Oh hi there. So I need to confess that I underestimated the amount of real-life work stuff that August was going to throw at me. Which meant missing on updating you all last week, and coming to the realisation that to try to put out a full newsletter this week (the last one before a planned summer break) was going to be an exercise in futility.

So consider this a brief apology for a lack of updates, and assurance that we will be back firing on all cylinders after the summer. But there is one fun story to tell this week that it would be remiss not to share.

Remember a few weeks ago I wondered out loud at what point Ed Sheeran will wake up to the fact that he is badly overexposed and feel the need to vanish from sight for a little while so that we can all miss him properly?

Well this week is perhaps a good example of just how ubiquitous he presently is.

We are all familiar (surely) with the prevailing chart rule preventing any act from having more than 3 tracks on the Top 100 at any time (Beyonce is going to fall foul of that this week, Harry Styles has been crashing into it for some months). Well, technically the rule refers to no more than three charting tracks as “primary artist”, with the inference that you can actually have more chart singles if you are simply a co-credited guest star. Official Charts defines “primary artist” not so much as the first named on the credits but by checking whose label has put the song out. If a single is released by the label you are signed to then bingo! You are the primary artist. Only if both (or more) artists credited on a track are on the same label does this become discretionary, and the label is asked to nominate who “owns” the single.

This week this “guest artiste” loophole is widened to its largest ever extent as Ed Sheeran became the first act since the rules were introduced just over five years ago to feature on seven simultaneous Top 100 singles.

They are the three where he is the primary (solo) artist:

But he is also the credited guest star on:

I guess we should be thankful that only one of them is in the Top 40.

It almost goes without saying that Beyonce’s long overdue commercial comeback RENAISSANCE is far and away the biggest new album of the week, storming into a commanding lead on the first official midweek updates to make it a racing certainty that it will be the No.1 album this coming Friday, giving her back to back chart-toppers with studio albums for the first time in her solo career, this after Lemonade also hit the heights in 2016.

The arrival of the album has had a beneficial effect on lead single BREAK MY SOUL (apparently all the titles of the track are to be capitalised) which is contending for the No.1 position, although it remains around 1,400 sales behind Afraid To Feel according to the Monday evening update.

The two biggest cuts from the album for the moment are CUFF IT and I’M THAT GIRL although both are short of the Top 10 for the moment.

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.