Now here’s someone I wouldn’t have predicted having a number 1 hit in 2024.

1. Eminem – “Houdini”
38. Eminem – “Without Me”

This is the lead single from his upcoming album “The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce)”, which seems to be some sort of weird meta thing about his past career and old Slim Shady persona. This track is, fairly obviously, a riff on “Without Me”, even though the hook is from the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” (number 2 in 1982). “Without Me” itself re-enters at 38, which is an unusual case of a spillover hit. His greatest hits album is back in the top 10 as well.

Whether the whole album is throwback stuff or whether this is set-up for something else… who knows. It’s Eminem’s 11th UK number 1, spanning a period of 25 years. For those wondering, the other 10 are: “The Real Slim Shady” (2000), “Stan” (2000), “Without Me” (2002), “Lose Yourself” (2002), “Just Lose It” (2004), “Like Toy Soldiers” (2005), a guest appearance on Akon’s “Smack That” (2006), “The Monster” (2013), “River” (2017) and “Godzilla” (2020). Basically, Eminem’s imperial phase is long behind him but, unusually for someone at this point in his career, he can still pull out a number 1 single or at least a big hit from each new album. In fact, the streams on this are huge – equivalent to over 100,000 sales, which is the biggest we’ve had in a year.

35. Fred again.. & Anderson .Paak featuring Chika – “places to be”

Ah, the long-awaiting collaboration of the punctuation enthusiasts. I quite like it, actually. Fred again.. has generally had quite an inconsistent chart record, but he’s been trending towards higher places in 2023, so we’ll see if this climbs. Technically this is the first credited hit single for Anderson .Paak as a solo artist, but he had two hits in 2021 as a member of Silk Sonic.

Chika is a rapper, and this is her first appearance on the UK singles chart. As you might guess from the video, her credit is for the sampling of her voice, which is from a spoken word track called “Intimacy”.

And… oh, that’s it.

This week’s climbers:

• “Band4Band” by Central Cee featuring Lil Baby climbs 4-3.
• “Stargazing” by Myles Smith climbs 9-8.
• “Good Luck Babe” by Chappell Roan climbs 20-16. It reached a previous peak of 18 five weeks ago but hasn’t dropped below 22 since then. Her album is also continuing to climb, reaching a new peak of number 23 this week.
• “Pink Skies” by Zach Bryan climbs 31-25.
• “The Door” by Teddy Swims climbs 35-28.
• “One of Wun” by Gunna, which entered at 32 two weeks ago and dropped, rebounds to 30.

The three songs leaving the top 40:

• “The Man Who Can’t Be Moved” by the Script got a single week at number 38.
• “Tell Ur Girlfriend” by Lay Bankz reached number 15 and lasted 7 weeks, and honestly deserved better.
• “Like That” by Future & Metro Boomin featuring Kendrick Lamar entered at 6, mostly fell from there, but still managed ten weeks.

On the album chart, “The Tortured Poets Department” by Taylor Swift is still at number one, for a fifth week in total. All of the new entries are in the top 10.

3. Becky Hill – “Believe Me Now?”

The singles “Side Effects”, “Disconnect” and “Never Be Alone” all made the top 40; “Disconnect” made the top 10. Despite being primarily a singles artist, her album positions keep improving – 2019’s “Get To Know” was number 20, 2021’s “Only Honest on the Weekend” reached 7.

4. Ateez – “Golden Hour – Part 1”

K-pop. It’s their third straight record to make the album top 10 – the last one reached number 2 – but they’ve yet to have a hit single. Mind you, these records are effectively EPs; this one is just over 17 minutes long. The album chart defines an album as (1) anything over 25 minutes in length or (2) anything at all with more than four songs (not counting alternate versions of the same song). Whether limb (2) of that definition accords with most people’s understanding of an “album” might perhaps be questioned.

5. Richard Hawley – “In This City They Call You Love”

His previous three studio albums also made the top 10, so no change here. I really like this single.

8. Crowded House – “Gravity Stairs”

Their previous album reached number 6, so again, this is par for the course for them.

10. K-Trap – “Smile”

This is his highest position for a solo album, though not by much – 2022’s “The Last Whip II” reached 12. Also, his album with Headie One, “Strength to Strength”, reached number 4 just last October.