Out Of It
What superlatives have I used for Alex Warren's Ordinary since its chart debut?
"A multi-layered choral ballad of fragile beauty".
"..beautifully compelling".
"…still very special".
This week we can add a further one. "A Number One single".
Yes, I know, at the start of the week this was the last thing we were expecting. But having accelerated into a lead by the time of the Wednesday midweeks the American influencer's third major hit opened up what turned out to be an insurmountable gap at the top of the charts. Just as most American female singers are starting to all sound the same, Warren's vocal throaty and bellowing vocal technique means at time he is all but indistinguishable from people like Teddy Swims, Hozier or Rag N' Bone Man. But his song undoubtedly possesses that sheer bit of magic which means that - just like Benson Boone's Beautiful Things a year ago - it may not be the most obvious choice of record to top the British charts, but with a few more listens in that context you can understand completely why it has made it to No.1.
Meanwhile Alex Warren's two other chart singles are both on the rise, Carry You Home now at No.20 and Burning Down smouldering at No.28. Both too are their highest chart placings so far.
Well, Good Luck To Her
Huge commiserations then to Chappell Roan who was otherwise widely expected to be pulling off the still somewhat rare trick of replacing herself at the top of the charts. Her first brand new material since the release of Good Luck Babe was always going to be a big deal, but the unabashedly country vibe of her new single The Giver only proved to hammer home her extraordinary versatility as a performer. Would The Giver have belonged at No.1 in its own right? Absolutely, and for all we know it might still end up there at some point. For the moment it has to content itself with a No.2 entry, making it her fourth Top 5 single and third Top 3 hit.
The arrival of The Giver appears to have sent Pink Pony Club into a more startling reverse than anticipated as it dips to No.4, leaving the path clear for Doechii's Anxiety to consolidate its position as her biggest hit so far and - to continue a theme - still a deserving contender of its own to be a future No.1 hit. It all means the top end of the singles chart has the freshest look it has had all year. For all our (OK, my) grumbling at the start of the year about the charts being clogged up with last year's hits just refusing to move out of the bloody way, we now have a Top 3 made up of singles whose "weeks on chart" column reads 6, 1 and 2 respectively. And that's how it should be really.
Keeping Busy
She plays gigs, she grabs headlines, she moves up the charts. Sabrina Carpenter's Busy Woman has been floating around for five weeks now without us paying it much attention in these pages. But here it is now adding itself to her list of major hit singles over the past 12 months, lifting itself to a brand new peak of No.5. A late addition to the tracklisting it may have been, but it still means that in an era when most albums are one and done in terms of major hit singles they contain, Short And Sweet has now emitted five smash hit cuts, four of which have all reached the British Top 5.
Absolute Boi
Albums chart champion of the week is Playboi Carti whose third studio album Music becomes far and away his biggest so far, smashing its way with some hefty streaming numbers to the very top of the charts. His last release Whole Lotta Red was sneaked out in the final week of 2020 and made No.17, but in truth we all had lots going on at that point. Previously best known for his past collaborations with The Weeknd and Travis Scott, the American rapper neatly lands the first big solo hits of his career, most notably with the album's biggest cut Evil Jordan which barges its way to No.7. He's also at No.10 with Rather Lie (resuming his Weeknd bromance) and at No.21 with the Skepta-assisted Toxic.
For the first time in ten months there are no British acts in the Top 10.
Banger
Part of the joy of chartwatching is knowing there will always be room for absolutely anything in here. Plenty have bemoaned the demise of both groups and mainstream rock in recent years, but that just makes the No.17 appearance of Emergence from Sleep Token all the more joyful. It is the first ever singles chart entry for the group who make their anonymity part of their notability, frontman Vessel and his recording partner II (along with live band members III and IV) perform entirely in robes and masks, their true identities a mystery to all but their mothers (presumably). Emergence itself is a joy, a six and a half minute epic in several movements which veers between genres at a breakneck pace. As one YouTube commenter puts it: "Producer: how many music types are you gonna mix? Vessel: Yes". I'm not going to muse on how this got here nor how likely it is to stick around. Just drink it all in and enjoy it while it lasts.
Mixed Out
OK this could be awkward. As I discovered during an enthusiastic Brits tweetalong, Jade Thirwall enjoys the support of some dedicated and quite hardcore fans who take affront to any attempt to snark on their idol. Yes, she won the fan-bombed Best Pop Act Award. Yes, she put on one of the show-stealing performances of the night. But she really, really cannot buy a proper second hit single to follow Angel Of My Dreams. The latest attempt is new single FUFN (Fuck You For Now) which sits nicely in her particular woman-empowered groove and presses all the right buttons as far as being wildly hyped is concerned. But all it does is enter at No.25 on the strength of some hardcore fan support. Yes, this is a far better showing than alleged "promotional" singles Fantasy (No.52), Midnight Cowboy (No.93) and IT Girl (No.44). But this is still borderline "we've all stopped caring let's move on" levels. Which for the singer clearly being pushed as the best solo prospect out of all the Little Mix girls is… unfortunate. It is not a bad pop record all things considered. But we have indeed already all stopped caring.
Hometown Tecca
Lil Tecca's last album Plan A only came out in September last year, but he's already moving on to new material. Dark Thoughts hands him a No.30 new entry, becoming perhaps curiously his first Top 40 hit single since 2019's Ran$om which climbed as far as No.7 during the course of an epic six month chart run. He's had the braces out since.
We finish on this week's genuine WTF moment, as the final 'new' entry of the week is the decade and a half old Hometown Glory from missing in action global superstar Adele. Famously her first ever single release, initially flung out on a small label before she found greater success elsewhere, the song appeared on her debut album 19 and was her second chart single, arriving for a brief wander around the lower end of the Top 40 concurrent with the chart success of her breakthrough hit Chasing Pavements. It would peak later that same year when pushed properly as a single, reaching an eventual peak of a non more appropriate No.19. For the first time in 17 years Hometown Glory makes a dramatic chart reappearance after - you guessed it - becoming part of a viral Tik Tok trend where people use it to soundtrack videos of old family photographs. Just what will people unearth next?
