Chart Watch Weekly - June 27th 2022

Call this the calm in between two storms if you will, the chart this week the one post-Kate Bush kerfuffle and the one next week the one dealing with the immediate aftermath of the first Glastonbury Festival in three years. But there’s still some enjoyable stuff to get our teeth into including:

No, there is no cute Twitter graphic I can legitimately share of this week’s Top 10 singles to illustrate this, last week’s embeddable table was clearly a special occasion one-off. And Revue’s integration with Instagram (where Official Charts post the graphics every week) is broken. But enough about my problems.

What we are now officially calling RUTH fever extended into a second week as Kate Bush remained firmly atop the British singles chart with Running Up That Hill. In one of those gloriously complicated calculations her streaming numbers actually fell week on week, but the mainstream press attention for the track prompted a surge in paid sales, meaning her total calculated chart sale of 78,568 was actually up on her first week at the top.

Surging up the singles chart to reach No.3 is Afraid To Feel by LF System, about which much more later.

The big arrival of the week was Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind album which entered at No.2 in its own right but inevitably spawned a huge number of well-streamed cuts. His domination of the Spotify numbers didn’t quite reach Styles or Sheeran levels but under old chart rules every one of the album’s 14 tracks would have landed somewhere on the published chart, even if the smallest of these (Liability) would only have reached No.64.

The three hits the Canadian droner was permitted all made it into the Top 10, restricting Harry Styles to just two Top 10 hits for the first time since his own album came out. The label are pushing Falling as the lead single it seems, although Britain seems more enamoured with Massive which was the album’s second-biggest cut last week and which seems set for a chart climb of its own this Friday.

But the week’s other big arrival was naturally Beyonce’s mainstream comeback with Break My Soul, the single not only eschewing the whole “drop an entire album at once” trend but arriving midweek to ensure nothing else was going to steal her focus. That inevitably depressed the initial chart position of the track which crept in at No.21 with a little over three days of sales to its credit. Although that’s still a magnificent number. Taking the unscientific method of dividing her posted 21,077 sales by three and multiplying up by seven it is possible to conclude that if the single had emerged on Friday with everything else it would have reached around 49,000 chart sales and entered at No.4.

Meanwhile, the debate rages, Is Beyonce’s track actually sampling Show Me Love as has generously been credited, or is it just using the same Korg M1 “organ” preset that the Robin S track from 1993 pioneered. Musician friends of mine aren’t sure either way.

Perhaps you had to be hanging out on that precise bit of the internet, but at the start of the chart week there was much glee to be derived from the way Slide, the debut single by Junior Andre (spawn of Katie Price and Peter Andre) seemed to be on course for a huge debut after it topped the iTunes listings within hours of release.

But as we all know this means absolutely nothing, the live charts of the various services telling you what has been selling five minutes ago and in small numbers at that. Falling back quite dramatically once the initial hardcore interest fell away, Slide entered at a glorious No.72 with almost exactly 6,000 chart sales to its name. We all know of his father’s chart exploits, but despite many efforts his mother’s musical career amounts to a famous duet with her then husband on A Whole New World (No.12 in December 2006) and her solo single Free To Love Again which hauled itself to No.60 in July 2010.

There’s a billion different uploads of it on YouTube. And yes, I’m going there.

In this week’s instalment of “stuff less reported” Ed Sheeran’s present batch of hits this week lifted his career total of Top 75 chart weeks to 1,308 - one more than the old record previously held by Elvis Presley. The latter fact being all the more impressive given that he spent his entire lifetime releasing singles when the chart was just 50 records long (sometimes even less).

Defining just what should count as the “full” length of the singles chart is more complicated than you might think. A couple of years ago I tried to document it all in a blog posting which alas remains in drafts as I was not able to find a way to make it interesting enough. Perhaps one day.

Anyway the “Official” singles chart is of course a Top 100 but full publication of it remains exclusive to Official Charts themselves. Hence Music Week still only reproduces the Top 75 singles as it has done since 1978, as that is presently all it is licensed to do. And which is why so many chart records still take the old school Top 75 as a reference point.

Nope, I still can’t make that any more interesting.

Drake does the US chart double this week, debuting atop both the Billboard 200 (albums) and Hot 100 (singles). He joins the ever growing ranks of artists to have had four simultaneous Top 10 singles this year although fascinatingly only three of them are his own tracks, the three cuts from his album joined by his contribution to Future’s long-running Wait For U.

Rather fascinatingly the second most-popular Drake cut in America was Sticky, which was only the fourth most-streamed in Britain - it was starred-out of our charts at a theoretical No.13.

Drake now has 58 Top 10 singles to his name in America, further extending his existing record.

Joji’s Glimpse Of Us fell back a little in the States thanks to the Drake tsunami and is still edging its way up the British charts (it will get there, don’t worry) but the worldwide phenomenon has barged its way to the summit in Australia in quite some style.

ARIA have also decided that the notably Japanese artist is however an Australian despite his being born in Osaka. His father was Australian you see and that’s all that appears to matter.

It does however mean that there is a rare home-grown double on the Aussie charts as veteran rock star Jimmy Barnes has soared to the top of the albums chart with his new release Soul Deep 30 - a 30th anniversary re-issue of his fifth album of soul covers with four new tracks added to its running order. Barnes has but one British hit to his name - the duet with INXS Good Times as heard on the Lost Boys soundtrack and which belatedly became a Top 20 hit in early 1991. But he is legitimately one of Australia’s most successful chart acts of all time, as ARIA were keen to celebrate.

The French charts, as is their way, remain clogged up with local rap and grime artists, all of them largely ignored by mainstream radio. Although you will note that Stranger Things fever has still propelled Kate Bush to hit the heights across the channel.

Their No.1 single of the moment comes from Alonzo, a Marseille-born rap star who is a surprising 39 years old. He’s been charting singles in France for ten years but this is easily the biggest of them all and his first ever No.1 hit. Perhaps the presence of all-conquering fellow superstar Naps on Tout Va Bien has something to do with it.

Anyway this hit (bereft of an official video for the moment) actually isn’t too painful to listen to. With a definite touch of the Post Malones about it.

With a full week of sales and streams to its name Beyonce’s Break My Soul is indeed surging forward and appears on course to reach the Top 5 this weekend. That would incredibly make it her first solo track to climb this far since Best Thing I Never Had was a Top 3 hit in 2011.

Running Up That Hill is firmly planted at No.1 on the midweek updates, but its strongest challenge seems to be coming from LF System’s Afraid To Feel which is presently beating even Harry Styles to the punch. The Music Week report is perhaps intentionally vague about the closeness of the race, merely stating it is “not far behind”. But I’m sure proper figures will emerge later.

Closure/Continuation by Porcupine Tree is leading the albums race on the first flashes but of course most attention will be paid to just what effect the weekend’s Glastonbury coverage will have on the fortunes of the performers and in particular the headliners. Having led the way on Friday Billie Eilish has the jump on everyone and her Happier Than Ever album is for now on its way back to the Top 10. And of course it is too early for the impact of Kendrick Lamar’s Sunday night headlining of the Pyramid Stage to show up in sales flashes.

It is a quiet week for new singles, the highest new entry likely to be Charlie Puth’s duet with BTS’ Jung Kook (who seems to have abandoned his usual mononym) but Left And Right seems almost certain to miss the Top 20 altogether.

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.