Summer Throne
Five weeks ago, Olivia Rodrigo became one of only two acts to (briefly) interrupt the No.1 run of Sam n' Livvy when her single Drop Dead enjoyed a solitary week of glory at the top.
For a vanishingly brief moment, it looked as if she was about to repeat the trick with a different single. But, alas, not this time.
The failure of the latest challenger means another chalk mark on the wall as Sam Fender and Olivia Dean clock up what is now their 13th week in total at No.1 with Rein Me In. That's enough to now put them level with Alex Warren's Ordinary as the longest-running No.1 single of the decade so far. Only six other singles in chart history have topped the charts for longer.
Is it indeed going to be there for longer? I hate to break it to you, but that is indeed quite possible. The bank holiday and unseasonable heatwave all combined to make listening to music a very popular pastime indeed. Rein Me In's overall numbers take a huge week-on-week jump to over 56,000 units - its highest for three weeks. Meaning the sodding ACR clock is reset once again and it will be July at the earliest now before the track enjoys an enforced relegation.
The only immediate fly in the ointment is a new single from another superstar who has been known to do extraordinary chart things. But let us not get ahead of ourselves. Nothing is as predictable as it seems.
In Between Days
So then to the other Olivia - Rodrigo - who has to be content with a No.2 entry for The Cure, the second single to be released from her forthcoming new album you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. I've banged this drum so many times where she is concerned, but it remains beyond argument that if nothing else she is a performer with few equals at present. The Cure is another emotional epic, a rollercoaster of a single which she appears to live and breathe every moment as she laments that the man she dreamed would fix all her neuroses turns out to be unable to. She's somehow performing the soundtrack to the life of every disturbed teen on the planet and leaves hit singles in her wake as she does so.
The Cure fails to make No.1, falling short by the small matter of 13,000 chart sales, but duly becomes her 10th Top 10 single and her sixth to reach the Top 3.
Double Tenners
The inevitable swift fall-off of Drake singles from last week's high means the Top 10 has the air of everyone exhaling once more. Janice STFU only falls to No.6, admittedly, but National Treasures tumbles 3-19 as his second biggest hit, while Shabang makes a chart debut at No.25 after taking over as his third hit of the moment.
Go from The Chemical Brothers reaches another new high of No.4, an extraordinary showing for a decade-old track that did not even make the Top 40 the first time around. Go features an uncredited vocal from American rapper Q-Tip, and so although the charts will never reflect this, it is now the biggest chart hit on which he has ever featured. He has in the past been a credited performer on a brace of No.6 hits - Janet Jackson's Got 'Til It's Gone in 1997 and Mark Ronson's Bang Bang Bang in 2010. His only major hit as a solo or lead artist was 2000s Breathe And Stop which peaked at No.12, although he also enjoyed a No.15 hit with Can I Kick It as the lead MC for A Tribe Called Quest in 1991.
The Chemical Brothers track contributes to an ongoing total of four golden oldies in the Top 10. Meanwhile, three different artists notably have a pair of Top 10 hits apiece this week - Michael Jackson (3 and 10), Olivia Rodrigo (2 and 9) and Zara Larsson (7 and 8) The latter is because both Lush Life and Midnight Sun rebound significantly after she performed at the Radio 1 Big Weekend show.
Go Hazza
While on the subject of singles capable of interrupting the chart reign of Rein Me In it seems appropriate to note the continuing chart run of the other one to do so - American Girls by Harry Styles. Unlike its predecessor Aperture which fell to ACR the moment it was eligible to do so and which hasn't been seen since, Styles' second No.1 of the year has proved surprisingly durable. Now 12 weeks old it has spent half of those as a Top 10 single and the other half finding its natural level just outside. It is this week's No.12 single to mark the sixth week in a row it has sat at either 12, 13 or 14 having now spent a fortnight at each.
Casting A Spell
To the albums chart, and Maisie Peters can this week celebrate back to back No.1 records. Her third album Florescence strolls to the top with ease and with a larger sale than its predecessor The Good Witch did almost three years ago. I like her enormously. The Ed Sheeran-signed singer-songwriter weaves some absorbing tales with her lyrics, although the "all boys are shit" theme of The Good Witch has been replaced this time with "boys are not shit, but they still cause me angst". Is she mellowing as she ages?. She remains bereft of anything resembling a hit single though, her highest charting record to date the No.47 peak of Together This Christmas, a 2022 Amazon Original from the soundtrack of the platform's festive movie Your Christmas Or Mine? She deserves more to shout about really.
Maisie Peters writes songs for other people as well - she wrote Millions for three-piece girl group Say Now. You've not heard of them? That doesn't surprise me. They can't buy themselves a chart hit in a world where people want to listen to Michael Jackson songs from 40 years ago.
You You You You You And I
We are used to seeing songs from the back catalogue of Fleetwood Mac hover around the lower end of the singles chart, the band clearly the vintage performers of choice for the 2020s streaming generation. But the last thing anyone expected to see was them making genuine chart waves. Yet this is what happens this week as two of their most famous and clearly beloved classics have been granted an ACR reset. The charge is led by the evergreen Dreams, one which originally appeared on their celebrated Rumours album in 1977. A No.25 hit at the time, it returned to the Top 20 in late 2020 as the OG Tik Tok viral oldie and has been a single chart perennial ever since - most notably its latest run that stretches back to the start of 2025 and which was only broken by the Christmas influx. This week Dreams is No.18. And yes, that's its highest chart position ever - although still short of the No.6 scaled by a cover by The Corrs in 1998.
Their other hit of the week is Everywhere, a slightly more contemporary track which appeared on their 1987 album Tango In The Night and which was a No.4 hit when released as a single the following year. It enjoyed a download revival in 2013 after featuring in a TV advert (dance pony, dance) but has again had a semi-regular chart presence since 2023 without ever really threatening to take off. All of that changes with an ACR reset as the endearingly twee track surges to No.24.
Neither of these are the first Top 40 hits of the year for Fleetwood Mac either, as the equally vintage Landslide enjoyed a new year chart run and peaked at No.20 during a three month Top 40 run. It retains a chart presence of its own and is this week's No.50 hit.
A New Golden Age?
Not for the first time in recent months we have to note the perhaps slightly alarming number of catalogue tracks in the Top 40 of the singles chart. If we define an "oldie" as a track over 10 years old then there are no fewer than 12 such singles floating around. Granted, four of them are Michael Jackson-related hits but even without him it would be an absurd total. There total was very nearly swelled too, new at No.41 this week is On The Floor by Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull, the former No.1 single from 2011 returning to prominence after featuring in the Amazon Prime series Off Campus. Meanwhile, there is also Harry Styles' Sign Of The Times at No.39 which is also an oldie of sorts even if it doesn't meet our criteria, being "only" nine years old.
Slightly newer than all of these, but still a revival of sorts, Blessings from Calvin Harris and Clementine Douglas gets a reactivation and is the week's only other "new" entry at No.27. This we seem to have to credit to the Big Weekend concert again as it returns to the charts a few weeks shy of a year since it first peaked at No.3.
The charts themselves aren't broken. The whole damn industry is. The raw measure of popularity - streaming numbers - tells the awkward truth that people are very happy to consume catalogue tracks of varying vintage in greater numbers than most things released this year. Meanwhile, Rein Me In is a fortnight away from completing a year on the charts, and may still be No.1 then. Music streaming consumption has never been higher. Over 34 million calculated sales were tracked this week - they have only ever once been higher and that was over Christmas. People love their pop music. But if you are a new act it seems harder than ever to get people to love your work in fame-making numbers.
