This is what you call a dead week.

1. Ed Sheeran – “Bad Habits”

Two weeks. And for our highest new entry we find ourselves going all the way down to…

32. Brent Faiyaz featuring Drake – “Wasting Time”

This is the first top 40 hit for Brent Faiyaz. Gosh, I wonder what could account for that? Well, it’s not just the fact that Drake’s on it. Drake guest appearances are incessant, and they don’t always chart. Two of them have missed the top 40 in the last two months. So you do need something more than just his name, and in this case there’s also a production by the Neptunes. It goes on a bit, but I like the vibe.

Faiyaz is from Maryland, and he is the first Brent ever to have a UK hit single, unless you count Tony Brent, who had a string of top 20 hits in the 1950s.

36. Fat Les – “Vindaloo”

So there’s football on at the moment, and England are doing well, and that means we have the football back catalogue in the charts. Now “Three Lions”, I like. It works as a chant, it works as a song about fandom. “Vindaloo” – number 2 in 1998 – I absolutely detest. Not only is it a bunch of self-righteous creative types doing their “I imagine this is what the working folk are like” (though admittedly that never seems to have limited its appeal), it embodies a combination of celebratory and threatening that makes football stadiums so very avoidable on match day. It captures something about football, I suppose. I’ll give it that.

40. D-Block Europe & Lil Pino – “Kevin McCallister”

Kevin McCallister is the main character in Home Alone. 95% of D-Block Europe singles sound the same, and this is one of them. It’s not a bad single, it’s just that they’ve made it so many times by now.

This week’s climbers:

• “Heartbreak Anthem” by Galantis, David Guetta & Little Mix climbs 4-3. That makes it Galantis’s biggest hit – overtaking “Runaway” and “Peanut Butter Jelly” from 2015/6.
• “3 Lions” by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner & The Lightning Seeds climbs 22-4 in a frenzy of English enthusiasm. Bearing in mind that it’s permanently downweighted as an older track, you have to wonder where it would be otherwise – though it made it to number 1 in 2018 despite that handicap. Since the  tournament ends on Sunday, three days into a chart week, it’ll be challenging for it to get any higher than this, though.
• “By Your Side” by Calvin Harris featuring Tom Grennan climbs 10-9.
• “Remember” by Becky Hill & David Guetta climbs 16-13. It’s now her highest placing single since 2019, though only marginally.
• “Fly Away” by Tones & I climbs 33-25 – so not just a technical second hit.
• “Leave Before You Love Me” by Marshmello & The Jonas Brothers climbs 35-28.

On the album chart, “Sour” by Olivia Rodrigo returns to number 1 for its third run, and its fourth week in total. It’s been out for seven weeks now, and has yet to dip below 2. A 40th anniversary reissue leads to Queen’s “Greatest Hits” – a hardy perennial which never goes away – rebounding 13-2. It’s spent a total of 273 weeks in the top 40 by now, and hasn’t been away since Christmas 2019. “Inside (The Songs)” by Bo Burnham is also hanging around unexpectedly well, and climbs to a new peak of number 5 after spending its first three weeks at number 6.

12. Bobby Gillespie & Jehnny Beth – “Utopian Ashes”

That’s the frontman of Primal Scream, and the former lead singer of the Savages. It’s a country soul album, and it’s unexpectedly good. Definitely worth a play, this one. It’s the first top 40 album for either artist as a solo act.

21. Laura Mvula – “Pink Noise”

Laura Mvula’s third studio album lands at exactly the same position as its 2016 predecessor. This 1980s carwash isn’t what I was expecting at all…