Extra Curricular Reading
Let's start with a links dump, as it is the start of the year and everyone is still busy doing retrospective summaries instead of, you know, the messy business of making new music.
First, an unpaywalled tease of a chat with Music Week by Radio One's head of music Chris Price. The big headline is his noting that simultaneous Top 10 hits for acts is "the new norm". Meaning Radio One are pivoting to deal with this when it comes to playlisting. However, he also makes vague statements about the "structural reasons around the streaming ecosystem" which results in chart domination for American artists. It is an issue that nobody yet has a direct solution for - assuming that it does become a long term problem of course.
On a similar theme, the BPI began the year trumpeting the record amount of musical consumption in Britain in 2024. The streaming market appears to very much be approaching maturity, with new records being set along the way. But the alternative view comes from the always fascinating to read Patrick Clifton, noting that the economic upside is largely from the artistic and business effort created PRIOR to 2024. Breaking new artists has become an art that is increasingly trickier. The problem is that the role of radio has diminished greatly - I've commented before on how Radio One will cheerfully jump on new sounds as part of its remit, but they actually struggle to turn these airplay favourites into proper hits. The DSPs try their best with new music playlists, but you have to work damn hard to seek them out and track them down.
..and Pearls
Which brings us neatly round to this week's charts themselves. The move on top of the Official UK Albums chart all surely grabs the headlines. Because of all people, Elton John has the No.1 album. It isn't with a new piece of work either, because the record in question is his 50th anniversary hits collection Diamonds.
No, I'm not making this up. First released in November 2017, Diamonds has - thanks to the power of endless streams of the famous songs it contains - been a chart ever-present in every one of the 284 weeks since. Entering at No.5 in its first week on release It has never charted lower than No.73 but since April 2019 has never once dipped outside the Top 40. The release last week of some new physical editions - including a first-ever cassette package - has finally given the album the impetus it needed. And so after the slowest continuous climb in chart history Diamonds finally makes it to No.1.
It is - you may be surprised to learn - only Elton's ninth No.1 album. The man who has spent over 50 years creating some very famous works has never really been the kind of person who saw his albums fly straight to the top. Most of them came during his imperial phase in the 1970s - Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Caribou and Elton John's Greatest Hits gave him four in a row in 1973 and 1974. He didn't top the charts again until Sleeping With The Past and The Very Best Of Elton John hit the top (both 1990). And now in the 21st century he has had three more - Good Morning To The Night in 2012, The Lockdown Sessions in 2021 and now Diamonds - albeit belatedly.
So yes, Elton topping the charts is a big story to begin the year with. But at the end of the day it is also a collection of recordings, some nearly five decades old, as performed by a 77 year old man. The cutting edge of rock and roll.
More Truth
Meanwhile on the singles chart it is all a bit same old, same old. At least at the top. A static Top 4 means a seventh week in total at the summit for Gracie Abrams and That's So True. I confess that the long-running appeal of bizarro Taylor Swift is a bit of a head scratcher. It is a nice song for sure and a good pop record. But a seven week No.1 single in two runs either side of Christmas? Tickle me slightly curious as to how this all comes about. But at the very least the Top 4 singles are all justifiably huge. We have one current No.1, one single that can consider itself unlucky to have never been No.1 (APT.), one single that surely deserves to be No.1 (Messy) and one single that already has been No.1 (Sailor Song). Not a bad selection at the end of the day.
WTF?
The No.5 single of the week is however something quite startling. A record that was dismissed as a bubble hit when it first charted, which then traced a chart path indicating that it was indeed such a record, but which now returns with quite startling force. I refer to none other than Who by Jimin. The K-Pop single first charted back in August at No.4 but then gently drifted down 4-11-25-32-47 in a quite predictable fashion. But then it never truly went away, not in the way most other BTS-family singles generally do. Who took up position just outside the Top 40 and remained there for most of the rest of 2024, always neatly avoiding ACR until the axe finally fell in November.
And now suddenly it is back, rocketing back into contention at No.5, after reappearing at No.64 last week. Part of that is explained away by an ACR reset - but that doesn't begin to tell the story of why a single which was No.50 in its final week before relegation is suddenly back up there as one of the most-streamed tracks of the moment. But still, "who" are we to argue? Part of the frustration of it being a bubble hit to begin with is that Who was a rather fine pop record in its own right and deserving of a wider audience than is normally granted to these things. This second wind may well give it the chance to emerge from that shadow.
Cuts Like A Knife
It got mentioned in dispatches last week but BMD by SZA is now a proper hit single, rocketing up to No.21. It is a fascinating listen as she steps out of her comfort zone, rapping and singing over a jazz guitar. The melody is unabashedly The Girl From Ipanema with lyrics also borrowed from Don't Stop Believin' (the connection being both songs reference South Detroit). SZA was last in the Top 10 a few weeks ago as the co-performer on Kendrick Lamar's Luther (itself still floating around at No.26) but she hasn't had a smash hit to call her own since Kill Bill made No.3 almost two years ago. Is this track the one to make a difference?
Never Heard Of You, Sorry
A combination of ACR resets and new surges in appeal means Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club gallops back onto the chart for the first time since early November, re-charting at No.22 at the expense of last week's No.60 hit Casual. The breakout star of last year also has the still evergreen Good Luck Babe at No.17 and Hot To Go at No.47. And a breakout star she is, anointed this week as the winner of the BBC's annual Sound Of <This Year> poll, although this is another of those occasions when eyebrows are raised that a feature designed to showcase the hottest upcoming talent of the moment chooses to recognise an artist who has had multiple hit singles, a chart album and performed her own headlining gigs during last year. The organisers mutter about the rules stating you must have had fewer than two chart albums and shuffle off into a corner.
But this isn't actually unusual. Take for example the winner of the Sound Of 2014 poll Sam Smith who topped it despite having performed lead vocals on a No.1 single during the course of the previous year. Said single was Naughty Boy's La La La and topically enough that is a surprise return to the singles chart this week as it re-enters at No.32 for its first chart appearance in over a decade. This is all thanks to TikTok having "discovered" Smith's back catalogue over the past few weeks, prompting a surge of interest in many of his past works. It seems only appropriate that La La La should be leading them all, a genuine million seller and one of the biggest songs from a year that represented the absolute peak of singles downloads. Its Wizard Of Oz-themed video is similarly iconic, and if this turns out to be TikTok's final hitmaking hurrah (the US wants it shut down due to its Chinese ownership) then it is a fine way to go out.
Isthmus Time
Finally, to bring up the rear, American rapper Doechii starts her hitmaking career with the fun novelty Denial Is A River which opens its account at No.39. And surely has to get bigger, because this the one hit this week that I can't help but play over and over. You'll see why. It is just a shame it doesn't go on for longer, but these therapists charge by the hour you know.
