Eight Up
Just a week after its surprise debut as a Top 5 single alongside the unannounced release of its parent album, Justin Bieber's Daisies ascends almost effortlessly to the top of the Official UK Singles chart. I say "almost" as it still had to come from behind, the single trailing Dior by a thousand sales or so based on early midweek figures, a deficit it was more than able to make up as the week progressed.
It is the Canadian star's eighth No.1 single, his first in some considerable time. 2021 smash hits Peaches and Stay both stalled at No.2 for extended periods (10 weeks combined), meaning he hasn't actually enjoyed a spell at the top of the charts since 2019 when he duetted with Ed Sheeran on the similarly long running smash I Don't Care.
This also means Justin Bieber has spent 39 weeks in total at the top of the charts, drawing him level with Calvin Harris on the all-time list. Only Elvis Presley (80 weeks), The Beatles (70 weeks), Ed Sheeran (61 weeks) and Cliff Richard (46 weeks) have spent longer at the summit. That stat alone appears quite startling - how on earth has Bieber managed to spend the best part of nine months of his life at No.1 on the UK charts. But this is all thanks to his participation on some spectacularly long-running smashes. His presence on the English language remix of Luis Fonsi's Despacito (the single which notoriously broke the ACR rules five minutes after they were implemented) meant he spent most of the summer of 2017 at No.1 (11 weeks in total) while his co-performance on the aforementioned I Don’t Care accounts for 8 more. Eight No.1 singles in the streaming era means the weeks start to add up.
So how long will Daisies last? People are groping for something, anything to become the proverbial sound of the summer. And Justin Bieber's single is suddenly in prime position to be lodged at the top of the charts from now until the schools go back. You'll note it still doesn't have anything resembling a video - not even a lyrical one. Pity the jukebox channels. Now can we talk about the way (as someone pointed out to me in the week) it owes a rather large debt to Steve Lacy?
He's Back
During Alex Warren's extended run at No.1 with Ordinary one of the more curious side stories was the way the success of the single just refused to translate into large sales for what was at the time his debut EP You'll Be Alright Kid (Chapter 1). OK, so the album wasn't doing badly, but it spent most of the early spring and summer hovering around the Top 20 with just two weeks in the Top 10 to its name, and even then only managing to peak at No.9. All that changes this week as the EP is turned into an album proper with a new set of tracks that bumps the running order up to 21 in total. Rather fascinatingly this isn't being treated by Official Charts as a new release but merely an expansion. A "special edition" if you like. But in any event the effect is plan to see - the newly re-christened You'll Be Alright Kid in its 43rd week on the Official UK Albums chart is finally hauled to the top.
At least one of those new tracks was always going to make a chart impact, and so it proves as Warren also boasts the week's highest new entry as new song Eternity debuts at No.3. The new single is enjoyably Beige, full of sonorous vocals, plucked strings on what sound worryingly like lutes and with lots of intense multitracking. Everything in fact you woul\d expect to hear on an Alex Warren track. Or possibly a Hozier one, I forget. It is a format which commands the attention of a worryingly large number of people right now, but the idea of listening to 21 of these in a row fills me with terror.
Meanwhile the Elephant looms. Ordinary lingers on at No.7, relegated to ACR but still commanding numbers which mean it would still - STILL! - be No.1 by some distance if hadn't been emasculated. If it accidentally trips over the threshold and earns a reset there is still every chance it could barge its way back.
Rumi Has It
I'm running out of up-up-up puns, but that is just what Golden from Huntr/x keeps doing. The cartoon girl group just keep marching forward and now have a Top 5 single to their name as the hit record charges to No.4. It is however their only hit on the chart this week. As anticipated on these pages seven days ago their second track How It's Done is supplanted as the third-largest hit from the K-Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack by Soda Pop from the nemeses Saja Boys. The song by which the five demons in disguise announce their presence to the world, it debuts at No.17, two places behind Your Idol which itself surges forward to No.14.
