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.
Another Swift Shift means a vast surge in sales for the lady you see here. A third week at No.1 is in the bag. But just what will happen next time around now those physical stock are exhausted? Meanwhile Olivia Rodrigo clears her throat...
Watch out all, there's a Storm on the way. A viral VMAs performance sends what may well be the most talked-of track of the autumn skywards. But the big story is another Swift Shift. A timely physical singles drop giving Taylor Swift a No.1 edge she would almost certainly otherwise have lacked.
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.
