Suedehead2

The Iran squad have arrived in Mexico. They are playing all their group matches in the USA, but the Trump administration insist that they have to enter and leave the country on each match day. The USA has also refused to allow supporters of some competing nations to enter the country. FIFA should show some courage and throw the USA out of the competition.

That's a really interesting selection, with personal circumstances playing a bigger part than for most of us.

This week's musings, in the run-up to a 67 weekend, can be found from the Blogs section or the Forums Index page.

After finishing comfortably ahead of the field in the singles chart for several weeks, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In finally had some competition again this week. It came in the form of a new song from Ariana Grande, meaning that we could see the end of an eleven-week run oif number one singles by someone called Olivia. Ariana Grande’s new single Hate That I Made You Love Me comes from her forthcoming album Petal, due to be released at the end of July. The song is pleasant enough, but I can’t say I will be making any great effort to hear it again. By entering the chart at number one, it becomes Grande’s eighth chart-topping single and her first since Positions spent six weeks at the summit at the end of 2020. Ariana Grande’s seven previous number ones have spent an average of three weeks there, so Rein Me In may face a struggle to become the first single to get four spells at the top in the same chart run. For now, it falls back to number one having spent a total of thirteen weeks at number one. Olivia Rodrigo’s The Cure falls one place to number three. Drake’s Janice STFU is back up to number four (why?) and Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is at number five. According to Spotify, F3miii is pronounced Femi. Why didn’t he just spell it like that, then? Perhaps he was hoping that people might spend so much time ridiculing his moniker that they didn’t have time to mention how boring his song Noble is. That worked well. Weird spelling or not, he makes his UK top forty debut this week at number 34. The steady flow of old songs returning to the chart continues. This week it is the turn of Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull’s 2011 number one On The Floor, back at number 35. More than one-quarter of the songs in this week’s top forty are at least a decade old. That includes four of the top ten. Dungeon Lane is a lane in the Speke area of Liverpool where schoolboy Paul McCartney used to play with his friend George Harrison. It now lends its name to McCartney’s 20th solo album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane. The album is a very nostalgic collection, looking back to the days before he and Harrison formed the most successful band in UK chart history. It features a mixture of ballads and rockier songs, and demonstrates that McCartney can still write some cracking tunes at the age of nearly 83. The Boys Of Dungeon Lane is Paul McCartney’s ninth number one album since he became an ex-Beatle. Including those with the Fab Four (starting with Please Please Me in 1963), he has now had 24 number one albums, more than anyone else in UK chart history. The Essential Michael Jackson is at number two. One of the various editions of the album includes his duet with Paul McCartney, Say Say Say, a number two hit in 1983. Both Jackson and McCartney have now had a number one album this year. Despite their name, Boards Of Canada are a Scottish duo who have been performing their electronic music since 1986. Since then, they have not exactly been prolific; Tomorrow’s Harvest, released in 2013, was only their fourth album. That album saw them make their top ten debut, but they haven't rushed the follow-up. It was released last week, thirteen years on. Inferno fires them into the top five for the first time, at number three. Boards Of Canada may not be from Canada, but Drake is. Maybe he could have styled himself Boreds Of Canada. His album Iceman is at number four. Olivia Dean’s The Art Of Loving is at number five. Lovers of chart quirks might enjoy this bit. Skye Newman released SE9 Part 2 last week. However, it hasn’t charted in its own right. Instead, Part I is back in the chart. It reached number eighteen last year; now it is back at number eleven. Kiefer Sutherland is best known as an actor, but has also carved out a music career. Naturally, the Official Charts Company (OCC) has seized on the chance to increase their number of uses of the word multihyphenate. I am pretty certain I have never seen the word used apart from on the OCC website and on the two sites that host this commentary. Grey is his fourth album and, as a new entry at number 31, the third to reach the top forty. Freya Ridings is at number 26 with Mother Of Pearl. Dua Lipa celebrates her recent wedding with another top forty album as Live From Mexico lands at number 21. This means that the USA is the only one of the hosts of the World Cup starting next week not to feature in either the name of the act or title of the album in this week's new entries. The closest they get is Floridian band whose eighth album, Ei8ht, is - hurrah for coincidences - at number eight. All three of their charting albums have peaked at a multiple of four, all in an even year which is not a multiple of four.

