Overlooked Again
Welcome friends, welcome one and all to the chart that represents the annual tradition, noting just how much (or how not) the screening of last weekend's BRIT Awards has had on the chart fortunes of those featured.
In theory, the answer should be "a great deal" as prime time television exposure for the best moments of the year gone by can always be counted on to boost the appeal of award winners and performers. This is especially so, so the theory goes, given the ceremony's move in recent years to Saturday night prime time. Allowing almost a full week of sales and streams to impact the following chart survey.
Except of course this possibly counts against it. Saturday night is no longer guaranteed to be the biggest audience night of the week, even for terrestrial channels like ITV1. And the truth of the matter is that the three-hour-long show screened last weekend gathered a peak audience of no more than about 2 million. That's a million fewer than Britain's Got Talent which led into it, numbers which themselves appear to have sent the television industry into crisis mode.
So there are headline figures which you will see bandied around of the post-BRITs impact. But the truth is that even these didn't amount to much.
Let's deal with albums first of all, the Official Albums chart actually dominated by Gorillaz whose first independent album The Mountain takes them back to the chart summit (no pun intended) for only the third time - although it is the cartoon group's second studio album in a row to top the charts, hard on the heels of Cracker Island back in 2023. Also new is Bruno Mars' much anticipated release The Romantic, but that can only muster No.3. Technically he was an award winner last weekend, thanks to his presence on Best International Single APT. But it was Rose who climbed up to get the award, as it was her record after all.
PinkPantheress was an award winner, although she didn’t make it to the ceremony in the end. Her award was already know, she became the first woman to receive Best British Producer. There is a temptation to credit the Top 5 return of her Fancy That album to her BRITs success, but the truth is rather more prosaic - the physical release of its Fancy Some More extended edition, home to current hit duet Stateside (which slides to No.4 this week in the face of competition above it). Her album would have made the Top 10 even if the awards had ignored her, so we can ignore it too.
But let's deal with the chart jumps that you possibly can attribute to the BRITs. I Barely Knew Her from Sombr leaps ten places to No.27 - although Music Week doesn't give numbers for this so it is hard to know what percentage of sales he was boosted. Sam Fender's People Watching (home of Best Single Rein Me In) is up 50-28 with a 30% sales increase. But the biggest headline grab will be that of Rosalia who performed on the night (with surprise guest Bjork in tow) and picked up the International Artist Of The Year trophy. Her album Lux, a No.4 record when first released last November) enjoys a 333% sales increase. Which sounds spectacular doesn't it? But that still only amounts to just over 3,000 sales - taking the record to a mere No.37.
Official Charts also note big surges of interest in albums by Wolf Alice (up 100%) and Mark Ronson (up 77% for Version). Awkwardly neither actually make the Top 100 at all.
The Weekly Olivia
As widely predicted, and it hardly took a genius to work out, Olivia Dean was the big winner on the night, taking home four awards. And if another writer says that was "four of the five she was nominated for" give them a slap, given she was essentially nominated twice for the same award (Song Of The Year) and could not physically do a clean sweep. As joyous as it was to see her cemented properly as a superstar, this does continue the odd trend of recent years for the awards to be dominated by a single act - witness Charli XCX a year ago, RAYE in 2024 and Harry Styles before her. One thing the annual music industry awards are not is diverse in where it sends the love.
But that still means she (and OK, Sam Fender too) is comfortably still No.1. As noted, Rein Me In managed the extraordinary feat of becoming the best song of 2025 whilst also being incumbent at the top of the charts. The release of a new physical variant sends its chart sales surging to another new high, the track posting over 62,000 units to remain comfortably ahead of the competition. And still a long way from an ACR slump.
So Easy (To Fall In Love) is shoved out of the way by some very strong competition and so dips 2-5 despite enjoying an uptick in sales. She of course performed Man I Need on live TV last Saturday night and that too enjoys a similar increase with a 13% uplift. That falls a place to No.8 despite this. But yes, if not on ACR the song would still be No.1 - although only by the narrowest of margins.
Again you might have thought receiving four awards and a great deal of new mainstream exposure would have at least helped Olivia Dean's Art Of Loving album a great deal. But it doesn't really. The album is up 20% at the very least, its highest since the week before Christmas fact fans, suggesting people did go out and buy it. But that still amounts to only a few thousand extra sales. That's really all a TV audience is worth now.
Loving Her
One of the week's more unexpected winners is American singer-songwriter Bella Kay who in the space of a month has gone from complete unknown to major star. Her big it iloveitiloveitiloveit continues what has been by any standards a meteoric rise, making a further two place climb to now sit at No.2. And all this still without the benefit of anything resembling an official video. Meanwhile, she now enjoys two different halo hits. Earlier chart single The Sick falls just shy of a Top 40 place at No.41, this track having first apparently peaked at No.72 in August last year. It is now further joined by Steady, a track from her three-track EP A Couple Minutes Out (also home to iloveitiloveitiloveit) and which becomes her third chart hit overall with a new entry at No.63.
