Charts – 31 October 2025
This again?
“Golden” gets a ninth week at number one after a four week interruption by Olivia Dean and Taylor Swift. There are still two other HUNTR/X tracks in the chart, with “How It’s Done” at 10 and “What It Sounds Like” at 13. Streaming of the soundtrack album is up again (possibly because of the school half term), so “Golden” still hasn’t been hit by the downweighting ACR rule, even though it’s been in the chart since July. The Olivia Dean track has been hit by ACR at this point, but “Golden” would have beaten it anyway.
Taylor Swift still has tracks at 2, 4 and 8. We also have three by Olivia Dean (6, 7 and 22), three by Sabrina Carpenter (15, 21 and 29), two by Sam Fender (14 and 38), and two by Sombr (24 and 35). In fact, there are only five different lead artists in the top 10, and eleven in the top 20. This doesn’t feel entirely healthy. If you confined each lead artist to one track, the number 40 song this week would be “Come Find Me” by MK & Clementine Douglas, which is the official number 60. Except… that version of the top 40 would also include “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls (official number 48), “Mr Brightside” by the Killers (number 51), and “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac (number 58). Hmm.
5. Dave & Tems – “Raindance”
10. Dave & James Blake – “History”
11. Dave & Kano – “Chapter 16”
These are the top three tracks from Dave’s third album “The Boy Who Played The Harp”, which enters the album chart as his third number 1. It has hefty first-week physical sales but it would have placed high on streams alone. It’s all wildly out of place on the singles chart, and on that level, it’s very welcome.
There are no official singles from this album, and no videos. These tracks all have guests, but I doubt they’re the main reason for these songs to have the most streams. Nigerian singer Tems has a had a couple of minor hits under her own power, and has guested on some bigger hits – her previous best was number 8 when she appeared on Future’s “Wait for U” in 2022. James Blake has always been a solid albums performer, but his only previous hit single was “Limit to Your Love”, which had a week at number 39 back in 2010. He’s the producer on several other tracks on the album, including “Chapter 16”. As for Kano, he’s a veteran who had four previous hit singles, all between 2005 and 2013.
For what it’s worth, number 5 is Dave’s highest position since “Sprinter” reached number 1 in 2023. But he did have a number 6 hit with Central Cee earlier this year, so it’s not an outlier.
Oh, and his first album “Psychodrama” re-enters the album chart at 17. And his second album, “We’re All Alone In This Together”, re-enters at 26.
11. Lily Allen – “Pussy Palace”
17. Lily Allen – “West End Girl”
19. Lily Allen – “Madeline”
These are three tracks from her fifth album “West End Girl”, which enters at number 4. It’s a concept album, which is to say it’s a song cycle about the failure of her marriage to David Harbour. He does not come out of it very well, shall we say. I mean, just listen to the track above. Obviously, there is Drama to be found here, but the reviews have been strong and the chart position reflects… well, both of those, to be honest.
A number 4 on the album charts is not a surprise – her previous album got to number 8, and she’s never missed the album top 10. But she hasn’t had a hit single since 2014. The lead single from her previous album missed the top 100. So this level of interest in her new material is genuinely unexpected.
Again, while she’s taking up three spaces, she’s adding to the range of the chart in other ways. And yes, the BBC’s radio edit of “Pussy Palace” is as clumsy as you’d imagine.
18. Skye Newman – “FU & UF”
This is a track from her EP “SE9 – Part 1”, which enters the album chart at 18. It comes very close to adding another three tracks to the singles chart: “Family Matters” re-enters at 25 (having peaked at number 5 in May), and there’s a third track from it down at number 50.
33. Michael Jackson – “Thriller”
For Hallowe’en, obviously. The chart week runs from Friday to Thursday, so Hallowe’en itself will be in next week’s chart. We’ll see whether a single day’s streams is enough for it to chart again.
This week’s climbers… oh, there aren’t any. Well, that’s because there are nine new entries. The nine tracks leaving the top 40 are:
- “Undressed” by Sombr, after a 30-week run and a peak of 4. He still has two singles in the top 40.
