Strength In Numbers
Oh UK singles chart, how you tease us so. Sometimes you are alarmingly, frustratingly, boringly but yet still comfortingly predictable and consistent. But then you switch to being alarmingly capricious, flighty and quite thrilling.
What prompts this lurid prose this week? Only the fact that for the second time in two weeks we have a brand new single entering at No.1. And after last week's British-American hybrid it is – at long, long last – an all-British act.
Honour of the week's new No.1 single goes to Chase & Status and Stormzy who team up for a quite delicious drum n' bass/grime crossover called Backbone. A single whose popularity blows the competition away in a manner which meant there was never any doubt as to what would end up at No.1 by the end of the week.
What's fascinating about the track is that its popularity has come thanks to live exposure, the track debuting as a surprise addition to Chase & Status' Coachella set earlier in the summer. As if in acknowledgment of that the track's video is a live performance, filmed as the Ushaia Beach Hotel in Ibiza at the end of July.
After a wait of almost 16 years Chase & Status finally land themselves a No.1 single. They debuted on the UK singles charts in October 2008, teaming up with Plan B on the minor chart entry Pieces. The same combination helped them to make the Top 40 for the first time a year later when End Credits hit No.9. After eight years of regular hits the chart entries dried up for Saul and Will only for them to make a triumphant return to commercial form in the last two years, Disconnect and Badadan landing them Top 10 singles last year. But Backbone takes them into brand new territory, their 20th Top 75 entry their first to peak beyond No.5 never mind go to the top of the charts.
Stormzy has been here before of course, although he's had to endure a four year wait. Backbone is his fourth No.1 single, although oddly only his second not to feature Ed Sheeran as a co-performer, the pair having teamed up on Take Me Back To London in 2019 and Own It which crept to No.1 in the early weeks of 2020 – that strange period before the world went crazy which almost seems memory holed.
The word "backbone" has never been used as the title of a chart single before, neither indeed has any No.1 single ever featured a bone of any kind in its name.
Feathers Flying
As to what happened to last week's No.1 single, well that has turned out to be something of a one-week wonder, GUESS diving to No.4 and thus behind longer runners such as Birds Of A Feather and Good Luck Babe which both ascend back to 2 and 3 respectively. It isn't that we don’t have one-week wonders anymore, but they very rarely make it to No.1 before flaming out spectacularly.
Rarer still though are the one-week wonders which do a volte-face and reassert themselves out of nowhere. Such a fate though has befallen Jade's Angel Of My Dreams which makes an unexpected return to the Top 10 with a leap back to No.10 which makes it – startlingly – the first ever solo Little Mix single to spend more than a single week in the Top 10. There's a reason behind this of course, and the occasion was the drop of a new S.A.D. version – that's Sad, Angelic, Dramatic for those not in the know. Slowed-down versions of hit songs is nothing new, those with long memories will recall the fad for "candlelight" mixes of hits in the 00s, a genre that spawned its own long-running internet station. But Jade's SAD version of her hit takes it to a new level as she stretches her singing chops accompanied by nothing more than strings and a piano. Don't say it too loudly, but this is a very worthwhile exercise. I wish it had sounded like this to begin with. Meanwhile, Jesy Nelson has a new single out at the moment, Nobody has noticed.
What Is Old Is Also New
The most notable Top 10 exit is Sabrina Carpenter's Please Please Please which finally tumbles to ACR and in the process joins Espresso at the same level. The two singles are now 15 and 16 respectively, a consistent placing which should clue you into the fact that both would still be clogging up the Top 10 were they able.
Two of last week's newer arrivals are making good on their initial promise. Somedays from Sonny Fodera and friends leaps to No.19 while Big Dawgs from Humankind and Kalmi rides the wall of death up to No.21.
While 'NSync's Bye Bye Bye retreats a place to No.13, the Deadpool & Wolverine movie soundtrack spawns a second Top 40 hit. Madonna's 1989 No.1 hit Like A Prayer is finally granted an ACR reset following the release of a new "battle royale" mix which more closely aligns with its use in the movie (and which notably trims the epic five minutes plus of the original down to more 2024-friendly sub-three minutes). As a result the famous song explodes back into life at No.27 after having languished at the lower end of the Top 100 for the past couple of weeks. The track is in an unusual kind of limbo, the soundtrack to one of the core moments of the movie but not actually present on its soundtrack album – this thanks to Madonna's long-standing refusal to allow her music to be included on compilations or collections of any kind. But the market knows what it wants. 35 years after it raised hackles with its video of burning crucifixes and lyrics that blurred the line between spiritual and religious ecstacy Like A Prayer is back in the charts. And yet it still isn't the oldest song on the Top 40 this week, a mere junior compared to Bruce Springsteen's 40 year old Dancing In The Dark which clings on at No.39.
New Entries
New entries? Nah, we have none of those on the rest of the Top 40, although poking its nose above the horizon after a seven-week climb is I Love You I'm Sorry which duly becomes the third Top 40 single in the last two months for Gracie Abrams as it claws its way to No.38.
Someone, somewhere is determined that Gigi Perez' Sailor Song should become a hit. It still isn't a Top 40 single but has hurtled 53-70-43 in the last couple of weeks.
The lower end of the singles chart gives us the unusual, but by no means unique sight of two different singles with the same title occupying consecutive chart rungs as Eminem's Houdini plunges to ACR to sit at No.45, one place below Dua Lipa's long-running hit of the same name. And while I much prefer to use these pages to celebrate success rather than (apparent) failure, check out the performance of Clean Bandit's new single Cry Baby. A track that was supposed to be a dramatic return to form for the once invincible British group, a new re-emphasis on the classical and dance fusion with which they made their name and which reunites them with Ann-Marie for the first time since Rockabye eight years ago. That's before we mention the co-credit for David Guetta on production duties. Its first week position? No.78. I'll keep the faith, it is still a mangnificent production which deserves far better. But bloody hell, those are some poor optics.
