for the number one spot in the latter part of the week. Hot on the heels of a Led Zeppelin live EP, Robert Plant is at number four with Saving Grace. Although he has been touring with a band called Saving Grace, the album is credited to Plant alone, making it his twelfth solo studio album. Doja Cat has a new entry at number five with her new album Vie. Two songs from the album are in the singles chart. Gorgeous is a new entry at number 34 and Jealous Type re-enters at number 30. American band Geese are at number 26 with the cheerfully-titled Getting Killed. Mariah Carey has her twentieth top forty album with Here For It All at number 31. Genesis’s last album with Peter Gabriel on vocals, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, is at number 35 thanks to a “50th anniversary” edition. It peaked at number ten when it was released at then end of 1974. Returning to the singles chart, there are new entries that are not from albums released last week. The highest of them comes from Tate McRae who is at number six with Tit For Tat. The phrase is the reason why a hat is known as a titfer in cockney rhyming slang. Myles Smith is at number 32 with Stay (If You Wanna Dance). With the year now into its final quarter, the Official Charts Company has published a list of the top albums of 2025 so far. The list highlights just how much streaming of older albums influences the chart. The top album released in 2025 is Sam Fender’s People Watching, but it is only at number six overall. Sabrina Carpenter’s Short ‘n’ Sweet is at number one with Ed Sheeran’s Tour Collection at number two and the Oasis compilation at three. Compilations by Fleetwood Mac and The Weeknd are also ahead of Sam Fender. Fender’s time with the top-selling album released in 2025 will not last much longer as Taylor Swift released a new album today (Friday).

This week's chart ramblings, in a slightly different order from normal, are now available from the Blogs page and the Forums index.

Friday 3rd October AFC Bournemouth 2-1 Fulham (20:00) Saturday 4th October Leeds United 0-2 Tottenham Hotspur (12:30) Arsenal 3-1 West Ham United Manchester United 2-1 Sunderland Chelsea 1-2 Liverpool (17:30) Sunday 5th October Aston Villa 3-0 Burnley (14:00) Everton 3-1 Crystal Palace (14:00) Newcastle United 1-1 Nottingham Forest (14:00) Wolverhampton Wanderers 0-2 Brighton & Hove Albion (14:00) Brentford 0-3 Manchester City (16:30)

Are you a member of a union? If so, talk to them. If not, think about joining.

The same applies to Johnson as applies to Andy Burnham for Labour. Any attempt to get them back into the Commons via a byelection is likely to backfire.

Saturday 27th September Brentford Vs Manchester United (12:30) Chelsea 2-2 Brighton & Hove Albion Crystal Palace 0-3 Liverpool Leeds United 1-2 AFC Bournemouth Manchester City 4-0 Burnley Nottingham Forest 2-1 Sunderland (17:30) Tottenham Hotspur 3-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers (20:00) Sunday 28th September Aston Villa 3-1 Fulham (14:00) Newcastle United 2-2 Arsenal (16:30) Monday 29th September Everton 2-0 West Ham United (20:00)

The British government doesn't prosecute anybody.

Let's also not forget that several Reform figures have, in the past, supported some form of ID card. Their conversion is pure opportunism. The Lib Dems and Tories were both opposed to the last labour government's scheme. Therefore, it was hardly a surprise that the Coalition was very quick to scrap it.

This week's ramblings through chartworld can be found from the Forums index and the Blogs section.

HUNTR/X, EJAE, AUDREY NUNA, REI AMI & KPop Demon Hunters Cast extend their run at the top of the singles chart with Golden to an eighth week. Three-quarters of the way through 2025, we have had eleven number one singles of varying quality. Saja Boys, Andrew Choi, Neckwav, Danny Chung, Kevin Woo, samUIL Lee & KPop Demon Hunters Cast are at number five with Soda Pop. Once again the Demon Hunters have thwarted Olivia Dean’s Man I Need which is at number two for a fifth week. This week’s highest new entry is the second single from Lewis Capaldi’s forthcoming third album. Probably - there is, as yet, no release date and no title. The first single, Survive, spent a week at number one. Something In The Heavens is at number three. His second album Broken By Desire To Be Heavenly Sent re-enters at number 40. Raye also has a new entry in the top five in the form of Where Is My Husband at number four. It is only the second top forty hit with the word husband in the title after Meghan Trainor’s Dear Future husband in 2015. There has never been a single anywhere in the chart with the word wife in the title although Next came close with Wifery, a number nineteen hit in 2000. Raye’s 2023 number one hit Escapism returns to the top forty at number 37. There are no further new entries in the top forty, so let’s have a little diversion. I don’t often mention a song at number 73. I also don’t generally mention something from last week’s chart. However, I am prepared to make an exception once in a while. Since Damon Albarn launched Gorillaz as, supposedly, a one-off project, his reputation as a musician has meant that many of the biggest names in music have accepted the opportunity to work with the world’s greatest virtual band. KPop Demon Hunters will never come even close. Gorillaz will be releasing their ninth album next March, but the track listing is already available. The collaborators this time include Johnny Marr, the late Mark E Smith and Idles. Oh, and the ever-wonderful Sparks. The Sparks collaboration, The Happy Dictator, has been released as a single and was at number 73 last week. It is, obviously, a great track and has given Sparks a first top 75 single since a new version of their debut hit This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us (featuring Faith No More) in 1997. Their last top 75 hit with a new song was Now That I Own The BBC in 1995. Sparks did have a hit with Number One Song In Heaven, Gorillaz’s Feel Good Inc is back in the charts and a Coldplay song called Sparks is also in the chart, so there are plenty of links to this week’s top forty. Scottish band Biffy Clyro’s first three albums all failed to reach the top forty. Their fortunes changed with the release of Puzzle in 2016 which went to number two. The next five studio albums all reached the top five with three of them topping the chart. They continue that run with their fourth number one Futique. Sabrina Carpenter is still at number two with Man’s Best Friend. Ed Sheeran’s Play falls to number five after a week at number one. The title of Lola Young’s second album has a couple asterisks added in the chart listing so I will have to guess what its full title is. I think it is I’m Only Flaking Myself. It enters at number three to give her a first top ten album D£aler, the second single from the album, returns to the top forty at number 35. Among the UK’s greatest lyricists is Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon whose talent for wit and story-telling has sustained the band for 35 years and thirteen albums. The fact that he is a pretty good tunesmith as well helps. The latest, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, is at number four, their highest position for a studio album. The album includes a song called The Man Who Turned Into A Chair and another called Mar-a-Lago By The Sea. I wonder what that might be about. Before they joined Fleetwood Mac, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks released an album together. The duo and the album were both called Buckingham Nicks. Not many people noticed; the album failed to chart in the UK. Fifty-two years on, it has been released and it enters the chart at number six. The KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack album is ineligible for the main chart as the tracks are credited to a number of different lead artists. However, the soundtrack for the latest Tron film, Ares (*checks for an unfortunate typo*) are all credited to Nine Inch Nails, so the album is eligible. It is at number twelve. There are four more new entries in the top forty. Joy Crookes is at number thirteen with Juniper. British DJ Sammy Virji’s Same Day Cleaning is at number 21 while Cardi B’s Am I The Drama is at 26. Octopus, Newton Faulkner’s first album for four years, is at number 27. The appearance of an album called Octopus provides me with an opportunity to include another chapter in Suedehead’s Guide to the English Language. Octopus derives from Greek, not Latin, which means that the plural is definitely not octopi. If octopi is a word at all, it should mean eight times pi. Technically, and etymologically, the plural is octopodes, but octopuses is a perfectly acceptable anglicised version.