You are reading the famous weekly guide to the Official UK Charts. The longest-running British music column online.
Read about this week's Top 40 charts and the stories behind the biggest new hit singles. Plus browse the complete 26-year archive, a resource of over 1300 articles documenting over a quarter of a century of popular music history.
This shall henceforth be known as Ariana week because there is surely nothing the American singer will ever do to surpass this. Her new album tops the charts, bringing in its wake yet another brand new single. And making her the first (dangerous) woman to do something very special indeed.
An intriguing three-way battle at the top end of the albums chart was the perfect distraction from nothing of note happening at the top end of the singles market. 39 years to the week that they topped the singles chart for the first time, The Specials have a first-ever Number One long player to go with it.
There's more to life than Ariana Grande, despite what the Spotify charts would have you believe. Mabel makes the Top 10 for the second time, but J Cole and Lewis Capaldi do so for the first time ever. One of them is pretty damn thrilled about it too.
Ariana Grande's new single is big. We're talking full-on family-sized pizza with extra toppings, stuffed crust with hot dogs and mustard levels of big. A record streaming total and the first record to move over 100,000 copies in a week for almost 18 months. 7 Rings has arrived, and not even a row over its origins could stand in its way.
