Power Of The Pyramid
Let’s deal with the main event first. It is the annual post-Glastonbury chart, the one week of the year when following extensive mainstream media coverage of a significant musical event the music of the featured stars enjoys a noticeable and significant sales boost. One which surprisingly it never occurs to anyone to try to reproduce at any other time. Although this year unlike in the past there hasn't been a noticeable surge in overall music consumption. Just a trend in the usual market towards those who featured.
Almost needless to say, it is on the albums market we see the effects the most, and this year is no different. Friday night’s immaculate headliner and most entertaining performer of the weekend Dua Lipa reaps the rewards of her Pyramid Stage performance with her current album Radical Optimism rocketing back to No.3, the classic Future Nostalgia leaping fully 92 chart places to No.8 and her self-titled debut similarly propelled to No.10. Yes OK, Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department is still No.1, but it is our own British pop Queen who dominates the Top 10 this week.
Saturday night headliners Coldplay are conspicuous by their absence, at least on the albums chart (perhaps everyone who tuned into them had the songs already) but despite the lukewarm response to her Sunday night Pyramid Stage headlining performance SZA also enjoys a Glasto bounce as her SOS album climbs to No.19. Let’s not overlook Shania Twain as well. As poor as she was, her Greatest Hits bounces 91-29.
Tight Sabrina
We very nearly had an extraordinary changing of the guard on the singles chart with Sabrina Carpenter’s Please Please Please having trailed its predecessor by a thousand copies or so on every one of the midweek updates. Come the end of the survey though and the status quo is maintained. But that does mean the American singer becomes the first woman in chart history to hold down positions 1 and 2 on the singles chart for three consecutive weeks. Once again Please Please Please is No.1 and the ever-perculating Espresso is No.2 but the real story of the week is the tiny, tiny gap between the two. Just 49 sales separate the singles at the top of the charts this week. Since the start of the Kantor Millward Brown era when reasonably accurate sales figures began to be gathered there have been just two closer chart races: In November 1995 Robson and Jerome's I Believe edged Gangsta's Paradise from Coolio by just 42 sales while in August 2007 Timbaland's The Way I Are was No.1 over Foundations from Kate Nash with just 16 sales between them.
We should also note overseas artists have now topped the charts for 27 weeks in a row, matching the modern-day record set between May and November 1991. In the whole of chart history there have been just two longer spells without a British performer at the top of the charts. And both of those came back in the 1950s.
Meanwhile the relentless rise of Chappell Roan continues well, relentlessly. Good Luck Babe adds to its account with a rise to a new peak of No.4, while lower down Hot To Go is up to No.26.
Sleep Data, Sleep
For the third week running though it is, awkwardly, another damn quiet week on the singles market with nothing new making any impact of note. Tommy Richman’s Million Dollar Baby is the big loser of the week, exiting the Top 10 as it dips to ACR, but it is merely replaced in the upper reaches by Central Cee and Lil Baby’s Band4Band which creeps up a place to No.11. Although this does at least meant there are two British acts in the Top 10, Myles Smith at No.7 the only other person to keep the Union Jack flying.
We don't often see the Glastonbury effect hit the singles charts, at least not any more, but there is perhaps one exception this year. Coldplay may not have moved the dial on any of their albums, but they have an otherwise unexpected singles chart presence. Their new single feelslikeimfallinginlove may have risen anyway, but it seems unfair not to credit its 25-16 rise with their TV exposure. But lower down there are also re-entries for Viva La Vida (63) and Yellow (66). Glastonbury got people listening to them again.
Dua Lipa got to benefit as well, Illusion charges up to No.25 with Houdini close behind as it re-enters at No.38. Meanwhile Training Season is also back on the chart at No.83. All three of course from her current album Radical Optimism.
The New(ish) Boys
As is traditional now, a relatively quiet top end of the charts still leaves room for some stirrings of newer material at the bottom end. Making good progress is a track I omitted to mention last week because of personal incompetence, Kehlani by Belfast rapper Jordan Adetunji. Breaking into the Top 40 for the first time last week, the track now rises once more to No.24 and seems comfortably on course for a Top 20 placing in short order.
It has taken three weeks, but Kid Laroi's steadily viral new hit Nights Like These is finally a Top 40 hit single as it rises to a new peak of No.30. It is the Australian performer's biggest chart hit since last year's No.10 single Too Much and his seventh Top 40 single in 13 Top 75 entries. But my word it is short, barely breaking 90 seconds in length. By the looks of things he may end up competing with himself for chart places, new release Girls also taking a bow at No.47.
There's also a long overdue Top 40 place for Kisses by Bl3ss x CamrinWatsin, banging if all too brief club track which is heavy on the Korg bassline for a deliciously retro sound that could well make it one of the sounds of the (much delayed summer). And if a criminally bad analysis like that ends up being cited on its Wikipedia page in future years I may cry. But enjoy anyway.