For me it was the Aberfan disaster in 1966. I started a thread about it for the 50th anniversary. Aberfan anniversary - The Lounge - BuzzJack Music Forum It will be the 60th anniversary in October, and I'm sure it will be another emotional day for me.

This case is clearly awful, and the police made a serious mistake. However, to suggest that this proves that the whole police culture is somehow anti-white is utterly ridiculous. The issue here is simply that the police officers involved failed to recognise that the victim was in severe distress. Farage's response is, predictably, that of a rabble-rouser. He doesn't care about facts. He just cares about whether he can get a certain type of person to vote for him.

I reach state retirement age next March, so the 14-month contract is quite tempting, particularly as I have experience as a data analyst. Data manipulation doesn't have to mean "fiddling the data"! The lack of a salary could mean that it is very low. It could, OTOH, mean that it will depend on the type of person they get. They could be willing to pay more for someone with a better skillset and/or more exsperience. If I apply, I will have to describe myself as a multihyphenate

Except that Starmer hasn't been silent at all. He, rightly, waited for the legal process to be completed. Farage, OTOH, has tried to stir up racial hatred, completely ignoring the wishes of Henry Nowak's parents.

Banning orders have been used very sparingly, which means I haven't yet objected to any.

Successive governments have banned people from entering the UK.

Best David Bowie - Modern Love Siouxsie And The Banshees - Dear Prudence The Cure - The Love Cats Olympic Orchestra - Reilly Depeche Mode - Love In Itself Worst Unique - What I Got Is What You Need Black Lace - Superman (Gioca Jouer) Lionel Richie - All Night Long (All Night)

This week's waffle can be found from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

