Out Of It
After one of those weeks where we were teased a close chart race which actually turned out to be anything but, the status quo remains at the top of the Official UK Singles chart. Alex Warren is No.1 for a second week with Ordinary, the track now surging in popularity to become the first single this year to top the 60,000 mark with its weekly chart sale/units/whatever they are calling them these days.
The halo effect of Ordinary is carrying over to the singer's other hits - most notably Carry You Home which ensures Warren becomes the latest member of the simultaneous Top 10 club as it soars 20-10. But we must not lose sight of Burning Down which reaches a new peak of its own, up to No.23.
This all serves to hammer home that we truly appear to be back in the era of the singer-songwriter, manufactured pop at least for now being consigned to the dustbin. Part of the reason for that is practicality. The old way of carefully planned promotional campaigns and artists reliant on a team of experts in the background to teach them what to say, how to dance and give them songs to sing simply does not work in the streaming era where the market makes its own stars in its own way. Alex Warren simply waited his turn and waited for his songs to catch fire and reach the right amount of ears. Meanwhile FUFN by Jade Thirwall, promoted to the hilt with some expensive production and a glamorous video has tumbled 25-69 and will be forgotten about by Easter. Nothing against her, because there's nothing wrong with it as a pop record. But that's the simple truth of the direction of travel of pop music right now.
Dancing Back
This week, just like last week, the chart runner-up is Chappell Roan. Only this time around with a completely different song. Last week's big new entry The Giver slumps three places to No.5, and so in its place returns former No.1 single Pink Pony Club. I did wonder if this was some random variance in the overall numbers required for each chart position, The Giver a victim of the moves of the market. But no. The Giver has slumped from an opening week sale of 41,729 to 25,696 this week. But it is Pink Pony Club that has lucked out, posting 37,793 to sit at No.4 last week, only to lose 3,500 of those sales in its journey back up to No.2.
Resurgent
The theme for the lower end of the Top 40 is not so much brand new arrivals (of which there are practically none - the highest new entry of the week is Jack Harlow and Doja Cat's Just Like Us way down at No.50). But instead hits that are enjoying steady upward mobility. Take Drake's Nokia for example, a track that is now six weeks old and which has spent the previous five either at 19 or 20. But now it surges, even just a little to rest at No.12.
There's a more spectacular move just below though. Club hit Show Me Love from WiztheMC and Bees & Honey first charted three weeks ago. After an obligatory fortnight lower down the chart it made the Top 40 for the first time last week at No.38 but now surges to No.14 with the kind of momentum which suggests it will be Top 5 in fairly short order. The creator of the track Wiz (if we may call him that) was both in South Africa, grew up in Germany but now resides in Canada which all feels wonderfully cosmopolitan. His hit single is a decided throwback, everyone online is convinced it has true 2014 vibes. But that makes the hit feel all the fresher, a track with summertime smash written all over it. And it still isn't Easter yet.
Also new to the Top 20 - pleasingly so - is Ravyn Lenae's Love Me Not, a hit that could have so easily been lost in the mix but which has quietly and steadily been growing an audience for itself in the four weeks it has been on the Top 40 so far. Also on the move is Lil Tecca's Dark Thoughts which rises ten places to No.20.
Down Fido
Another track with a sudden fire lit under it is Mutt from Leon Thomas. The utterly smoking soul track has been around for some six months now without ever really finding its feet. After a false start in February when it charted for the first time it has been skulking around the lower depths for the last four weeks before finally accelerating to prominence with a jump to No.26. As ever there is a logical reason for this - in this case the release of a new remix of the track featuring jump-on vocals from Chris Brown. And clearly, he has the power still to make things happen. Keep your eyes peeled for what this one does next.
Science Part
Alex Warren marching over the 60k mark with his No.1 single has sort of trodden on the point I was going to hit this week, but the fact that until now none of the chart-topping singles of 2025 had managed to post much more than 50,000 weekly sales was starting to be quite telling. In years gone by sagging sales of No.1 singles would be a tell of an overall dip in the singles market. In the streaming era this just isn't the case. Once more this week the singles market overall is well over 30,000,000 as it indeed has consistently been since the end of February. Trust me, those are huge numbers. Five years ago (circumstances notwithstanding) 20 million a week was the norm - meaning the size of the market for tracks has shot up by 50% since the start of the decade. But what hasn't happened is a corresponding rise in the consumption of the biggest hits of the week - the tracks at the top end of the market. The No.1 single generally averages between 6-7 million streams (Alex Warren did the latter) week in week out. In 2020 the average sale for a No.1 single was 61,000 units, while the average No.10 posted 27,000. This week Alex Warren has both the No.1 and No.10 single with sales of 62,000 and 19,500 respectively. Overall tracks consumption has never been higher (thanks largely to the easy availability of what is by any definition a vast back catalogue). The portion of that number accounted for by the top end of the market has by contrast never been lower.
