As anticipated, Billie Eilish only manages a single week – which means she’s now had two 1-week number ones. We’re still in Barbie territory, though.

1. Dua Lipa – “Dance the Night (From Barbie the Album)”

Climbing to number 1 in its thirteenth week on chart. This has grown on me somewhat, but it still strikes me as something of a generic Dua Lipa track. It’s her fourth number 1, following “New Rules” (2017), “One Kiss” (2018) and “Cold Heart” (2021). The Billie Eilish track is at number 2, and we’ve also got “Barbie World” at 9, “Speed Drive” at 15, and “I’m Just Ken” at 22. Overall, the Barbie wave seems to have crested, and given how long it took Dua Lipa to get here in the first place, I suspect she won’t be here too long.

In an absurdly quiet week for new singles, there is just a single new entry on the top 40. There’s also a slightly baffling re-entry for “Dog Days are Over” by Florence & The Machine at number 27, which appears to have had its downweighting reset on the very tenuous basis that it’s in a film soundtrack on Disney+ – but it already reached number 21 earlier in the year.

But what about that new entry? Ah. Well.

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At long last, “Sprinter” by Dave & Central Cee is comfortably past its peak and gets hit by the downweighting rule – with the result that it drops straight to number 10 after a ten-week run at number 1. Thanks to that, our new number one is…

1. Billie Eilish – “What Was I Made For”

Not by a huge margin, admittedly. Dua Lipa is number 2, and the midweeks have her taking the slot next week. But it’s Billie Eilish’s second number one, and a very good record, too. The other one was “No Time To Die”, which had a single week at number one in 2020, so she’s in the odd position that her two biggest hits both come from film soundtracks. This one is more characteristic of her normal work, though. And hey, she’s had another 7 top ten hits to go with them both.

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For the first time in a while, this is a dead week for the singles chart.

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

That’s 10 weeks, tying with Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” as the longest running number one of the year. In theory, the next target is Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits”, which had 11 weeks in 2021. But “Sprinter” is due to be hit by the downweighting rule next week, so in practical terms it has no prospect of getting there. The top three is all non-movers – in fact, there are six non-movers in the top 10 – so Billie Eilish has a reasonable shot of taking the number 1 by default next week.

20. Doja Cat – “Paint the Town Red”

Doja Cat’s previous single “Attention” stalled at number 37, but probably achieved its actual goal of signalling that she’s tacking away from pop. That means we can follow it up with a track with a nice familiar sample – “Walk On By”, which reached number 9 for Dionne Warwick in 1964. Warwick’s biggest UK hit was actually “Heartbreaker”, which got to number 2 in 1982. “Walk On By” has also been a hit single for the Stranglers (number 21 in 1978), Sybil (number 6 in 1990) and Gabrielle (number 7 in 1997). The 1962 top 5 hit of the same name by Leroy Van Dyke is a different song entirely.

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Not even Barbie can shift this. Well, not yet.

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

That’s nine weeks – it needs one more week to match Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers” from earlier in the year. It’s not due to get hit by the downweighting rule last week because it isn’t far enough past its peak yet, so it’s got a decent chance of getting there. It’s not a track I would have predicted having this much sustained popularity, but there you go. Central Cee has another track out this week too, but we’ll get to that later.

It’s holding off three Barbie tracks – Billie Eilish at 2, Dua Lipa at 3 and Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice at 4, with Charli XCX also entering the top 10 at number 9.

10. Travis Scott featuring Drake – “Meltdown”
13. Travis Scott featuring Playboi Carti – “Fein”
21. Travis Scott – “Hyaena”

That’s the maximum three tracks from Travis Scott’s fourth album “Utopia”. It’s his first UK number 1 album, but since the chart positions for the previous three were 22, 19 and 3, it’s not a huge surprise. He’s not a consistent singles act in the UK, despite having a few big hits to his credit (his peak was number 2 in 2019 with “Highest in the Room”). The lead single for this album was “K-Pop”, which got to number 24 last week, and gets immediately shouldered aside by these tracks.

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Hope you like pink.

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

That’s eight weeks. Still two weeks to go before they match “Flowers” from earlier in the year. “Vampire” by Olivia Rodrigo remains stuck at number 2 for a fourth week, and after that we have the march of the Barbie soundtrack, with Billie Eilish at 3, Dua Lipa at 4 and Nicki Minaj & Ice Spice at 5. Apparently, this is the first time a single movie soundtrack has produced three simultaneous top 5 hits. (Three simultaneous top 10 hits has been done before, by Encanto, Grease and Saturday Night Fever.)