There is still no catching Sam Fender and Olivia Dean at the top of the singles chart as Rein Me in gets a thirteenth week at the top. It matches the thirteen weeks at the top achieved by Alex Warren’s Ordinary last year. Rein Me In’s thirteen weeks at the top has been split across three separate runs, each interrupted by a one-week number one. Its current run now stands at five weeks, matching the previous run. Sandwiched between these two runs was a seven-day spell at the top for Olivia Rodrigo’s Drop Dead. At the start of the week, there was the prospect of Olivia Rodrigo toppling Sam Fender and Olivia Dean once again, which would have meant a third successive swap of Olivias at the top. However, by Wednesday, Rein Me In had established a healthy lead over Rodrigo’s The Cure. It would be good to think that Rodrigo is paying tribute to the best band Crawley has ever produced, However, the only reference to Robert Smith and co comes at the very beginning of the video when the name of the song is spelled out in a typeface close to one used by the band. The song is at number two. Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is at number three. The Chemical Brothers are at number four with Go. Tame Impala’s Dracula stays at number five. In a further indication of Drake’s declining popularity, the three songs of his that entered the chart last week have dropped significantly this week. One of them has fallen so far that it is no longer one of his three most popular songs. His third most popular song is now Shabang which is a new entry at number 25. Everywhere was the fifth, and most successful, single in the UK from Fleetwood Mac’s 1987 album Tango In The Night. It has been hovering around the lower reaches of the chart for much of the last three years. For all that time it has been on the Accelerated Chart Ratio as it is over three years old. Now, for no obvious reason, it is back on the standard ratio. The consequent doubling of the value of its streams sees it back in the chart at number 24. There’s more. Dreams was a single from Fleetwood Mac’s classic 1977 album Rumours. While the album did very well in the UK, and even better in the USA, it didn’t spawn any major hit singles. Dreams, probably one of the best known songs on the album only got to number 24. Like Everywhere, it has been in the lower reaches of the chart for three years. Now, it to has returned to the Standard Chart ratio and enters at a new peak position of number eighteen. Clementine Douglas was among the acts performing at BBC Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Sunderland last weekend. She reached number three last year as the vocalist on Calvim Harris’s Blessings. The song is back in the top forty at number 27. Natasha Bedingfield’s Unwritten was a top ten hit in 2004. Twenty years later, it returned to the chart for an extended run. Now it is back for another go at number 40. Pinkpantheress’s Stateside re-enters at number 38. Singer-songwriter Maisie Peters was born in Steyning, a few miles north of Shoreham, and is now based in Brighton. In 2021 she became the first act to join the record label set up by Ed Sheeran and she released her debut album You Signed Up For This. That album debuted at number two, but its successor The Good Witch went one place higher. Album number three, Florescence, started the week at number one, but its lead over The Essential Michael Jackson halved between Tuesday’s update and Wednesday’s. In the end, Maisie Peters did enough to grab herself a second number one album with The Essential Michael Jackson in second place, just 250 “sales” behind.. He is also at number five with Thriller. Darke’s Iceman falls two places to number three. His other two new albums suffer more drastic falls. Olivia Dean is at number four with The Art Of Loving. Michael Ball is at number nine with his latest album Glow. Ball has had two top ten singles, 31 years apart. His debut hit Love Changes Everything reached number two in 1989. He famously topped the chart in 2020 with a version of You’ll Never Walk Alone, accompanied by charity fundraiser Tom Moore who was approaching his 100th birthday. American rock band finally got a deserved hit album in the UK when their fourth studio set reached number five in 2024. They now have a second hit to their name as Everyone For ten Minutes lands at number ??? Their singer, and main songwriter, Jack Antonoff, is more widely known as a co-writer with the likes of Taylor Swift, Lana del Rey, Pink and Florence Welch. In the early days of search engines, it would probably have been quite hard to find information on a band called A. However, they are now more sophisticated and can take into account a user’s previous searches. Therefore, someone who looks up a lot of musical acts only has to type a few letters of “A band” to find them. We can soon find that the band were formed in Lowestoft, a coastal town between Ipswich and Norwich, and the birthplace of Benjamin Britten as well as three members of The Darkness. Only one of their four previous albums reached the top forty. Album number five nearly gave them a second top forty hit, but they just missed out. Prang is at number 42. It is at number one on the Rock and Metal albums chart. Dominic Harrison, better known as Yungblud, had two number one albums last year - Idols and One More Time, the latter recorded with Aerosmith. Two new physical editions of Idols were released last week, allowing the album to return to the chart at number seventeen.

42 please

They will only notice if the OCC issues a press release which they can copy and paste with a few minor changes.

It happens in other confederations, apart form South America which has very few members.

Best Depeche Mode - Everything Counts Kraftwerk - Tour De France The Kinks - Come Dancing Genesis - Mama Heaven 17 - Crushed By The Wheels Of Industry Worst Peabo Bryson And Roberta Flack - Tonight, I Celebrate My Love KC And The Sunshine Band - Give It Up Status Quo - Ol' Rag Blues Tie-break Moonlight Shadow

I think I might have banned myself from entering the USA for a while. An anti-Trump post on Threads now has 13,800 likes

Another week at number one fot Olivia, then.

Well done to @Rooney for an emphatic win! And thanks to @Houdini fot your hard work in running the competition.

Brighton & Hove Albion 2-1 Manchester United Burnley 2-1 Wolverhampton Wanderers Crystal Palace 1-3 Arsenal Fulham 1-2 Newcastle United Liverpool 3-1 Brentford Manchester City 2-0 Aston Villa Nottingham Forest 2-2 AFC Bournemouth Sunderland 1-1 Chelsea Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Everton West Ham United 1-1 Leeds United

Saxophonist Dick Parry has died aged 83. I love a sax part, so we really should mark this in the RIP slot. He worked with Pink Floyd, including playing on Us And Them on Dark Side Of The Moon.

