Well, Ed Sheeran’s got an album out, and it’s a reasonably big deal, but not as big a deal as it used to be.

1. HUNTR/X – “Golden” 

“Golden” gets a seventh non-consecutive week at number one, but it is past its peak and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” came very close this week. If “Golden” manages another week, it will be a surprise.

16. Ed Sheeran – “Camera”

This is the release week single from his album “Play”, which predictably becomes his ninth consecutive number 1 album. “Camera” is the album’s token epic ballad, and it becomes the fifth top 40 track from the album. Most people can only dream of getting that many hit singles off an album.

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The KPop Demon Hunters era continues…

1. HUNTR/X – “Golden” 

Six weeks at number 1. It has peaked, though, and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” is gaining on it at number 2. The two Saja Boys tracks remain in the top 10, with “Soda Pop” at 4 and “Your Idol” at 7; and the Twice songs from the soundtrack are at 24 (“Takedown”) and 35 (“Strategy”). So KPop Demon Hunters is still accounting for more than 10% of the chart on its own.

9. Sabrina Carpenter – “When Did You Get Hot”

This is the three-song rule in action. “Tears” is a non-mover at number 3, and “Manchild” is at number 6; “When Did You Got” is a technical new entry at number 9 because it swaps places with “My Man On His Willpower” as the third most popular track on the album. That song’s streams would have placed it between numbers 10 and 11, but instead it’s disqualified.

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It’s Sabrina Carpenter week!

1. HUNTR/X – “Golden”

I’m going to go with the short version of the artist credit, I think. Anyway, this is its fifth week at number 1, and it’s still growing. The two Saja Boys tracks fall to 5 and 8 this week, but that’s more of a reflection of two high new entries. Their actual streaming figures went up.

3. Sabrina Carpenter – “Tears”
7. Sabrina Carpenter – “My Man on Willpower” 

Sabrina Carpenter’s album “Man’s Best Friend” enters the album chart as her second number 1, and gets the obligatory three singles. The third is former number 1 “Manchild”, which rebounds from 26 to 4. It’s her seventh studio album (ignoring the Christmas EP “Fruitcake”), but the first four were on Disney labels and don’t really count. Its predecessor “Short & Sweet” rebounds to number 8, but after 54 weeks on release, it’s never actually dropped below number 13. More surprising is that her first post-Disney album, “Emails I Can’t Send”, shows up at number 21 – it reached number 76 on release, and until now has only managed a single week at number 40.

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You know, I’m starting to wonder if the chart show needs to be moved to Radio 2.

1. HUNTR/X – “Golden” 

Not for this, obviously. “Golden” gets its fourth week at number 1, with a 50% margin over Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” at number 2. The two Saja Boys tracks are at 4 and 6 – neither is climbing on the chart, but both are up in streams. There are also three Olivia Dean tracks in the top 10, with “Nice to Each Other” at 7 and her guest appearance on Sam Fender’s “Rein Me In” at 10. It’s… not the most diverse top 10 you’ve ever heard.

13. Doja Cat – “Jealous Type”

Well, that’s the sort of video that makes Tate McRae looks subtle, isn’t it? It’s the lead single from her fifth album and it’s a rather good 80s throwback dance track. It’s been a couple of years since we had her in the top 40 as a lead artist; the lead single from her last album was “Paint the Town Red”, which was a five-week number one. But it entered lower than this, so I wouldn’t bet against her climbing further.

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In which KPop Demon Hunters continues to be the main story.

1. HUNTR/X, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami & the KPop Demon Hunters Cast – “Golden” 

Three weeks total, and growing – it has a commanding lead over “No Broke Boys” at number 2, so it could be here for a while. Thanks to a quirk of chart rules, there are now five tracks from the soundtrack album in the top 40, with “Soda Pop” at 3, “Your Idol” at 6, and two tracks by Twice which aren’t caught by the three-song rule because they aren’t exclusive to the soundtrack. We’ll come to them. With Blackpink at number 22 and Rosé at 37, that’s seven tracks on the chart this week by South Korean artists – well, six and a half, depending on how you feel about Bruno Mars.

8. Olivia Dean – “Man I Need”
38. Olivia Dean – “Lady Lady”

Well,certainly a good week for Olivia Dean. She also has “Nice to Each Other” rebounding to a new peak of number 9, and has a featuring credit on Sam Fender’s “Rein Me In” at number 11 (which doesn’t count towards her three songs). Normally this sort of thing means that the album is out but… no, her second album isn’t out to September. It’s just that the pre-release singles have really got some momentum behind them.

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Ah, well that didn’t last long.

1. HUNTR/X, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami & the KPop Demon Hunter Cast – “Golden”

Second week, after being interrupted by Chappell Roan’s “The Subway” last week. That track drops to number 2, but it really isn’t a close race – “Golden” has a 35% lead, mostly due to “The Subway” dropping off. “Golden” also has more than double the points of “Ordinary”, which means it would have been number one even without that track being downweighted.

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Gosh, we’re really shuffling through the number ones now.

1. Chappell Roan – “The Subway”

A new entry at number 1, which isn’t that common these days. Lewis Capaldi did it with “Survive” a month ago, but that was mostly thanks to physical sales in the first week. “The Subway” is here on digital sales and its streaming alone would have made it number 1 – even if “Ordinary” wasn’t on downweighting.

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Just one week for Justin Bieber, then.

1. HUNTR/X, EJAE, Audrey Nuna, Rei Ami & The KPop Demon Hunters Cast – “Golden”

Climbing to number 1 in its fifth week on the top 40, and with two other soundtrack songs not so far behind – “Your Idol” is at 10 and “Soda Pop” at 11, though both of those are Saja Boys tracks. As I’ve explained before, the convoluted chart credit is actually listing the same people three times: the fictional band, the real singers (on this track, mostly EJAE), and a generic cast credit because that’s how the overall album is credited.

“Golden” really is very good – it works as a regular pop song, but fits the plot requirement of being unreasonably difficult to sing. This thing requires a two and a half octave range, and the top end is really high.

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A number 1 we actually weren’t expecting!

1. Justin Bieber – “Daisies”

This entered at number 4 last week, and had only made it to number 2 by the midweeks. It winds up with around a 10% lead over MK.

Justin Bieber’s first hit was back in 2010, and this is his eighth number one. Three of them came from his 2015 album “Purpose”: “What do you Mean”, “Sorry” and “Love Yourself”. The others are guest vocals on other people’s tracks: “Cold Water” by Major Lazer in 2016, “I’m the One” by DJ Khaled in 2017 (to be fair, he’s the top billed actual artist on that track), the English-language remix of “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi & Daddy Yankee in 2017, and “I Don’t Care” by Ed Sheeran in 2019. So it’s been six years since his last number 1, and a decade since he had one purely under his own power.

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This would be a quiet week if it wasn’t for Justin Bieber.

1.  MK featuring Chrystal – “Dior”

Two weeks. Here’s some chart trivia I skipped over last week: MK’s first credited top 40 hit was “Always” in February 1995. Since he didn’t have an artist credit on the Storm Queen track that he remixed – which is fair enough, because it really was just a conventional remix – he had a wait of 30 years and 6 months from his first chart entry to his first number 1.

There are only three artists with longer gaps than that, and they all had slightly freak circumstances. The all time record holder is Tony Christie at 34 years, but that’s on the strength of the charity reissue of his back catalogue track “Show Me The Way to Amarillo”. Number 2 is Ozzy Osbourne, if you measure from Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid” in 1970, rather than his own first solo credit in 1980. Oh, and the number 1 was his duet with daughter Kelly.

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