At last, could we be resuming normal turnover?

1. Lewis Capaldi – “Survive” 

Another new number 1! We last heard from Lewis Capaldi in January 2024, when “Strangers” reached number 37. But that was a single that he barely promoted, having withdrawn from live shows on mental health grounds after summer 2023, when he had an episode of Tourette’s syndrome during his set at the Glastonbury Festival. He promoted this single with a surprise set at the 2025 Festival. That clearly made a big difference, since he released a covers EP last month that seems to have gone mostly unnoticed.

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Right, for real this time.

1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild” 

At long last, the chart rules deem Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” to be far enough past its peak to boot it down the charts. The downweighting rule – “accelerated chart ratio”, if you prefer the official name – is a singularly blunt instrument, and “Ordinary” lands at this week’s number 9. It would otherwise still be number 1 by a healthy margin.

More by default than anything else, “Manchild” returns to number 1 for a second week, but it’s less than 10% ahead of the number 2 single and falling, so it may not be there long. That number 2 single is “Dior” by MK featuring Chrystal, which… nope, still hate it. It’s MK’s biggest hit, though – his previous peak was 7. We used to have to asterisk that with the fact that his real biggest hit was his remix of “Push the Feeling On” by the Nightcrawlers in 1994, but that peaked at 3.

4. Fred Again, Skepta & PlaqueBoyMax – “Victory Lap”

That’s a Fred again.. track? Really? I would not have guessed that. It’s his biggest hit since “Adore U” reached number 4 in 2023. Astonishingly, it’s only Skepta’s second top 10 hit – the other was a guest verse on Wiley’s “Can You Hear Me”, which reached number 3 in 2012.

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Oh, come on.

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary” 

Alex Warren returns to number one for a thirteenth week, beating Sabrina Carpenter into second place by a comfortable 10% margin. There’s a big gap between those two and the number 3 single, but… no, more Alex Warren. Fortunately, next week he will finally get hit with the downweighting rule, and that will get rid of him for good. From the number 1 spot, anyway.

We have to go a long way down to find any new entries:

30. J-Hope featuring GloRilla – “Killin’ It Girl”

This is another BTS single, nicely timed to fit with the band returning from military service. J-Hope has been out for a few months already. It’s only his second solo top 40 appearance – the other was a single with J Cole that reached number 37 in 2023. God, the vocal processing on this is annoying.

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We’re saved!

1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Manchild”

This is the lead single from her upcoming album “Man’s Best Friend”, and it finally liberates us from Alex Warren’s “Ordinary”, which had been number 1 since March. The margin is less than 5% but I’ll take it. “Manchild” is a perfectly good Sabrina Carpenter single in the vein established by the previous album (and it helps if you stick with it to the middle eight, which acknowledges that if she’s running into this many incompetents, the issue might actually be with her taste in men).

It’s her fourth number one, following last year’s triumvirate of “Espresso”, “Please Please Please” and “Taste”.

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Oh god…

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary” 

Twelve weeks. The chart company is getting very excitable about how this compares to American artists of the past, but it’s not very meaningful, because they were working in the sales era, and so their runs at number one weren’t measuring continued listening.

At this point we need to get into the tedious details of the downweighting rule. I normally summarise it here as meaning that a record gets downweighted if it’s been out for ten weeks and it’s more than three weeks past its peak. It’s a bit subtler than that: it’s three weeks in which the change in consumption from week-to-week is consistently below the market average. Alex Warren has benefitted from this, because he has had three consecutive weeks where consumption went down, but in some of them the whole market was down, so he was still above average. The result is that he is still not in any imminent danger of being downweighted.

If he makes a thirteenth week – and by all appearances he will because he still has nearly double the consumption of the number 2 single – then that will match the run of “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran in 2017, which is before the downweighting rule was introduced, and so isn’t directly comparable. God help us all.

6. Tate McRae – “Just Keep Watching”

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It never ends.

