This week, drama! But first…

1. Taylor Swift – “The Fate of Ophelia”

This again? Yes, this again. It had a three week run at the top before, and then got knocked off for two weeks by “Golden” on its third run. “Golden” looks to finally be tailing off properly, and so “Fate of Ophelia” returns to number 1 with a 7% lead. It heads a rather stale-looking top 10, with Swift at 1, 6 and 9, HUNTR/X at 2 and 9, and Olivia Dean at 4, 5 and 8. (Raye and Dave round out the chart.) In fact, there aren’t any new entries in the top 20.

Well… officially.

…?  HAVEN. – “I Run”

Okay, so this is a weird story. “I Run” was number 9 in the midweeks  and clearly on course to make the top 10. It’s a UK garage track based around what appears to be a sampled female vocal. It’s actually quite good. The name HAVEN. hasn’t been used before, but the credited writer is a guy called Harrison Walker – presumably this one.

The issue is the uncredited vocal. At one point, the most common suggestion was that it came from an unreleased Jorja Smith track. The lyrics don’t seem to match up with any released track. One news article says:

And if you’re wondering whose female voice that is on ‘I Run’, we’re told it’s actually Walker’s own, run through layers of processing and filtering.

This is, to put it mildly, extremely difficult to believe, certainly on any conventional definition of “processing and filtering”. It is very obviously not just a pitch-shifted male voice. The prevailing theory now appears to be that the vocal is AI-generated. To be honest, if so, it works fine. It’s designed to sound like a cut-up and processed sample anyway, which obscures any glitches that might be more apparent in other contexts.

According to the chart compilers:

It is against Official Charts Company policy to include within our charts any repertoire which is believed to potentially be infringing. We have received notification that a series of takedown notices have been issued to DSPs in relation to the track I Run by Haven. Our understanding is that these takedown notices have been or are in the process of being implemented. As a consequence, this track is suspended today from the Official Singles Charts.

As of Friday, the track has indeed been removed from UK streaming services, although it’s still easy to find on YouTube. What remains unclear is who exactly has made a claim against it and on what basis. We can set aside for the moment the argument that all AI models are trained on infringing copies, since that would be unlikely to generate take down notices targeted at one specific track. Equally, if the issue was simply the label spreading rumours that Jorja Smith was involved in the track when she wasn’t, that would be passing off, not copyright infringement.

Might the issue be getting an AI to impersonate Jorja Smith, or to replicate an unreleased sample that they couldn’t clear? But it’s not obvious that this sort of thing infringes copyright. Dance labels have been getting session musicians to replicate uncleared samples for commercial release for years, and it’s not obvious why that would be okay when done by humans but not when done by AI – either way, you’re attempting to replicate an existing recording, and that’s what makes it a copy, right?

So perhaps it’s something else entirely. Maybe the claim is that they don’t have a licence to the songwriting copyright – if it did start life based on a sample, as many dance records do, then it seems to be from an unreleased song, so maybe it’s not covered by the normal collective licensing arrangements. Or maybe it’s simply alleged to be an old-fashioned uncleared sample and the AI stuff is all a red herring. At any rate, it’s all very odd.

22. Fred again.., Sammy Virji & Reggie – “Talk of the Town”

With that very heavy asterisk, our highest new entry this week is a Fred again.. track. Virji gets a second hit to follow “Cops and Robbers” (number 36 earlier in the year). Reggie is an Irish rapper, and this is his first hit.

31. Digga – “DPMO”

The former Digga D was last in the chart in 2023. He’s spent some of that time in jail, but he was released last month.

33. Sonny Fodera, D.O.D & Poppy Baskcomb – “Think About Us”

This is Sonny Fodera’s fifth top 40 hit and D.O.D’s fourth – in both cases, their biggest hit was “Somedays”, which reached number 5 last year. Singer Poppy Baskcomb gets her first hit.