A reader queried in the comments last week just why Huntr/x and Saja Boys are regarded as the same "artist" for the three songs rule. And the answer is: because reasons. This is an odd holdover from the time when soundtrack albums were counted for the artists chart rather than the compilations chart (as they have done for the past few years). When they did, the overarching project, be it a movie or a musical, was considered the "artist" and only three songs from the album were permitted to chart, regardless of who actually performed them. Those restrictions apply now despite the illogicality of it. After all, if a soundtrack album is now a multi-artist record then surely each of those artists should be treated separately. But alas, no. Really putting soundtrack albums on the "compilations" chart is an oddity anyway - they are the only record there whose streams are allowed to count for their chart position.
It means we are left with real life imitating fantasy. Saja Boys have 2 hits to Huntr/x's 1. Meaning the demons are steadily taking over, just as they do in the movie. If none of that makes sense, just go watch it already. And keep an eye out for what the release of a new David Guetta remix of Golden does to its already bright chart prospects.
Oldies And Goners
Down the lower end of the Top 40 it is very much in with the old. Coinciding with their first London dates in a generation, Oasis land a "new" entry as Wonderwall takes over as their third chart hit of the moment, finally overtaking Acquiesce which vanishes from the chart. That's back at No.27 while Don't Look Back In Anger and Live Forever sit at 22 and 23 respectively.
This week the music world mourned the loss of Ozzy Osbourne, the legendary rocker passing away mere weeks after his big farewell concert. It was always going to be fascinating to see how the charts reacted to this. His music was mostly at the harder end of heavy metal, not necessarily the most commercial of sounds, and his latter-day celebrity was based on him and his personality and not necessarily his singing. So there was a surge, but only for 2016 Black Sabbath hits collection The Ultimate Collection, a record which rebounds to No.22 after having first peaked at No.20 when originally released. Black Sabbath's most celebrated album Paranoid is also back on the charts, arriving at No.52 in what is its highest chart placing since its original 1970 run when it topped the charts. The celebration of Ozzy's solo years Memoirs Of A Madman is also back on the chart, landing at No.60 in its first chart run since it peaked at No.23 upon release in October 2014.
All of those will have been mostly down to streams of the most famous tracks, as illustrated by the number of Ozzy hits that pepper the other listing. The charge is led by Black Sabbath's Paranoid, for some odd reason listed as an entirely new chart hit by Official Charts despite it having first peaked at No.4 back in 1970. Its posthumous arrival means it makes No.32 in its first chart appearance since a 1980 reissue saw it back in the Top 20. Genuinely brand new is War Pigs, an eight minute epic also taken from the Paranoid album and which is this week's No.79 hit in its first chart appearance ever. The trio is rounded off by Iron Man at No.93 which was originally an American-only single which reached No.52 on the Hot 100 as their biggest ever hit on those shores.
The fun part is that the three hits per artist rule means Ozzy Osbourne can chart as a solo artist independent of his old band. That leaves room for the celebrated Crazy Train to return to the chart at No.56. Originally credited to Ozzy Osbourne's Blizzard Of Oz, it peaked at No.49 in September 1980.
There's no sign of the singer's two biggest ever chart hits, neither of which were actually rock songs. He reached No.4 in summer 1992 as the uncredited singer (alongside Kim Basinger) of Was (Not Was)'s Shake Your Head, and topped the charts for the first and only time in December 2003 with a cover of his own Changes, this time as a duet with daughter Kelly. The last chart single of his life was also a fun oddity, co-credited on Post Malone's 2019 No.22 hit Take What You Want.
Rest in peace Ozzy, you weren't a walking rock star cliché. You invented it.
Incidentally the also newly deceased Hulk Hogan also had a chart hit of his own, appearing on Green Jelly's 1993 cover of I'm The Leader Of The Gang which reached No.25. I'll be astounded if that re-charts somehow.
