It’s the weeks like this that I enjoy.

1.  Benny Blanco featuring Halsey & Khalid – “Eastside”

New number one!  That’s not the most interesting thing about this week’s chart, but still, new number one!  “Eastside” has climbed 40-23-12-4-3-1 to get here, and it’s a great pop single (with a very good video), so I’m perfectly happy to see it here.  It might not be here long, though – it only has a very slight margin over the Calvin Harris & Sam Smith single, equivalent to 139 sales.

Halsey gets her second number one, two years after singing on the Chainsmokers’ “Closer”.  Khalid’s previous best was number three, guesting on Marshmello’s “Silence”.  And this is Benny Blanco’s first hit as a credited artist, but he’s been around as a producer and songwriter for years, so he’s had a hand in several number one hits: Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl”, Ke$ha’s “We R Who We R”, Maroon 5’s “Payphone”, Major Lazer’s “Cold Water”… yes, well.  This one is good.

Now for something different.  This week’s highest new entry:

21.  BTS – “Idol”

K-pop!  It’s not the first piece of K-pop to chart in the UK – obviously, that was “Gangnam Style”, the viral hit of 2012 which accidentally went global despite being aimed at audiences who would get jokes about a specific district of Seoul.  Five years after we last heard from Psy (there was a follow-up, he isn’t technically a one-hit wonder), it’s time for the second South Korean act to make the top 40.  Since a lot of K-pop is eminently friendly to Western ears, and good to boot, it’s surprising this hasn’t happened earlier.

But BTS, who are huge stars in South Korea, seem to be having a serious go at the international push.  Two other singles, “Mic Drop” and “Fake Love”, just missed the top 40 within the last year; two previous compilation albums have charted in the top 20.  The third, “Love Yourself – Answer”, enters the album chart at 14 this week.  Now the lead single reaches the singles chart, and it’s good.  The lyrics are a mixture of Korean and English – though the chorus line “you can’t stop me loving myself” pretty much gives you the general idea.  It’s a stadium pop epic, with a video to match, and I could see this going further.

There’s a version with a guest verse by Nicki Minaj, for particularly nervous radio programmers.  But I doubt that’s made too much of a difference here.  Her own album didn’t make a huge impact earlier this month, and the lower end of the top 75 is frequently littered with obscure Nicki Minaj guest verses.  Note that the record company hasn’t elected to treat her version as the lead, and give her a “featuring” credit on the chart – this is about pushing BTS.

36.  Freya Ridings – “Lost Without You”

This is the first hit for Freya Ridings, and it’s a songwriter-y piano ballad of the sort we don’t often see in the top 40.  It’s here because ITV used it to soundtrack what I am told was an especially moving break-up in Love Island a month ago, which prompted Radio 1 to pick up on it, and has now led to a proper promotional effort.  That includes the video above, which will be unmissable for fans of hair blowing in slow motion.  It’s a good song, albeit something of an X Factor audition piece in waiting.

And finally for this week’s new entries – you wait five years for another South Korean single, and two of them come along at once!

37.  Pinkfong – “Baby Shark”

Okay, so you know when I said a while back that adding video streams to the chart didn’t seem to have led to dodgy viral crud making the top 40?  We-e-e-e-ellll… this is a South Korean nursery rhyme video which people are doing a dance thing to.  And it’s number 37.  It really is.  The video dates from 2014 but somehow went global after going viral in Indonesia last year.  Such are the time in which we live.

Mind you, this really is an extreme case.  At over 1.6 billion views, it’s the 35th most watched video on YouTube… ever.  The top 100 list is overwhelmingly regular music videos, so oddities like this are not going to make the chart on YouTube hits all that frequently.

This week’s climbers:

• “Promises” by Calvin Harris & Sam Smith climbs 4-2.
• “Taste” by Tyga featuring Offset climbs to 9 after three weeks stuck at 10.
• “Lucid Dreams” by Juice WRLD climbs to 11 after three weeks stuck at 10.  Pattern!
• “All I Am” by Jess Glynne climbs 16-12
• “In My Mind” by Dynoro & Gigi D’Agostino leaps 36-15, so it’s going to be around a while.
• “Happier” by Marshmello & Bastille climbs 31-16.
• “Nevermind” by Dennis Lloyd climbs 19-17.
• “Don’t Leave Me Alone” by David Guetta featuring Anne-Marie climbs 23-20.
• “079Me” by B Young climbs 25-24.
• “High Hopes” by Panic at the Disco climbs 34-25 in its sixth week on chart, presumably helped by the video coming out.
• “Best Life” by Hardy Caprio featuring One Acen climbs 32-26.
• “Panic Room” by Au/ra & Camelphat reaches a new peak of 33, three weeks after it got to 34.  It’s been on the top 40 for seven weeks now and this is as far as it’s got.

Meanwhile, over on the album chart, the Mamma Mia – Here We Go Again soundtrack is back at number 1 for its fifth week in total.  And as already mentioned, BTS’s album is number 14.  Other than that…

6.  Interpol – “Marauder”

That’s their higher placing album since 2007’s “Our Love To Admire”.  Interpol have consistently placed in the top 10 since then, though.

9.  Alice in Chains – “Rainier Fog”

For some reason the Official Charts Company are claiming this as AiC’s “first ever UK Top 10 album” in their news article, which is highly debatable – a combined re-issue of their EPs “Jar of Flies” and “Sap” reached number 4 in 1994.  It was held off the top spot by ZZ Top, Diana Ross, and Chaka Demus & Pliers.

20.  Gilbert O’Sullivan – “Gilbert O’Sullivan”

This is an original Gilbert O’Sullivan album, his nineteenth – and the first to even make the top 75 since “A Stranger in My Own Back Yard” way back in 1974.  He’s seventy-one now.  He’s popped up fairly regularly with compilations, though, and for some reason this one seems to be charting at their sort of level.

25.  White Denim – “Performance”

Their second album to chart, only a few places behind its predecessor.

30.  Stone Foundation – “Everybody Anyone”

The follow-up to last year’s “Street Rituals”, which reached 25.  They’re endorsed by Paul Weller, who produced their previous album and appears on this one.