Charts – 30 May 2025
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.
19. Max Dean, Luke Dean & Locky – “Can’t Decide”
Chart debut for all involved. It’s a club track, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it stick around. The two Deans are cousins. All three of the credits are producers – the vocal is either a sample or a recreation of “2 Much” by Qendresa, a soul track which came out last year without making much impact. It’s good, though.
31. MGK – “Cliché”
This is the same guy who used to go by “Machine Gun Kelly”. We haven’t heard from him since 2022, when he scraped to number 39 as a guest on a Bring Me The Horizon track. Apparently he’s country-pop now.
32. Myles Smith – “Gold”
We’re getting a lot of this sort of thing in 2025, aren’t we? Alex Warren isn’t an outlier. This is a little bit more interesting in the arrangement, to be fair. Smith still has “Nice to Meet You” at number 14.
This week’s climbers:
- “Family Matters” by Skye Newman climbs 8-6 in its second week. (“Hairdresser” remains at its peak of 16.)
- “Back to Friends” by Sombr climbs 12-11. (“Undressed” is a non-mover at 4.)
- “One Thing” by Lola Young climbs 25-22 in its second week.
- “What I Want” by Morgan Wallen & Tate McRae climbs 32-30. She’s in the country touring at the moment, which might help a bit.
There are re-entries at 37-39 for records that were at 41-43 last week (“Die with a Smile”, “That’s So True” and “Good Luck Babe”) – in other words, the three tracks that were displaced by Eurovision tracks last week. So we have seven tracks leaving the top 40:
- “Here in Your Arms” by Nathan Dawe & Abi Flynn, which spent seven weeks in the top 40 without ever getting above number 34.
- “Busy Woman” by Sabrina Carpenter, with a 15-week run, peaking at number 6. With that, we currently have no Sabrina Carpenter songs in the top 40 – for the first time since April 2024.
- “Espresso Macchiato” by Tommy Cash, a Eurovision track which got a single week at number 62.
- “Baller” by Abor & Tynna, another Eurovision track, which got a single week at 34.
- “Mutt” by Leon Thomas, which lasted 9 weeks in the top 40 and peaked at 17.
- “What the Hell Just Happened” by Remember Monday, the UK Eurovision track, with a single week at number 31.
- “Running Around” by Ely Oaks, with a ten-week run and a peak of 28.
On the album chart:
1. Sabrina Carpenter – “Short N’ Sweet”
A fifth week at number 1. The fourth was back in March. The album has been out since last September and has yet to drop below number 5.
2. Sparks – “Mad!”
And so Sparks’ 28th studio album fails to become their first number one. It is, however, their highest placed album since “Kimono My House” reached number 4 in 1974. Which, you might notice, was over 50 years ago.
This may be Sparks’ 28th album, but only 7 of them have made the UK albums top 40 – “Kimon My House”, “Propaganda” and “Indiscreet” in 1974-1978, and then nothing until “Hippopotamus” in 2017, since when they’ve racked up four consecutive top 10 albums. Basically, after a long stretch in the “are they still going” category, they’ve been rediscovered as art-pop veterans in the twilight of their careers, with the brothers both now in their late seventies. They don’t sound like it, though.
4. When Rivers Meet – “Addicted to You”
Their fifth album, the second to chart. Its predecessor got to number 9. It’s throwback blues rock, but they’re good at it.
7. Skunk Anansie – “The Painful Truth”
Their seventh album. Skunk Anansie haven’t made the album top 40 since 1999 – their previous album reached number 85 in 2016 – so I’m not sure what’s prompted this to suddenly make the top 10. Remarkably, it’s actually their highest placed album, as their first two albums only got to 8 and 9.
8. Louise – “Confessions”
Louise Redknapp started releasing albums again in 2020 after a nineteen year gap, and the last two both reached number 11. This is her highest position since “Woman in Me” in 1997.
11. Sports Team – “Boys These Days”
Their third album. The first two reached 2 and 3, so we’re tailing off a bit here.
13. Orbital – “Orbital 2”
Officially, the title of this album is just “Orbital”, but it’s the second Orbital album called “Orbital”, so the chart lists it as “Orbital 2”. Orbital themselves appear to favour “the Brown Album”. It only reached number 28 on release in 1991.
And yes, the video for “Lush 3.1” is archive footage of a car boot sale. This doesn’t seem to have been released before, but it’s credited to director Luke Losey, who was working with Orbital doing visuals for their live shows around this time, so it could well be something that’s genuinely been lying in the back of a drawer for thirty years. Reminds me vaguely of Four Tet’s “As Serious As Your Life”, an even cheaper exercise in trusting to the edit.
29. Stereolab – “Instant Holograms on Metal Film”
Yes, that’s AI but it’s the only track on the album with an official video, so that’s what you’re getting. To be fair, I’ve seen this sort of thing done worse – if you actually want “uncanny valley dreamland” then AI can give you some footage that you can, well, fix in the edit. Especially if you don’t mind all the humans being shown from behind. But the comments on the video are, uh, not keen. Not sure what anyone was expecting from the Stereolab audience, to be honest.
It’s been 15 years since the last Stereolab album, but their last album to make the top 40 was “Dots and Loops” back in 1997.
32. Myles Smith – “A Minute”
Finally, this 21 minute EP, which came out last year but only now shows up in the album top 40. It includes the singles “Stargazing”, “Nice to Meet You” and “Wait For You”.
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