Oh Him Him
Alex Warren didn't win an award but did get to perform Ordinary, continuing a strange tradition of acts staging their biggest hits in an arrangement that bears little resemblance to the record. Still, a full orchestra was a nice touch as was the appearance of James Blunt on piano. I've no idea what story they were trying to tell with that. Was it a nod back to the way 20 years ago he too enjoyed weeks of chart success with a love ballad that by the end everyone was wholeheartedly sick of?
Like Blunt before him, Alex Warren has managed to squeeze out a follow up hit or two, even if none are destined to have quite the impact of the behemoth. Last year he enjoyed Top 10 hits Bloodline (No.9) and Eternity (No.3) and now is back in the Top 3 with a brand new track that at one point topped early sales flashes only to fade as the week went on. Fever Dream is his fourth Top 10 hit and is indeed everything you might expect from a post-Ordinary Alex Warren single. But if it sinks 3-14 next week just like its immediate predecessor did, don't say I didn't warn you.
More!
The BRITs did at least give Harry Styles a degree of respectability, his show-opening rendition of Aperture gave everyone a long chance to get the tea brewed and sees the single reverse its steady decline of recent weeks at jump 16-10. Its parent album is the big release of this week, so it will be interesting to see what his singles chart fortunes are in seven days.
Bruno Mars as we've mentioned is No.3 on the album chart. I Just Might rises 8-6 in sympathy, and it is joined by two other cuts. Risk It All is this week's second highest new entry at No.15, with Cha Cha Cha low down at No.47.
There's more Olivia Dean too, although her third permitted solo hit is oddly enough not one of the tracks from The Art Of Loving. The fun part of her having taken so long to break through is that she has a whole catalogue of earlier material that was ignored by the mainstream. The Hardest Part was a song that first appeared way back in 2020 on her second EP release What Am I Gonna Do On Sundays and would eventually find its way onto her 2023 album Messy. It has grown in popularity ever since, but has always been excluded from the chart by Art Of Loving cuts. Not so this week. It narrowly jumps ahead of A Couple Minutes, debars that hit from the chart and belatedly makes a debut at No.19. It's not, as I first wrote the first cut from Messy to make the charts- that honour goes to Dive which was belatedly a No.17 hit last autumn only to be ejected from the charts itself when The Art Of Loving was released.
Rachel's World
As much as you love RAYE it will never be as much as she loves herself, and she was given free rein at the BRITs to whoop and holler over a mash-up performance of both Where Is My Husband and her brand new track Nightingale Lane which as a teaser for her new album This Music May Contain Hope (due at the end of this month) takes a bow at No.20. The new track sees her in full voiced balladeer mode, as illustrated by this video clip of an as-live performance of the track with full orchestra and chorus. Even if the song's debvt of acknowledgement to Stay With Me Baby is all the clearer. Making it all the more extraordinary that she spent her early years as a voice for hire on club tracks, as that was all the label believed she was worth.
Big Bad Dom
Another artist from the "everyone is catching up to him" pile is Dominic Fike. His 2018 track Babydoll remains his biggest hit so far, now rising to No.14. But it too has a halo hit, the more contemporary White Keys, a track he actually first recorded in 2020 but which was not fully commercially released until the tail end of that year. Now catching fire in its own right, it becomes his second Top 40 hit of the moment as it arrives at No.2.
Quirky chart moment of the week comes from Ella Langley whose Choosin' Texas I still have a soft spot for. But it now has its own place in history, stalled in place once again to now become the first single in chart history to spend four consecutive weeks at No.35.
No, we aren't done yet either. All good things come to those who wait, just ask Scottish DJ and producer Ewan McVicar who enjoyed a Top 20 hit in 2021 with his take on the Chaka Khan song Tell Me Something Good. Radio silence ever since is now broken by Share The House which after a three-week climb finally makes its way into the Top 40 at No.38. Old school house tracks never sounded better.
But the oldest of old school this week (sorry) comes courtesy of Madonna who for the second time in recent years is seeing one of her older classics go viral and enjoying a mini revival. This time it is the turn of her 1985 classic hit Into The Groove which is enjoying its own share of video-app virality. After an ACR reset it becomes the second golden oldie in a row to occupy the No.40 slot, replacing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights. I'll leave you to contemplate the fact that the song was a No.1 hit 41 years ago this summer, the equivalent of it having shared the charts at the time with a record made in 1944. Which would have been all but unthinkable.
