This week's Official UK Singles Chart
This week's Official UK Albums Chart
Wednesday night saw the live TV screening of the British music industry's annual BRIT awards ceremony, celebrating the great and the good and the Adeles of British music over the last year. Inevitably this has meant that these, the first set of charts published since the event, are scoured for evidence of the "BRITs effect", the boost in sales that always results from the TV exposure for the featured acts and the added appeal of their music now being an award winner. A note of caution though - the move of the charts survey period has meant that the event took place just 24 hours before the end of the chart week, barely any time for the true impact to filter through at retail. Crediting the annual bunfest at the O2 for many of this week's chart moves requires a certain degree of caution but we'll do so anyway in this analysis.
Destined it seems to feature at the 2017 ceremony are Lukas Graham and as was widely expected they spend a third week at the top of the Official UK Singles chart with 7 Years, the sales and streams of the single holding up well to ensure it clocks up a further 130,000 in combined sales. The only truly notable thing to say about it this week is just how far ahead of the competition it is at present, almost 60,000 combined sales ahead of its nearest rival.
That nearest rival? Work by Rihanna and Drake, one which theoretically gets a BRITS boost after the pair performed the track at the ceremony but which was always set to remain one of the bigger hits of the week. The track rises to Number 2, giving Rihanna an 8th second place hit to neatly complement the 8 chart-toppers she has managed in her career to date. Drake has only ever once been this high, and not since 2011 when another Rihanna duet What's My Name topped the pile.
Those who spend the end of last year hoping Justin Bieber would perish in a fire were teased with deliverance on Wednesday night as the Canadian star performed in a pyrotechnic-laden performance that also featured a surprise cameo of James Bay on guitar. This does appear to have given Love Yourself a small boost as it arrests its chart decline and rises 7-5 although the other song he performed on the night Sorry dips a place to Number 9. He's now a double BRIT award winner, picking up the Best International Male Solo Artist trophy to add to the International Breakthrough Act he netted in 2011.
Coldplay are the only act to penetrate the Top 10 this week as Hymn For The Weekend (the track with an uncredited Beyonce in tow) climbs 17-10. The newly minted Best British Group (the third time they have landed the honour) can now claim 17 Top 10 hit singles since their first way back in the summer of 2000.
One man who has been waiting for four years to return to the Top 10 is singer-songwriter Mike Posner. He narrowly misses out this week as his global smash I Took A Pill In Ibiza rockets up the charts but crashes into the glass ceiling with a 42-11 jump. The single, radically remixed by Norwegians SeeB, is his third British chart hit, the last two coming at the very start of the decade with his own Cooler Than Me reaching Number 5 in October 2010 followed a year later by his cameo role on Cher Lloyd's With UR Love which bettered that and reached Number 4.
Adele's When We Were Young makes a move of its own, some of which quite possibly can be attributed to her multiple gong-grabbing at the BRIT awards this week. The second hit single from 25 leaps 23-13 in the wake of her performance of the song at the ceremony on its way to surely inevitably becoming another Top 10 hit single in the next week or so.
Sia's latest hit single is Cheap Thrills which makes its Top 40 bow this week at Number 36 but it is oddly bettered by an older song making a surprise comeback. 2014 Number 6 hit Chandelier leaps 52-29 to grab its highest chart placing since April last year - all thanks to the viral success of her Carpool Karaoke appearance with James Corden last week. The CBS aired Late Late Show doesn't have a broadcast outlet here so its influence is limited to YouTube clips, but that hasn't stopped the regular celebrity singalong feature having a measurable impact on some of the tracks featured. Corden himself is the proud owner of a Number One single in his own right, having performed Shout (For England) alongside Dizzee Rascal in 2010.
On the Official UK Albums chart Adele remains supreme at the top, a position she would have occupied regardless of her sweeping the board on Wednesday night. Critics' Choice award winner Jack Garett lands himself an immaculately timed highest new entry of the week with his debut album Phase shooting to Number 3, whilst James Bay could arguably be seen as the most notable sales winner of the night. Performing both alongside Justin Bieber and doing his own performance of Hold Back The River in the wake of being garlanded Best British Solo Male Artist his album Chaos And The Calm jumps 17-7, four weeks away from the first anniversary of its release.
