Charts – 3 March 2023
It’s another largely uneventful week. The top three is static, so…
…gets a seventh week. That overtakes Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero”, but it still needs another week to match LF System’s “Afraid To Feel” from last summer. Number 2 is PinkPantheress’s “Boy’s a Liar”, which has been in the top 3 for three weeks now, and number 3 is SZA’s “Kill Bill”, which has been at number 3 for seven of the last eight weeks.
4. The Weeknd – “Die For You”
Technically, this is not a new entry – it’s a climber from number 37. However, the reason why a track that’s been out for years has climbed 33 places is the release of new mix with Ariana Grande. So, you know, it’ll have to do.
If it’s actual new entries that you want, we have to go all the way down to…
Charts – 24 February 2023
The rest of the top 10 is starting to free up – mostly due to older records being cleared out under the downweighting rules – but there’s no shifting…
…just yet. It is comfortably past its peak, so the end is in sight, but in the meantime it gets a sixth week at number one. This matches the run of Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” in November/December, but it’s not especially out of the ordinary yet – 2022 saw three other number 1s with longer runs than this (“We Don’t Talk About Bruno”, “As It Was” and “Afraid To Feel”).
There is movement in the top 10, but none of it involves new entries, so we move on to…
18. Niall Horan – “Heaven”
This is the lead single from his third album. By the standards of One Direction members who aren’t Harry Styles, Niall Horan’s solo career is entirely respectable. It’s been three years since his previous album, and so it’s been a while since we’ve had him on the singles chart (he also popped up on an Anne-Marie single in 2021).
Charts – 17 February 2023
This is the week after the Brit Awards, which has… to be honest, almost no impact on the chart. With one exception, which we’ll come to. But it’s a quiet week otherwise.
Five weeks. The number 2 single is still “Escapism” by Raye, which has been there for five weeks too.
7. Harry Styles – “As It Was”
This is the one obvious impact of the Brits: last year’s Harry Styles number 1 rebounds into the top 10. It was still hanging around the fringes of the top 40 anyway – it’s actually a climber from 34 – but there’s no apparent reason for it to be here beyond the Brit Awards. Particularly since a lot of its chart points are coming from views of the video above. I’m not sure why, since I don’t think it’s an especially great live performance… but there you go.
Charts – 10 February 2023
The top three has now been static for a month, which is… exciting…?
1. Miley Cyrus – “Flowers”
Four weeks. It’s still miles ahead of anything else, and it’s holding Raye’s “Escapism” – a former number 1 – in the number 2 place. Of somewhat more interest is the fact that SZA’s “Kill Bill” has spent five straight weeks at number 3. That’s not quite the biggest hit of her career, if you count her guest appearance on Doja Cat’s “Kiss Me more” – which had a total of six weeks at number 3 – but it’s far and away her breakout hit single as a solo act.
8. PinkPantheress – “Boy’s A Liar”
Officially, this is a re-entry for the track that spent a week at number 38 at the end of January, but the version now being pushed is the Ice Spice remix. Clearly she’s making a big difference here, but since it hasn’t officially been nominated as the lead version, she doesn’t get a chart credit.
Charts – 3 February 2023
It’s a fairly quiet week. The top 5 is static, which means the number 1 is still…
… which has double the points of the number 2 single as it spends a third week at number one. It’s a good record but I’m surprised it’s doing quite this well – it’s certainly not simply Miley’s star power, since her previous number 1 was back in 2013. It does stand out, genre-wise, in the current chart, which can’t hurt.
11. KSI featuring Oliver Tree – “Voices”
Well, that remix thing finally gave Oliver Tree a mainstream hit, so let’s have a go at capitalising! And that means… a collaboration with KSI? Okay, then. It actually enters one place below “Miss You”, which is still in the top 10 after a total of 11 weeks. The song itself is fairly conventional; the video is – well, Oliver Tree’s an idiosyncratic director, and he’s evidently not minded to shift on that. I can see this making the top ten, though. And it doesn’t have any of that awkwardness of cloning a bootleg remix…
Charts – 27 January 2023
Well, we’re getting back to the normal rhythm of the singles chart – which is to say, quiet, but there’s some movement..
