Chart Watch Weekly - April 25th 2022

Yes, it’s the weekly charts newsletter that only occasionally takes the week off for the Bank Holiday. Not that we missed all that much last week, as you will discover when we once again grumble about not very much happening at all.

Squeezing the last drops of blood from a stone this week we discuss:

So if there had been a newsletter last week I’d perhaps have been a bit stuck for something to write about in this one. Instead, I can use this one to write about the things that would have been in its predecessor - the lack of much in the way of chart moves.

Harry Styles is No.1 this week for a third time with As It Was. The single has now done sales weeks of 94,140, 70,389 and 65,387 which if nothing else represents an interesting immediate downward trend even if the track is still pulling in numbers which mean it will take a similar kind of superstar smash to shove it aside in the next few weeks.

Superstar grunt was, in theory, to be supplied by Jack Harlow and First Class but unlike in most of the rest of the English-speaking world he has had to play second fiddle to Hazza in Britain and so has been in the runners-up slot for a fortnight. But there’s a long game in play here it seems. The single still doesn’t have a proper video released, just an “official visualiser”.

It isn’t every day we thank goodness for ACR, but that’s the only thing that has generated anything resembling chart moves outside the Top 5. But even this is a false image.

ACR puts paid to the chart run of Where Are You Now from Lost Frequencies as it plummets 19-7. But all that does mean is that many of the hits below it moves up one place. Every single one of the hits that were at positions 8 through 14 last week move up one place to fill the gap. Without knowing the precise numbers it is hard to determine exactly where the Lost Frequencies hit might have charted without the ACR handicap, but it isn’t hard to conclude that we would otherwise have been looking at every chart position from 5-14 being non-movers. The sluggish spring marches on.

Are there any ACR slides in prospect to change this up? Extraordinarily no. Not one of this week’s Top 100 singles is listed as DCL-3 on the charts database (meaning it has declined in streams for three straight weeks and is at least 10 weeks old). Just two singles have two ticks of the ACR clock (those by Acraze and Em Beihold) meaning that unless the tastes of the public and streamers start to shift the biggest hits of the spring are locked in place for a few more weeks yet.

I mentioned that Jack Harlow had the besting of Harry Styles in many other countries, and that was certainly the case on last week’s Hot 100. But just look at this, our local hero has reasserted himself and the two singles swap places on the brand new American singles chart. It means that over there, as here, Harry Styles has a solo No.1 hit that has lasted longer than a single frame as As It Was enjoys a second week at the summit.

For the second week running there is a new entry inside the American Top 10, this week the turn of the notorious Morgan Wallen. He’s the man who cannot be cancelled, the controversial character caught on tape making racial slurs resulting in his label suspending him, his music pulled from radio stations and his being uninvited to every award ceremony going. Yet the public, the people appreciating his music simply didn’t care, his album Dangerous going on to sell in huge numbers.

So to see him in the US Top 10 is quite a significant moment. The point at which it becomes futile even trying to keep him down. Don’t Think Jesus stands precisely zero chance of being a hit single anywhere else, but to see this nestling neatly alongside the likes of Kodak Black and Jack Harlow at the very least proves that the Billboard charts can gift us some startling variety.

The embeddable version of the graphics that ARIA supply of course don’t tell the full story of the Australian Top 10, making no reference to whether any of the hits featured have moved up or down. So let me do it for you.

Every single one of the Top 15 singles on the Australian chart occupy the same positions they did last week as the most notoriously becalmed chart we feature on these pages wallows in even stiller waters than usual.

That means then a second week at No.1 for Jack Harlow as Harry Styles lasted just a single chart at the top.

The two men at the very least mean there is some fresh sounding music at the head of the Australian market. The “weeks on chart” figure on the full table does not make for some pretty reading. Take the other singles in the Top 5 for example:

Glass Animals - 72 weeks

Kid Laroi - 41 weeks

Ed Sheeran - 43 weeks

The highest-charting single to have been on the charts for fewer than 10 weeks is Ed and Camila’s Bam Bam which has 7 weeks to its name so far.

Mind you things aren’t any brighter in the long players market. Australia’s No.1 album this week? Future Nostalgia by Dua Lipa. No word of a lie.

Beautiful language isn’t it? Harry Style is indeed top of the Dutch Top 40 voor de tweede week as the low countries eschew grimy American rap for some proper pop music. Jack Harlow is nowhere to be seen.

Sitting pretty still at No.2 is Halloo by Antoon which was No.1 the last time we swung this way, so instead let us appreciate the sounds of the track which has so far peaked at No.3 on the Dutch charts. In The Dark is actually a German single, created by producers Purple Disco Machine but featuring a British act on vocals, this their second collaboration with Sheffield pop revivalists Sophie And The Giants following Hypnotized in 2020.

The top comment on YouTube hails this as “the best track from the 1980s made in 2022”. They aren’t far wrong.

Chances of a change at the top this coming Friday? Zero I’m afraid. Harry and Jack will maintain their hegemony for at least another week with As It Was still comfortably in the lead. The Top 5 may well be due a shakeup however with Cat Burns’ Go now with a head of steam behind it and set to reach a new peak.

We should see two new entries inside the Top 20. Ed Sheeran’s new remix of 2Step (with a new vocal contribution from LilBaby) should arrive just ahead of Thousand Miles, the long-overdue new single from Kid Laroi.

Skinty Fia by Fontaines DC should be the No.1 album by a country mile. It is at the present moment 12,000 sales ahead of Everything Was Beautiful by Spiritualized in second place.

The new UK charts are announced by Radio One from 4pm every Friday, can be seen in full on officialcharts.com and musicweek.com, and I’m now back on chart-watch.uk with my own detailed charts analysis later that same evening.