36. Rosalía featuring Björk & Yves Tumor – “Berghain” 

What the hell…? This is way out of normal bounds for the singles chart. I mean, it’s fantastic, but what on earth is it doing here?

Rosalía is a Spanish singer making her first appearance on the UK top 40, but she’s had a string of number 1s in Spain, with guest appearances from the likes of the Weeknd, Travis Scott, Billie Eilish and Bad Bunny. This track was number 1 in Spain. As a quasi-operatic track performed partly in German, it’s not the most obvious way for her to break the English-language market, but here we are. The parent album “Lux” enters the album chart at number 4, which is her first appearance on the UK album chart – her 2022 album “Motomami” just missed the top 40.

Yves Tumor gets their first UK single chart credit. They’re a producer not normally found anywhere near the singles chart; their last album was entitled “Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)”. This was the lead single. As for Björk, she wandered off into experimental albums long ago; we haven’t seen her in the top 40 singles since “Triumph of a Heart” 20 years ago.

39. The Goo Goo Dolls – “Iris”

Oh lord. I’d love to say that this has gone viral on TikTok or something, but the reality is that it’s a track that just never goes away, and it’s been hanging around in the lower reaches, crawling ever-slowly upwards, since the middle of last year.

It didn’t chart in the UK on release in 1998, but got to number 26 the following year. It had a week at number 39 in 2006 (early in the download era), and reached number 3 in 2011 on the back of being covered on The X Factor.

If you think this is bad, “Mr Brightside” is lurking at number 46. Mind you, the Christmas tracks are starting to mass just below that, so all this may become academic very shortly

This week’s climbers:

• “So Easy (To Fall in Love)” by Olivia Dean climbs 6-5, which is a new peak. It’s been in the top 10 for six weeks now.
• “Die on This Hill” by Sienna Spiro climbs 24-13; it previously peaked at 16 three weeks ago.
• “A Couple Minutes” by Olivia Dean climbs 22-15 on its second week charting.
• “FU & UF” by Skye Newman climbs 18-16 in its third week.
• “Phantom” by EsDeeKid & Rico Ace climbs 28-17, which is a significant jump.
• “Folded” by Kehlani climbs 26-20; it’s been hovering between 23 and 26 for the last six weeks.
• “Century” by EsDeeKid climbs 40-21 in its second week.

We also have re-entries for “Pink Pony Club” at 35, “Manchild” at 38 and “Love Me Not” at 40, which means there are eight tracks leaving the top 40. As you might imagine, they’re mostly the Hallowe’en tracks.

• “Thriller” by Michael Jackson
• “Ghostbusters” by Ray Parker Jr
• “Somebody’s Watching Me” by Rockwell
• “Monster Mash” by Bobby Boris Pickett
• “When Did You Get Hot” by Sabrina Carpenter… oh hold on, that’s just been starred out after dropping below “Manchild”, though it’d probably have fallen out of the top 40 anyway. It peaked at number 9 and lasted 9 weeks.
• “Spooky Scary Skeletons” by Andrew Gold
• “This Is Halloween” by Danny Elfman
• “The Dead Dance” by Lady Gaga, which lasted nine weeks and peaked at 13.

On the album chart, “The Life of a Showgirl” by Taylor Swift returns to number 1 for a fourth week (after two weeks away). The highest new entry is “Lux” by Rosalía at number 4, but we’ve already covered the single.

10. Hayley Williams – “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party” 

Her third solo album, although this is effectively a re-release with bonus tracks; the album was essentially made available for streaming back in August, albeit as a collection of individual tracks. Her first solo album, “Petals for Armor”, reached number 4 in 2020; her 2021 folk album “Flowers for Vases/Descansos” bombed in the UK, reaching number 92.

12. Paul McCartney & Wings – “Wings” 

Retrospective box set.

29. White Lies – “Night Light”

Their seventh album and their lowest placing to date – they’ve never previously fallen short of number 14.

37. Jake Bugg – “A Modern Day Distraction”

Deluxe edition of last year’s album, which reached number 14 on first release.