Can We Talk?
The becalming of the past few weeks finally turns into a torrent of activity. Not for the first time the cold clammy hand of ACR takes a grip just when it is needed the most. No fewer than five of last week's Top 10 singles all fall victim to the enforced halving of their streams, the effect being to freshen up the Top 10 and indeed many other areas of the singles chart.
But the songs rushing in to fill the void only serve to highlight something which perhaps had gone under the radar, at least as far as these pages were concerned. Because what we are witnessing at the moment is a chart sweep by artists who all have one important thing in common. Songs performed by intense, arty and slightly left-of-field (largely) solo women. Allow me to introduce you then to the Rise Of The Weird Chicks.
Weird Chick #1
Immune to the winds of change (at least for now it appears) is Sabrina Carpenter who remains top of the pile with Taste. The single has now been No.1 for the past 8 weeks running, now out on its own as her biggest hit single of the year but also the longest-running No.1 single since Sprinter by Dave and Central Cee had a 10-week sojourn in the middle of 2023. And it is the longest-running No.1 hit by a solo female since Miley Cyrus also enjoyed 10 weeks at No.1 with Flowers earlier that same year.
Sabrina Carpenter can now boast 20 weeks - five lunar months - at No.1 in 2024, a modern-day record. Only one person in the whole of chart history has spent longer at the top of the charts in a single calendar year - Frankie Laine with 28 back in 1953. Ed Sheeran did have 20 weeks in total at the top of the charts in 2017 with singles that reached No.1 during that year, but the final two weeks of the final one (Perfect) were chart weeks at the start of 2018. So they don't actually count.
But this week there is a twist in the Sabrina Carpenter tale. Last week's No.4 single Espresso returns to ACR for the second time and dips to No.17, but of last week's No.5 Please Please Please there is no sign. The reason is the one we've been flagging here for weeks. The 'hidden' hit single Bed Chem finally moves from Sabrina's 4th biggest hit to the 2nd and in the process becomes eligible for the Official UK Singles chart for the first time, a 'new' entry this week at No.9 after a great many weeks occupying a notional rung in a similar position. One listen and you can see why it was also up there as one of the most consistently streamed tracks from the Short N' Sweet album, the spiritual successor to Espresso as an unabashedly raunchy slice of early 80 soul revival. I prefer this to Taste if I'm honest, even if the latter has given us the female equivalent of "stirring the other guy's porridge".
Weird Chick #2
The second one is essentially the OG wild woman of pop, Lady Gaga who along with Bruno Mars ascends gracefully to take second place with Die With A Smile. I didn't necessarily peg this as a potential No.1 single when it landed, but at the risk of once more repeating myself - something has to replace Taste at the top. And right now this throwback ballad is right at the heart of that race. Die With A Smile is now far and away Bruno Mars' biggest chart hit since Uptown Funk topped the charts almost ten years ago.
Weird Chick #3
I'm not completely sure anyone would have pegged Gigi Perez' Sailor Song as a Top 3 single either, especially given its tortuously slow progress up the tables. But circumstances have today propelled it to a new peak of No.3 - this after an extended chart run since the summer which has seen it stall in place on no less than three occasions. In its chart run so far the viral hit has spent two consecutive weeks at No.35, two consecutive weeks at No.13 and two more at No.11. I'll leave you to ponder that but for the ACR ejection of the two Sabrina Carpenter hits from the Top 5, Sailor Song could well have been spending a second week at No.6 this week. Strange but true.
Weird Chick #4
Did anyone peg I Love You I'm Sorry by Gracie Abrams as a Top 5.. Oh, you get the point I guess. Another single whose rise has been less than stratospheric to date finally breaks into the big time. On its 16th week as a Top 100 single the biggest of four chart singles this year from the American singer-songwriter rockets to a new peak of No.4 and in its own sweet way serves as a perfect companion to Sailor Song, both songs tales of female angst from two very different directions.
Sonny Fodera's Somedays doesn't quite fit the theme, but it is female-led so kind of counts. Surviving the great cull of stayers on what is now its sixth week in the Top 10 it too enjoys a surge to a new peak of No.5. For featured singer Jazzy it is her third Top 5 single in as many years - she reached No.4 on the Belters Only track Make Me Feel Good in 2022 and No.3 with her own Giving Me in the summer of 2023.
