Well, the day has finally come. Last week, “Rein Me In” declined (and underperformed the market) for the third successive week. And so this week, it finally goes to ACR, ending its 23 weeks at number one, and relegating it to the gloomy depths of number 7. What exciting new music has this cleared the way for?

1. Ella Langley – “Choosin’ Texas” 

Oh. Right. Well, it’s not been number one before, I suppose. But it’s been on the top 40 for 31 weeks now, again without being relegated to ACR. She’s not a one-hit wonder – “Be Her” also charted a few weeks ago, and it’s currently at number 30. This is also the current US number one, though as a country song, international interest is not a given. The ponderous official video above doesn’t do it any favours either – if you’re going to talk over half the song, at least hire some people who can act.

But hey, it’s not “Rein Me In”, and we’ll take what we can get. In the real world, without downweighting, “Rein Me In” is still beating it by about 45%, but all these things depend on what you think the chart is actually trying to measure and how it ought to deal with tracks that just linger on streaming playlists for months on end. And besides, “Rein Me In”‘s 23-week run at number one includes several weeks where it was only number one due to other tracks being on ACR.

With that asterisk aside, it doesn’t have a particularly dominating lead – the whole top five is fairly tight – so we can probably expect a return to something like normalcy from here.

18. Dua Lipa – “Training Season” 

This reached number 4 on release two years ago. Apparently it’s having something of a viral revival, which has led to a collection of alternate versions being promoted as a digital EP. All the tracks on the EP will be counting towards this position.

39. Noah Kahan – “Willing And Able”

An album track which has been floating around outside the top 40 for months, though it has started moving upwards over the last few weeks – this is an 8-place climb.

This week’s climbers:

• “Great Expectation” by Sienna Spiro climbs 5-2, and “Pure” climbs 40-36.
• “9 to 5” by Dolly Parton climbs 12-5, “Jolene” climbs 9-6, and “Islands in the Stream” with Kenny Rogers climbs 13-9. At the start of the week she was on course to be number one, but the numbers have tailed off as time has passed – if she had died at the start of a chart week, she might well have managed it, but timing means that the surge of interest was split over two weeks. “9 to 5” has never been a hit before, and “Jolene” reaches a new all-time peak. “Islands”, however, peaked at number 7 back in 1983.
• “My Body Isn’t Ready” by Sombr climbs 28-19. It’s taken a while to get going, but it seems to be there now.
• “Stop the Wedding” by Ashe climbs 38-23. That’s a huge jump in the current market.
• “Ain’t in LA” by Adela re-enters at 26 after dropping out of the top 40 last week. That’s also pretty significant, no doubt helped by some festival appearances, and we’ll see how her album does next week.
• “Orbiter” by Noah Kahan climbs 31-28

The three tracks leaving the top 40 are:

• “Jamaican (Bam Bam)” by Hugel & Solto, which peaked at 34 and managed three weeks in the top 40.
• “Talk To You” by ANOTR & 54 Ultra, with a 21-week run and a peak of number 3.
• “Midnight Sun” by Zara Larsson, after a 33-week run that peaked at number 7.

On the album chart:

1. Alex Warren – “Wildchild”

His second album, his second number 1. Several of the singles made the top 40: “Fever Dream” got to number 3, “Fine Place to Die” reached number 20, and “Passenger” and “Rescuer” also had brief runs. None of them has had anything approaching the sustained success of “Ordinary” from his previous album, though. Admittedly, that’s a high bar – “Ordinary” had thirteen weeks at number 1, and is currently at number 29 in its 81st week on the top 40 – but only “Fever Dream” has stuck around for any length of time from this album, in a time when the chart moves quite slowly.

2. The Courteeners – “God Bless The Band”

Greatest hits album – with the obligatory two new tracks, but let’s go with their biggest hit single, from back in 2008. They’ve never placed lower than number 6 on the album chart with any sort of release, but their 2008 debut remains their only number 1.

6. Bananarama – “True Confessions”

40th anniversary re-issue of their third album, which stiffed on release – their first two albums both made the top 10, but this one missed the top 40 altogether, and is actually a new entry here. The album actually has one of their biggest hits, “Venus”, but that’s more of a harbinger of things to come when they hooked up with Stock Aitken and Waterman; most of the album sounds like the lead single above, which got to number 31.

Bizarrely, it now becomes their highest-placing studio album, which maybe tells you something about the health of the modern album charts. They only had two other top 10 albums – “The Greatest Hits Collection”, which got to number 3, and their 1983 debut “Deep Sea Skiving”, which reached number 8.

16. The Warning – “Everything’s Falling”

They’re a Mexican rock band composed of sisters Daniela, Paulina and Alejandra Villarreal Vélez. It’s their fifth album, but the first to chart – a support slot on Yungblud’s UK tour may have helped here.

24. Steve Hackett & Steve Rothery – “The Roaring Waves”

This is a collaboration between Steve Hackett of Genesis and Steve Rothery of Marillion, It sounds much as you’d expect from that description, for better or worse. Actually, the single above is entirely pleasant.

27. Mastodon – “Marrow Deep”

That’s very low for a Mastodon album – they haven’t missed the top 20 since 2011

28. Mike D – “Thank You”

Yes, Mike D from the Beastie Boys. It’s his first solo album, at the age of 60. The track above is pretty good.

33. Interpol – “This Mirror Weighs a Ton”

Finally for this week, Interpol’s eighth studio album. This is very low for an Interpol album – they haven’t placed below 21 since their debut in 2002.