Now, One Direction had a good run.  Five albums over four years.  That’s a decent lifespan for their ilk.  But if you’re in a boy band, you should have an exit strategy.  At some point, you stop being boys.  And growing with the audience is easier said than done, because you tend to be the sort of thing the fans make a point of leaving behind as they get older.  Look at Take That – consigned to the “vaguely embarrassing” file until the audience were old enough not to be so self-conscious about liking them.

And if you’re a member of One Direction, you probably noticed that the media long since established the conventional wisdom that, come the inevitable split, the successful one – the really A-list one – was Harry Styles.  Good news for Harry Styles.  Less thrilling for the other four.

This is “Pillowtalk” by Zayn, number one for the week of 5 February 2016.  He used to be Zayn Malik, so I guess the rest of the band got to keep his surname in the divorce.  He quit the group last March, claiming that he wanted to be a “normal 22 year old who is able to relax and have some private time out of the spotlight”.  Since he was already seen hanging around with other producers later that month, it’s easy to be cynical about that, but three years in One Direction probably was a non-stop grind, and chances are that his solo career has indeed been a welcome relief by comparison.

Of course, the first resignation has long been established as a canary in the mineshaft for major pop groups – just ask Take That, or the Spice Girls.  Officially, One Direction are now on a hiatus, but hiatuses in their line of work have a nasty tendency to stick.

A solo debut in these circumstances is a branding exercise as much as anything else.  Reasonably enough, Zayn seems to have his eyes on Robbie Williams’ ostentatious rejection of his old band, and Justin Timberlake’s bid for musical credibility, both of which are winning angles if you can sell people on them.  In that context, “Pillowtalk” could be seen as bit obvious in its “Hey kids I’m singing about sex now” approach, but judged as a song it’s actually pretty decent, and it suits his voice.  It managed a week at number 1, which is hardly surprising given his inherited fanbase.  More notable, really, is that it went on to move 1-2-2-4, which means it’s selling outside the hardcore fans. He’ll be chalking this one up as a win.

Nobody is releasing a major single against Zayn, so the week’s other new entries are “Summer Sixteen” by Drake at 23 (which crashed from there) and “One Call Away” by Charlie Puth at 29 (still hovering in the mid-twenties).

With that, we enter the age of “7 Years” by Lukas Graham, number 1 from 12 February to date (three weeks and counting).  Apparently the “on air, on sale” philosophy is making a comeback in British record labels, as this entered at number 24 in January and climbed to the top.  Lukas Graham are technically a band, though they’re one of those bands named after their own lead singer, which must be, um, an interesting conversation.  (“I was thinking that Lukas Graham might be a good name.”  “Isn’t that your name?”  “Yes.  It’s awesome, isn’t it?”)

I may have mentioned last month that the band’s Wikipedia page shows some signs of fan enthusiasm, but it’s nothing compared to Lukas Graham Forchhammer’s personal page, which offers the surprising information that he voiced Andy in the Danish dub of Toy Story 2 and 3, before explaining how “he began to architect a singular style that transcended international barriers and cultural boundaries”, after discovering Dr Dre.  Quite how that links back to the inoffensive record above, I’m not entirely sure.

Still, it’s undoubtedly a hit.  Lukas Graham are indeed big stars in their native Denmark, where this was their fifth number one.  It’s clearly been chosen as the single to launch them internationally – a bit strangely, since the lyrics reference the international success that they didn’t actually have until it was released.  And it’s done pretty well across Europe so far.  They’re only the third Danish act to have a number 1 in Britain, and that’s assuming you count Aqua, whose singer was Norwegian.  (The other one was Whigfield.)

Other than that, it’s been a quiet few weeks.  The 12 February chart had new entries for “Hymn for the Weekend” by Coldplay at 20 (now at 10 and climbing), “When We Were Young” by Adele at 33 (now at 13 and climbing – this previously charted as an album track on release in December, but it’s now promoted to an official single), “Stressed Out” by Twenty One Pilots at 34 (now at 19 and climbing), and “Me Myself & I” by G-Eazy featuring Bebe Rexha at 40 (27 and climbing).  So we’re back in an era of low entries and slow climbers, apparently.

The only new entry on the 19 February chart was “Swings and Waterslides” by Viola Beach, which spent a week at number 11 before dropping out of the top 40.  This one is tragic – Viola Beach were a widely tipped indie band who were killed in a car crash while touring Sweden the week before.  They had only released two singles, this being the first, and it’s the commemorative purchase.  On a pure sales chart, it would actually have made number 3, which shows you the sort of difference that streaming data makes these days.  It’s had a particularly muting effect on the sort of tracks that are bought as a badge of allegiance, be they memorial purchases, chart campaigns or second-tier charity singles, presumably because listening to them repeatedly on Spotify doesn’t carry the same sense of participation.  The actual song is good, and they deserve their posthumous place in the chart.

And the 26 February 2016 chart.  The highest new entry is “I Took A Pill In Ibiza” by Mike Posner, one of those people who’s mainly a songwriter for other, better known acts, but does put out some of his own stuff.  His only previous solo hit in the UK was “Cooler Than Me”, which got to number 5 in 2010, though he did appear somewhat randomly as a guest on a Cher Lloyd single the following year.  The version above is the largely-acoustic original, which came out in the middle of last year; the version that’s doing well in Europe, though, is a remix by the Norwegian duo SeeB, which is pretty much what we’ve come to expect from European dance producers speeding up acoustic records.  The original is better, though it’s still basically a “state of my career, eh” lament.

Only two other new entries.   “Cheap Thrills” by Sia is at 37, with one of those “lyric videos” that’s cost more than most people’s official videos.  And “Faded” by Alan Walker is at 40, a dance record whose video does a pretty serviceable job of pretending to be shot in somewhere like Chernobyl when it’s actually Tallinn.  Unusually, the acoustic version has its own video.