Weird Chick #5
This week alas marked the end of the high-level chart run of Chappell Roan's Good Luck Babe, the single that never quite fulfilled its No.1 destiny another to be unceremoniously ejected from the Top 10. It means its place as Roan's biggest hit is taken by Hot To Go which advances to No.6 after what is - yes you guessed it - a quite extended chart run. H.O.T.T.O.G.O. (to give it its full title) is now 22 weeks into its Top 100 chart life with this being its sixth in total as a Top 10 single. And it too now has a new peak of No.6. Meanwhile Roan's third hit of the moment, the even older Pink Pony Club cannot immediately capitalise on this sales reset, and lingers instead at No.13 for the second week running.
Weird Bloke v Weird Chick #6
The attempt by James Blunt to make this week's albums chart race all about himself, promising to legally change his name if the 20th-anniversary re-issue of his smash hit album Back To Bedlam topped the charts, eventually came to nothing. Leader of the race for a while was the even more veteran Paul Heaton only for everyone to be ursuped at the death by Charli XCX, intent on turning BRAT summer into BRAT autumn. This week she released a brand new special edition of the record, like its first special edition predecessor boasting a quirky new subtitle. The expanded album which adds a new disc of collaborative reworkings of all its original tracks is entitled Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat but should probably be called BRAT but it finally makes No.1. In an era when albums open high and then fall back the Charli XCX album this week makes a notable journey to the top of the charts for the very first time, hitting No.1 a full 19th weeks after it first debuted at No.2.
Almost needless to say this is largely down to streams of the brand new tracks, streams which duly propel its biggest tracks into the upper end of the singles chart. The charge is led by Sympathy Is A Knife, the album's 150-second third track which now benefits from added vocals from Ariana Grande. It duly becomes the week's highest new entry as it slams in at No.7, perhaps finally putting to bed the notion that Charli XCX lacks big hit singles.
The other big mover is the previously-charted Apple which is granted an ACR reset and surges back up the table to No.11, nine weeks after it first peaked at No.8. Confusingly as an already-charted hit it isn't allowed to grow the credit for its new co-vocalist (this is only permitted if the track has yet to make the Top 40) meaning we are denied the sight of a first ever chart entry for The Japanese House, aka dreampop musician Amber Bain. But that's a name we may well hear more from over the next year.
Similarly shorn of a co-credit for the same reasons but back on the singles chart nonetheless is BRAT's opening track 360 which grows new vocals from Robyn and Yung Lean to re-debut at No.20. You will note that this is all to the detriment of Guess, the chart-topping Billie Eilish duet that apparently inspired the full set of remakes. No.12 last week it is still around, but chart-ineligible thanks to the 3 hits per primary artist rule.
Moving On
The final two places in the Top 10 are taken up by men (sorry), but they also represent new chart peaks for the songs in question. Thick Of It rises 14-8 for KSI thanks it seems to a clever promotional campaign where he has embraced the mocking disses of the track from other online influencers and turned it into the marketing of the track. And after a wait of four months Move by Adam Port and collaborators is finally a Top 10 hit single as it reverses several weeks of decline to move 22-10, this logically enough thanks to the release of a new version that stirs in some added Camilla Cabello.
The usual suspects will almost certainly be out in force bemoaning the slightly artificial nature of the shaken-up singles chart. I'd note that continuing ACR is at present masking the consumption comeback of Billie Eilish's already vintage Birds Of A Feather. On the rebound ever since the release of its video, the single is officially No.16 this week but is notably No.2 on the overall and unencumbered streaming chart. Suggesting it is probably entitled to similar on the singles chart for real.
But let's face it the chart needed a shakeup. This week the tracklisting for the forthcoming new Now That's What I Call Music compilation album, the 119th volume, was announced ahead of its mid-November release. But it very rapidly runs out of actual new hit singles to feature, given how few there actually have been since the summer and the discs are padded out with additions from the Radio 2 playlist.
There's one more new entry of note to round things off this week, Mantra debuts at No.37 to become the third solo hit single for Jennie, adding to the nine she has enjoyed to date as a member of Blackpink. But we all know that one exists in a bubble and is vanishingly unlikely to go any further. Which is a shame, as it is actually the best pop record you will have heard all week. I love this far more than anything she has put her name to so far for reasons that I can't even begin to articulate.
