Well, at least the album chart is busy. Meanwhile, on the singles chart…

1. Harry Styles – “As It Was”

That’s six weeks. It heads up a moribund top ten, with four other non-movers, one climber (Lizzo) and four records going down one place. I mean, I’m all for records having decent runs in the top 10, but a bit of turnover would be nice.

19. Jack Harlow featuring Drake – “Churchill Downs”
33. Jack Harlow – “Dua Lipa”

Two tracks from his album “Come Home the Kids Miss You”, which enters the album chart at number 4. He also has “First Class” as a non-mover at number 2.

It’s his second album, and the first to reach the album top 40. His 2020 debut “That’s What They All Say” made the album top 10 in the USA and Canada, but in the UK it could only limp to number 73. His profile has risen a lot since then.

“Churchill Downs” is presumably here thanks to Drake’s appearance, but it’s actually very good. “Dua Lipa”, which is two minutes fifteen of Harlow expressing his enthusiasm about Dua Lipa, and which does not feature Dua Lipa, is probably here for the novelty value.

24. Kendrick Lamar – “The Heart – Pt 5”

Well, this is great. In an interesting move, it’s promoting his album “Mr Morale & The Big Steppers”, which was released today, but it’s not actually on that album.

There are indeed a previous four parts of “The Heart” – the last one was released in 2017. The video is more interesting than it might first look – the idea is that each verse is from the perspective of a different African-American figure and they use “deepfake” technology to morph his face accordingly for each verse. The sample is from Marvin Gaye’s “I Want You”, which was a number 15 hit in the USA in 1976; if it was released as a single in the UK, it didn’t chart.

31. George Ezra – “Green Green Grass”

Hmm. I’ve always found something slightly uncanny valley about George Ezra, and this video… fits with that, I guess? I’m not wild about the arrangement on the single version; the acoustic version feels better to me.

34. Benzz – “Je M’Appelle”

He’s a rapper from London, it’s his first hit, and this is big on TikTok, apparently. The sample is ultimately from Rune RK’s “Calabria”, which was released back in 2003, but it’s best known in the UK for its use in the mash-up “Destination Calabria”, credited to Alex Gaudino featuring Crystal Waters, which reached number 4 in 2007. I love it as a record; the video is, uh, of its time. To its credit, it has a very nice shade of green throughout.

This week’s climbers:

• “About Damn Time” by Lizzo climbs 15-4, becoming her biggest hit – it overtakes “Good as Hell”, which got to 7 in 2019.
• “Crazy What Love Can Do” by David Guetta x Becky Hill x Ella Henderson climbs 17-15; it’s spent the last four weeks hovering between 17 and 20.
• “Big Energy” by Latto x Mariah Carey featuring DJ Khaled climbs 28-21.
• “10 Things I Hate About You” by Leah Kate climbs 31-30.
• “Freaky Deaky” by Tyga & Doja Cat climbs 37-36; it took eight weeks just to make the top 40, and has now taken four weeks travelling from 38 to 36.

The five records leaving the top 40:

• “Birthday Cake” by Dylan Conrique. Five weeks, peaking at 30.
• “Seventeen Going Under” by Sam Fender, which has been in the top 40 since last October, spent 14 weeks in the top 10, and peaked at 3.
• “Cold Heart” by Elton John & Dua Lipa, a former number 1 which has been on the top 40 since August.
• “Don’t Forget My Love” by Diplo & Miguel – just one week at number 39.
• “Night Away (Dance) by A1 & J1 & Tion Wayne, which gets hit with downweighting in its tenth week; it peaked at 11 and spent most of its time hovering in the teens.

The album chart is busy.

1. Arcade Fire – “We”

That’s their fourth consecutive number one album; the last one, “Everything Now”, was back in 2017.

2. Sigrid – “How to Let Go”

Her second album. The first one produced a couple of top 20 hits and reached number 4 on the album chart; oddly, she seems to have become a premature albums act, with no singles from this album, but a higher position on the albums chart.

3. Knucks – “Alpha Place”

UK rap. A couple of the singles scraped the lower reaches of the top 100, but this debut album is the first time he’s charted.

Number 4 is the Jack Harlow album.

7. Soft Cell – “Happiness Not Included”

Their first new album in 20 years. The track above is a collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys, and boy does it sounds like it. To be fair, I think that’s the joke – it’s meant to be a callback to their glory days. Everyone in this record is in their sixties, though it kind of suits Neil Tennant.

8. Belle & Sebastian – “A Bit of Previous”

Every regular studio album that Belle and Sebastian have released since 2006 has landed at either 8 or 9. Usually 8.

(I’m not counting their 2019 soundtrack album for Days of the Bagnold Summer. Nor did their fans; it got to number 73.)

9. Halestorm – “Back from the Dead”

Their regular albums have been placing between 8 and 10 since 2015.

21. Warpaint – “Radiate Like This”

Diminishing returns here. The previous two albums got to 9 and 13. It’s been a six year break. The single’s pretty good, though.

27. Emeli Sandé – “Let’s Say For Instance”

Uh-oh. Granted that this is a busy week, her three previous albums landed at 1, 2 and 6. It’s only been three years away and now we’re at number 27? That’s not good.

28. Sharon Van Etten – “We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong”

Another very consistent chart performer – it’s her third top 40 album, and the others got to 27 and 30.

40. Kylie Minogue – “Infinite Disco”

This is a lockdown-era live album, which is to say it’s a livestream. If number 40 seems remarkably low even for a side project album, there’s a reason for that: this has been released before, at the end of last year, as the second disc in the special edition of “Disco”. So the audience for this standalone release is Kylie Minogue fans who are completist enough to want a live album, but not completist enough to have bought it last Christmas.