Harry Styles has an album out, and nobody else is going to take that on.

1. Harry Styles – “American Girls”
5. Harry Styles – “Ready, Steady, Go!”

Together with former number 1 “Aperture” (which rebounds to number 4), these are the maximum three tracks from the album “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally”, which enters as his third number one album. (His second album, “Fine Line”, only got to number 2, but still spent over a year in the top 10.) If it wasn’t for the three-song rule, the entire album would have charted.

The official singles for this album seem to be going for “cryptic and distant”, which is an odd choice. “Ready, Steady, Go!” feels like a more natural single in many ways – “American Girls” seems a bit muted to me. Mind you, that’s what I thought about “Aperture” at first, and it did grow on me. He now has four number 1 singles, which actually equals One Direction’s total. (And one of those was a charity cover version.) It’s also the first number 1 in weeks to lack the Olivia Dean asterisk – he would be number one even without “Man I Need” being downweighted.

The album sales are heavily boosted by the usual variant physical editions, but it would have made number one on streams alone.

Nobody is releasing anything against Harry Styles, and so we have but a solitary other new entry.

33. Bella Kay – “The Sick”

“iloveitiloveitiloveit” gets shoved down a place to number 3 this week, but its actual streaming is growing. The spillover interest in the rest of her work leads to “The Sick” finally making the top 40 six months after release. I think “iloveitiloveitiloveit” is probably a better version of the same idea, but it’s good enough on its own merits. A third track, “Steady”, climbs from 63 to 49 this week, and might have promise too.

This week’s climbers:

• “Babydoll” by Dominic Fike climbs 14-13.
• “Dracula” by Tame Impala climbs 22-17. This re-entered at number 25 four weeks ago on the back of the remix with Jennie from Blackpink. Unusually, that version has had sustained success, and after an initial dip to 32 it started moving back up the chart again. “Dracula” only reached number 21 on its first run, and now becomes Tame Impala’s first top 20 hit.
• “Into the Groove” by Madonna climbs 40-18.
• “White Keys” by Dominic Fike climbs 27-19.
• “(When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me” by Sean Paul featuring Keyshia Cole climbs 33-30.

Special mention also to “Choosin’ Texas” by Ella Langley, which is actually slowing growing in streams, but has nonetheless somehow managed to spend five weeks in a row at number 35 as other tracks swirl around it – not so much an achievement as a statistical fluke.

The three tracks leaving the top 40 are:

• “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac, which entered at 20 and hung around for nine weeks.
• “DTMF” by Bad Bunny, which re-entered at four and lasted four weeks.
• “Nuevayol” by Bad Bunny, which entered at 15 and also lasted four weeks.

On the album chart:

1. Harry Styles – “Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.”

See above.

3. Morrissey – “Make-up is a Life”

This is his 14th album, after a six year gap – he seems to have been shopping it around to labels as an already-completed album for a while, but ultimately it does come out on Warner Brothers. Number 3 matches the position of his previous album, and for all that Morrissey is now widely viewed as British indie’s embarrassing uncle with deeply unfortunate opinions, he does still get consistent first-week sales.

15. Squeeze – “Trixies”

Squeeze last released an album in 2017 (which got to number 25). Supposedly these are songs that Chris Difford and Glen Tilbrook wrote as teenagers in the 1970s, and which they decided to record properly after finding the cassette.

22. Katherine Priddy – “These Frightening Machines”

Folk singer from Birmingham. This is her third album, and the first to chart.