Welcome to James Masterton's Chart Watch UK – your essential weekly deep dive into the Official UK Charts!
As the longest-running British music column online, we bring you the ultimate guide to this week's Top 40, unraveling the stories behind the biggest new singles and chart-topping hits. Plus, explore our extensive archives, a treasure trove of nearly 1800 articles documenting three and a half decades of popular music history and expert analysis.
Like a Nashville superhero, Taylor Swift does her thing of swooping in, very nearly landing her second chart grand slam in the space of a year, and then quite possibly takes off again. The special edition of Life Of A Showgirl does its thing and gives her a chart double for the fifth consecutive year.
This is not clickbait. Nicole Kidman does not have a hit single this week. But a song named after her is in the Top 5 which seems a good enough reason to put her here. Everything suddenly seems fresh and new, a long overdue chart shakeup is well under way.
All that jazz - and then some. Ezra Collective make their own small piece of history at the top of the albums chart this week. Meanwhile in the singles market it is a great week if you are a contemporary act with two hit tracks. Of which there are at least a couple.
Exceeding all out greatest expectations, less than a year on from her chart debut the magnificent Sienna Spiro is - magnificently - this week's No.1 star. We have a new British heroine on our hands. And it is a big week for women of any nationality as well.