But the three song rule only applies to artists, not compilation albums. It applied to Encanto because even though individual tracks were credited to different actors, the chart treated it as a single album by The Cast of Encanto. Barbie‘s album is a true compilation of unrelated acts, which means the whole lot can chart if people listen to it all. So…

19. Charli XCX – “Speed Drive (From Barbie The Album)”

Charli XCX hasn’t had a top 20 hit of her own since “1999” in 2018 (though she did guest on a Joel Corry track in 2021). This is the one which interpolates the hook from “Mickey” by Toni Basil (number 2 in 1982, and yes, it’s her only UK hit). “Mickey” is actually a gender-swapped cover of a 1979 album track by Racey, originally called “Kitty” – it’s a Chinn/Chapman song. But the original version doesn’t have the cheerleader chant that “Speed Drive” lifts – that’s Toni Basil’s contribution. Racey are almost entirely forgotten now, but they had two top 5 hits in 1978-9.

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It’s a fairly busy week for new releases. But at the top of the singles chart…

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

That’s seven weeks, which beats the six-week run of its immediate predecessor “Miracle”. It still need another three weeks to match Miley Cyrus’s ten-week run with “Flowers” earlier this year. We seem to be in an era where records either get 1-2 weeks at number 1, or stay there forever. Its sister tracks “UK Rap” and “Trojan Horse” are still clinging in there, at 33 and 40 respectively. It holds Olivia Rodrigo’s “Vampire” at number 2 for a second week.

3. Jung Kook featuring Latto – “Seven”

This is the solo debut of BTS’s Jeon Jung-Kook, and it matches the peak of BTS’s biggest hits – “Dynamite”, “Butter”, and their appearance on Coldplay’s “My Universe”. Technically he was on a Charlie Puth single last year, but it only got to 41, so we can pretend it didn’t happen. Latto’s bit of the video is, um, something. It’s only her second hit, following “Big Energy” getting to 21 last year.

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We’ve missed a couple of weeks, but not much has changed.

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

That’s six weeks, which is a record for Dave. As a result, this record has spent two weeks stuck at number 2…

2. Olivia Rodrigo – “Vampire”

This is the lead single from her second album, which was expected to be a surefire number 1 but… well, it’s been stuck behind a juggernaut. Nice melodramatic video.

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Not the most memorable of top 10s. We have a static top four, and nine of the ten songs were there last week too. So for a third week…

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

… is number one.

11. Leigh-Anne – “Don’t Say Love”

That would be Leigh-Anne Pinnock of Little Mix, whose surname has apparently been deemed unsuitable for solo status. The fact that she misses the top 10 is likely to cause a bit of concern, but Little Mix tracks have climbed from mid-table entries before, so the jury is still out. The track itself is… okay, I guess?

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Intro.

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”

Dave and Central Cee hang on for a second week, and the other two tracks from the “Split Decision” EP both climb – “Trojan Horse” moves 14-12, and “UK Rap” 17-14.

2. J Hus featuring Drake – “Who Told You”

More UK rap, but it’s not quite enough to shift Dave. This is comfortably J Hus’s biggest hit – he made it to number 5 in 2019 with “Must Be”, but he hasn’t made the top 10 since then. His only other top 10 hit was in 2017, when “Did You See” managed a week at 9. This is the second single from his upcoming album, following “It’s Crazy”, which could only manage number 15. Drake’s name is likely hurting here, even though his actual contribution is on autopilot. But the record itself is also one of J Hus’s more commercial tracks.

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So, “Miracle” doesn’t hold on for a ninth week at number 1. Instead…

1. Dave & Central Cee – “Sprinter”
14. Dave & Central Cee – “Trojan Horse”
17. Dave & Central Cee – “UK Rap”

For once, this isn’t three tracks from an album. “Sprinter” was released as a regular single and dutifully sails to number 1 with 13.4 million streams in its first week. The other two tracks are from a surprise follow-up EP, “Split Decision”. “Sprinter” appears on the EP too, but the remaining track, “Our 25th Birthday”, gets disqualified by the three-song rule. As that title might suggest, even though Dave has been having hits for longer, they’re the same age – their birthdays are one day apart, and the EP was timed for that.

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