Well, there aren’t many new entries this week, but at least they’re notable.

1. Harry Styles – “Aperture” 

This is the lead single from his upcoming fourth album, “Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally”. The last album was 2022, and we haven’t heard from him in the top 40 since its final single “Satellite” in 2023. Now in his thirties, he’s the sort of star who can get away with releasing a track like “Aperture” – it’s the longest number 1 of the century at over five minutes, and takes its time on a slow build. On a first listen, I was wondering if he’d discovered the Postal Service. It’s a grower, though, for all its lyrical obscurity and liminal-spaces video.

Naturally, facing a mostly stale top 10, it walks to number 1 by a massive margin. It’s his third number one, following his solo debut “Sign of the Times” (2017, one week) and “As It Was” (ten weeks at number 1 in 2022, with over a year in the top 40). As his signature track, that song dutifully re-enters the chart at number 28. By an odd coincidence, we also have another One Direction alumnus on the album chart, but we’ll come back to him.

16. The Arctic Monkeys – “Opening Night”

This is the lead single from the upcoming charity album “Help(2)”. The band haven’t worked together since 2022, and this is their highest placing track since 2013 (when they had their final top 10 hit). Apparently the song has been around as an unfinished demo for a decade, and it does indeed sound more like a mellower version of their early sound than a continuation of what they were doing before. I have no idea what it’s about, really, but it’s very pleasing, and merits a single release quite aside from the inherent interest that their reunion would get for the project.

27. Lil Uzi Vert – “What You Saying” 

One of those tracks where you have to wonder how they got away without crediting the sampled artist. It’s pretty much a remix of “Love Story” by Indila.

Indila had a handful of hits in France in 2013-2014, all from the same number 1 album. Her real claim to fame is “Dernière Danse”, which was a hit around mainland Europe, and the first French-language track to pass a billion views on YouTube. “Love Story” was the fifth and final single from that album, and wasn’t a hit. It seems to have had some renewed interest on TikTok that led to it coming to attention as a sample.

We last saw Lil Uzi Vert guesting on a Nicki Minaj track in 2023, and we haven’t seen him as a lead artist since “Just Wanna Rock” reached number 30 in 2022. He’s only had one bigger hit as a lead artist: “XO Tour Llif3” reached number 25 in 2017.

This week’s climbers:

• “Midnight Sun” by Zara Larsson climbs 29-26.
• “Boys Don’t Cry” by the Cure climbs 39-36.

Um… yeah. The four tracks leaving the top 40 are:

• “Talk of the Town” by Fred again.., Sammy Virji & Reggie, which had a total of seven weeks either side of the Christmas period, and peaked at 18.
• “Tit for Tat” by Tate McRae, which entered at 6 back in October, got driven out for a month over Christmas, and came back for five weeks in the new year.
• “Locked Out of Heaven” by Bruno Mars, which had two weeks as a back catalogue track, peaking at 28.
• “Plastic Cigarette” by Zach Bryan, which entered at 29 and took two weeks to leave.

We still have a lot of back catalogue clogging up the top 40: Djo’s “End of Beginning”, Zara Larsson’s “Lush Life”, Prince, the Police, Kate Bush, Harry Styles “As it Was”, Lady Gaga’s “Die with a Smile”, Fleetwood Mac and the Cure. That’s nine tracks, almost a quarter of the chart. But mostly, the slow pace is a reflection of tracks hanging around forever even after they’re on ACR downweighting. “Ordinary” by Alex Warren entered the chart last February, spend 13 weeks at number 1 that ended last June and is still at number 17 this week.

On the album charts:

1. Louis Tomlinson – “How Did I Get Here”

His third studio album, his second number 1. Very heavily skewed to physical sales, though . The single above is perfectly decent.

3. Megadeth – “Megadeth” 

Their 17th album and, officially, the last. It matches the position of its predecessor in 2022, though that’s rather misleading because the actual first week sales are significantly up. They had another three top ten albums back in the 90s, but they’ve never been higher up than this. The single is called “Let There Be Shred” and sounds exactly as you’d expect.

4. Callum Beattie – “Indi” 

His third album – the first didn’t chart, the second reached number 22, so he’s obviously moving in the right direction. All three have been number 1s in his native Scotland.

14. Mika – “Hyperlove”

His seventh studio album. We haven’t seen him in the album top 40 since 2015, after which he seems to have shifted his attention to French-speaking markets (his last album was in French, and made the top 10 in France, Belgium and Switzerland). This is his highest placing album since 2009, back when he was getting into the top 5.

23. The Damned – “Not Like Everybody Else”

Surprisingly low for the Damned – their last two studio albums both made the top 10. Still, it’s a ninth top 40 album.