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary”
9. Alex Warren featuring Jelly Roll – “Bloodline”

“Ordinary” has now been number one for 11 weeks. And it’s still way ahead of Chappell Roan at number 2, so it’s really a question of when it gets hit by downweighting. Unfortunately, it outperformed the market this week, so it’s several weeks off that happening. An 11 week run matches Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits” from 2021. To find a longer number 1 than that, we’re going back to “Shape of You”, which was number 1 for 13 weeks in early 2017.

Meanwhile, the highest new entry this week is from… Alex Warren. It’s Mumford & Sons stuff, with a guest verse by a very obviously autotuned Jelly Roll, making his first appearance in the singles or albums top 40. It’s Perfectly Competent.

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He’s going to be here forever, isn’t he?

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary”

That’s ten weeks. In itself, ten weeks isn’t so unusual for a major hit We had a 9-week number 1 from Sabrina Carpenter last year, and 2023 saw two tracks spend ten weeks at number 1 – “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus and “Sprinter” by Dave and Central Cee. In 2022, Harry Styles did it with “As It Was”. But “Ordinary” is still nearly 70% ahead of Ravyn Lenae at number 2. If it makes eleven weeks – which seems likely – then to match that, you have to go back to “Bad Habits” by Ed Sheeran in 2021.

8. Skye Newman – “Family Matters”

Oh, this is quite good, isn’t it? Skye Newman’s first hit “Hairdresser” entered at number 30 two weeks ago, and it seems to get some spillover attention from this hit – it climbs 29-16 this week, giving her two tracks in the top 20.

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Huh, I nearly forgot about this one.

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary” 

Nine weeks, and still no sign of anything getting close to him. What’s more, streams ticked up slightly this week, so he’s out of danger from the downweighting rule for another few weeks. Nine weeks matches Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” from last year. His next target is Dave and Central Cee’s “Sprinter”, which had a ten week run in 2023. Barring a miracle, he will make that. The top 4 are all non-movers.

8. Calvin Harris & Clementine Douglas – “Blessings”

This is the second single from Calvin Harris’s next album (presumably), and his highest position since 2023 when “Desire” reached number 6 with Sam Smith on vocals. It’s a fairly run-of-the-mill dance record, to be honest. But then the first single from the album went for country-pop and had Harris himself singing, and it missed the top 40 entirely. It’s quite a good vocal, too. Maybe airplay still matters more for artists like Calvin Harris than you might think, and releasing a single called “Smoke the Pain Away” was ill-advised in terms of daytime radio.

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Another very quiet week with no real threat of a change at the top. I know, I’m really building this up.

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary”

Eight weeks. He still needs one more week to match Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” from last year. It’s down a bit, but still has a massive 74% lead over the number 2 single, which is now Ravyn Lenae.

17. Ed Sheeran – “Old Phone”

This is the second single from his upcoming album, making a rather muted debut. It’s been overshadowed by the first single “Azizam”, which is spending its fifth week in the top 5 – albeit without getting above number 3. Obviously, the strategy here is to lead with a pop song and follow up with an acoustic track to cover the bases.

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A decent range of new entries this week…

1. Alex Warren – “Ordinary”

Seven weeks. And its streams are up this week (a bit). This is the longest run at number 1 since “Stick Season” last year, though “Stick Season” is obviously the more interesting record. It still has a massive lead over the number 2 single “Pink Pony Club” – a margin of over 80%.

11. Lorde – “What Was That”

This is the lead single from her upcoming album, and she’s electropop now. It works, though. Lorde is not a consistent presence in the singles chart – she can usually get a lead single into the top 40 but the follow-ups tend not to. Number 11 is high for her, though – she hasn’t been this high since her debut, “Royals”, reached number 1 in 2013. The flashmob performance in Washington Square Park at the end of the video is apparently legit – those are actual fans turning up for the shoot.

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