Two weeks – which is more than either of her previous number ones managed. It’s easy to forget how long Miley Cyrus has been around – her first hit was in 2008, so she’s now into her sixteenth year of having hits. It could easily have been longer, since one of her Hannah Montana tracks got to number 43 in 2007. Her previous number ones were a decade ago.
The top five is completely static, so that’s certainly familiar.
9. Headie One – “Martin’s Sofa”
To be honest, this leaves me completely cold. I think you maybe have to be invested in Headie One and his back story. Which is a shame, because it’s called “Martin’s Sofa”, which is clearly a great title. But as a record, it’s very one note. Anyway, it’s Headie One’s fifth top 10 hit. All the others had very high profile guest stars on them – as in, AJ Tracey, Stormzy, Dave and Drake – so it’s significant that he’s making the top ten completely under his own power here.
Charts – 20 January 2023
Well, I never got around to doing last week’s column, so let’s jump direct to yesterday’s chart and pick up the other new entries as we go along. In fact, we’ve missed an entire number one, because “Pointless” by Lewis Capaldi was at the top last week. And this is… probably something the chart would prefer not to think about.
Basically, Capaldi hyped himself to number one for a single week the old fashioned way – in the worst possible sense of that concept – by encouraging his fanbase to order heavily discounted copies of the CD single, of all things. There’s some silly story about too many having been ordered, or something like that, which I assume we’re not meant to actually believe. At any rate, the upshot is that Capaldi got himself a week at number one on the back of physical sales to hardcore fans, with a chart record that reads 20-43-40-60-15-1-12. This is silly.
Charts – 6 January 2023
The first chart of the post-Christmas period is always insane, as the Christmas records crash straight out of the top 100, and the records that would have been in the top 40 flood back in to take their place. I’m not going to bother documenting all the records leaving the top 40 this week – it’s everything aside from number 13, 31, 32, 37 and 38. One point that is worth mentioning, though, is that with the departure of his Christmas record from 2022, Ed Sheeran no longer has any singles in the top 40. The last Sheeranless top 40 was in June 2021, just before the release of “Bad Habits”.
So – who’s still standing in the rubble?
1. Raye featuring 070 Shake – “Escapism”
Yay! This entered the chart at the start of December, and it’s hung in there throughout the Christmas storm – it’s had four weeks in the top 10 so far, and it was still at 13 last week. It’s fantastic and plainly deserves to be a number one. If it wasn’t for the Christmas back catalogue, it would have been already.
Charts – 30 December 2022
By convention, the Christmas Number One is whatever happens to be number one on Christmas Day, which in practice means whatever was the most popular track in the seven days ending on the Thursday before Christmas. That’s the chart that people try and launch campaigns for. But this week’s chart is the one that covers Christmas itself, running from December 23 to 29. That means half a week of the heaviest Christmas listening, followed by… well, a few days of Not That, but it turns out that the Christmas side absolutely predominates. And so…
1. Wham! – “Last Christmas”
The Christmas number 2 of 1984 returns to number 1 after a week of being interrupted by LadBaby’s charity single. We’ll come back to him. For now, let’s just note that “Last Christmas” has now spent a total of three weeks at number 1 – two this year, one in 2020.
The disappearance of the novelty singles means there are gaps at the bottom end of the chart, and so we do have some tracks entering the top 40 – all of them back Christmas records, naturally.
Charts – 23 December 2022
Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes it brings deep sighing.
1. LadBaby – “Food Aid”
And you thought it was tiresome when Simon Cowell got the Christmas number one every year. Mark Hoyle has now had the Christmas number 1 five years running, which, yes, means he’s beaten the record that he previous set with the Beatles. This had a certain fluke charm in the first year, but it’s now starting to feel like someone trying to establish himself as a national institution even though you probably never hear of him the rest of the year.