- “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone, which has been around in its current run since February – but has never really gone away for more than a few weeks since first charting in February 2024.
- “Now or Never” by Tkandz & Cxsper, which had three weeks and a peak of 28.
- “People Watching” by Sam Fender, which re-entered at 28 last week.
- “Stay (If You Wanna Dance)” by Myles Smith, which re-entered at 38 last week.
- “Sapphire” by Ed Sheeran re-enters at 40.
- “My Old Ways” by Tame Impala had a week at 39. “Dracula” is still in the top 40.
- “Sugar On My Tongue” by Tyler, The Creator, after eight weeks and peaking at 27.
- “Pixelated Kisses” by Joji, after a single week at 37.
On the album chart, “The Boy Who Played The Harp” by Dave is number 1.
2. Bon Jovi – “Forever (Legendary Edition)”
Special edition of an album that reached number 3 last June. Or rather, it’s a re-recorded edition with lots of guest stars. Robbie Williams is on it.
4. Lily Allen – “West End Girl”
See above.
12. Sigrid – “There’s Always More That I Could Say”
Her third album; the last two made 4 and 2. Nice single, though.
14. Bruce Springsteen – “Nebraska ’82”
Box set re-issue of his 1982 album, to tie in with the biopic. The original album got to number 3 on release.
19. Clause – “Victim of a Casual Thing”
Indie guitars from Birmingham. It’s their debut album.
24. Elton John – “Captain Fantastic & The Brown Dirt Cowboy”
50th anniversary re-issue. It reached number 2 in 1975.
30. Brandi Carlile – “Returning To Myself”
This is her eighth album, but her only previous appearance on the UK album chart was her collaboration with Elton John, “Who Believes in Angels”, which reached number 1 back in April.
31. Henry Moodie – “Mood Swings”
Debut album. He’s from Essex, and apparently he’s big on TikTok.
38. Pulp – “Different Class”
Finally, a 30th anniversary re-issue for Pulp’s first and biggest number 1 album – one week at number 1, but a year in the top 40.
As a American, I haven’t paid much attention to Lily Allen since her first album (which was excellent), but everything I’ve seen from her is insufferable. So I will say this — “Pussy Palace” is awesome; a pure fuck-you song.
There’s only a couple of songs on the entire album that I *wouldn’t* describe as a “pure fuck-you song.” Fascinatingly lacerating.
On another note, Paul has been noting the effects on the singles chart of the 3-song rule and down-weighting rule. I would say I prefer it over the American charts lack of such rules, bc the top 12 songs the week of the Taylor Swift release were… the 12 songs from the Taylor Swift album, and the Teddy Swims song has pretty much been in the top ten for an entire two years.
I wonder if it would be simpler to just limit the chart to the top song by an artist.
It might end up just looking like the album chart, and you’d have to tighten up the rules about guesting on someone else’s song, but it would surely be better than the current nonsense.
Limiting the chart to one song per artist would have other unfortunate events, since it would reveal that the likes of the Killers, the Goo Goo Dolls and even Fleetwood Mac are perenially hovering just outside the top 40.
I think the underlying problem is that these rules raise awkward questions about what EXACTLY the charts are meant to be measuring. The UK chart was traditionally a pure sales chart until the streaming era made that untenable. Both sales and streams are being put forward as a measure of popularity, but sales only ever measured the week when someone started listening, whereas streams measure continued listening – so a streaming chart is likely to be slower. But it’s easy to grasp and has obvious legitimacy, when something weird like a “fastest growing streams” chart would be of about as much interest to most people as the old Breakers chart was – i.e., not at all.
The other problem, of course, is that the entire concept of a chart show is a hangover from the days when pop culture was funnelled through a few media chokepoints, which meant people expected to have to listen to a load of stuff they hated in order to hear the music they liked. So it’s difficult to tell the stories you want to tell with it.
On the comparison to the American charts, they (specifically the Billboard 100) did significantly tighten their downweighting rules as of a couple weeks ago. They aren’t trying to enforce the artist diversity thing like the British charts- we’ll still see whole albums charting. But Teddy Swims has been, uh, washed away.