A penalty shoot-out awaits

This week's meanderings can be found from the Blogs page or the Forums Index page.

San Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In remains at the top of the singles chart. It has now spent twelve of the last fourteen weeks at the summit. With one of Rein Me In’s three runs at the top having been ended by Olivia Rodrigo, there has been an Olivia at the top of the chart for the last eleven weeks. Olivia Newton-John still holds the record for the longest continuous run at number one by a single Olivia. Last Friday (15 May), Drake released not one, but three new albums. It is fair to say that some people were rather more enthusiastic about this development than others. With a total of 43 tracks between the three albums, Drake songs could have swamped the singles chart if the three-song limit for a single artist had not been introduced. When his popularity was at its peak, he could have occupied almost the entire top forty. In recent years, Drake’s singles have been rather less successful than earlier in his career. Even when his songs have achieved high peak positions, they haven’t always stayed in the chart for very long. The three songs from Drake’s new albums to be allowed into the chart all come from Iceman. Janice STFU is at number two, one palace ahead of national treasures. Make The Cry is at number six. Drake has now accumulated 102 top forty singles since his debut in 2009. Fifty of them have reached the top ten. If he has three songs in next week’s top forty he will have notched up 700 weeks in the broadcast chart. There have been approximately 850 charts since Drake’s first hit. Michael Jackson's Billie Jean is at number four. Tame Impala is at number five with Dracula. Jackson is also at number eight with Human Nature and number nine with Beat It. Apart from the Drake songs, there are just two other new entries. The first is by Gracie Abrams. She made her chart debut in 2023 but didn’t enter the top forty until the following year. Her biggest hit to date came later in 2024 when That’s So True went to number one. The song spent a total of eight weeks at the top, having made way for Wham for three weeks part-way through its run. Hit The Wall, a new entry at number eighteen, is her sixth top forty hit. . Last weekend the Eurovision Song Contest was held in Vienna. The UK entry came last (again) and is nowhere to be seen in this week’s top 100. The only Eurovision song in the top forty is the winner, Bangaranga by Dara at number 21. The Bulgarian entry sounds a little like two songs mashed together. It starts of as a fairly pleasant song until it is spoilt by the Bangaranga bits. One of the highlights of last week’s chart was the departure of the K-Pop Demon Hunters’ Golden. It spent the latter half of last year in the top forty (including ten weeks at number one), dropped out in the week of the most Christmas-heavy chart, before returning for another long run. However, it just won’t go away. It is back this week at number 39. And so we return to Drake and those three albums. Multiple releases of new albums by a single artist are rare. The most famous examples in the past are those by Bruce Springsteen and Guns ‘n’ Roses who both released two new albums on the same day. On both occasions, they occupied the top two positions in the albums chart the following week. Would Drake be able to top that by taking the top three positions? Thankfully, the answer to the above question is No. That said, one of them, Iceman, is at number one. It was clear by Wednesday’s update that “sales” of Iceman would be more than double the combined sales of the other two albums, Maid Of Honour and Habibti. Those two albums finished at numbers six and seven respectively. Drake has now had seventeen top ten albums, including seven number ones. The Essential Michael Jackson slips to number two. Olivia Dean climbs back up to number the wih The Art Of Loving. Noah Kahan’s The Great Divide is at number five. Returning to Eurovision, Freya Skye (now sixteen years old) represented the UK in the junior version of the contest in 2022.She won the public vote but a fifth place finish from the jury meant that she came fifth overall. She has now released her debut album Stardust. It is a new entry at number 35 and is at number one in the Vinyl Albums chart. London band The Karma Effect get their second top forty album with Intentions at number 39.