Hello, happy new year (if you aren’t already bored of people saying this), and welcome to the first edition of the brand new look Chart Watch newsletter. Thank you for following us on this change of platform, enforced by Twitter losing interest in the old one.
Otherwise not much else here has changed, so let’s got on with trying to make sense - any sense - of the new year reset.
In this week’s edition:
RAYE reduces us all to sobs
Random back catalogue hits go Top 10 in America and France.
Lewis Capaldi is making a surprise play for No.1
Ring In The New
As great as it is to have unexpected surprises greet you when you open up the data for the brand-new chart each Friday, sometimes it is a joy to see everything you were expecting unfold.
Ever since her big solo hit Escapism flew into the Top 3 just prior to the Christmas takeover we’ve been saying “RAYE is surely in pole position to land the first No.1 single of the new year”. And blow me that’s just what has happened.
Her emotion at doing so will be understood by everyone who has watched this story unfold over the past eighteen months.
From that series of Tweets in June 2021 she has managed to extricate herself from the record deal she felt was not giving her the room to be herself, established herself as an independent artist, made music on her own terms, and now finally has the colossal smash hit every one of her supporters believed she always had in her. The lady who was the Queen of collabs but who could not buy a hit single of her own is top of the UK charts. And best of all with a pop record that is quite breathtakingly good.
Escapism landed itself 45,570 chart sales, the vast bulk from streaming with a mere 801 via downloads. But she is No.1 by some distance, Taylor Swift in second place some 12,000 chart sales behind. And subject to an intriguing chart battle developing this week, she seems set to be there for a good few weeks more.
Holiday Bounceback
A study of the charts isn’t just about the week’s most popular singles all ranked in order. Fully half of it is observing them in relation to where they were a week ago. What is growing in popularity, and what is decreasing. What is brand new, and how swiftly has it moved into contention.
As has now become routine, this week marks the final pulse of the holiday absurdity, a near wholesale clearout thanks to the exit from the market of Christmas songs and the chance for existing contemporary hits to relax into place once more. The very top end, as illustrated above, shows just how far the best of the current crop had fallen in relation to Christmas songs. But that also means the lower end of the chart is entirely taken up with things that purport to be “new” but in actual fact are mostly just hits resuming from pause.
In fact 59 of last week’s Top 75 hits are nowhere to be seen this time around. 48 of them are re-entries, but in fairness 11 are brand-new hits which have never been seen before.
The biggest hit “new” to the Top 75 is Cian Ducrot’s I’ll Be Waiting but as that had previously come for a wander around the bottom end of the Top 100 (hitting No.80 in November) it is technically only a re-entry on the full chart (the strange conceit that Music Week has to adopt that nothing below position 75 exists because that’s all they have the licence to print is always entertaining).
So the highest true new entry of the week is the one alluded to in the screengrab above. This week’s No.52 single from Sub Focus & Dimension. But even that single was first released in October.
Land Of The Free
America’s new year reset means the Hot 100 pings back to the status quo from before Christmas, Anti-Hero jumping back to No.1 for what is now its seventh week on top. That’s enough to tie with Blank Space as her longest-running American chart-topping hit.
Amongst the expected usual suspects in this first brand new chart of the new year, there’s a surprise leap into the Top 10 for Die For You from The Weeknd, a track which had previously climbed no higher than No.12 just before the holiday. Another of those “random catalogue tracks that go viral” phenomenons, the cut dates from 2016 having originally appeared on the Canadian singer’s Starboy album. Britain has paid it no mind for the moment, although we have our own random viral cut creeping up the listings with Lady Gaga’s Bloody Mary (dating from 2011) presently at No.22 on the UK Singles Chart following its use in the Netflix series Wednesday.
Summer Down Under
First top of the Australian charts back in October, the new year reset on the ARIA countdown means that Unholy is back at No.1 over there, having been unlucky to not make it back to the top in America. It isn’t all about the stuff that has been hanging around forever though, SZA’s Kill Bill makes the same kind of waves that it does in Britain (where it is this week’s No.4 single).
Australia’s No.1 album this week is Midnights by Taylor Swift. But it occupies the same position in Britain, so who are we to judge?
Le Top Singles
The “back to school” feeling envelops the French charts this week as well. After stepping aside for, you guess it, Mariah Carey but also just before that Central Cee’s Let Go, Amber by Zola is back at the No.1 position it first ascended to back in November. The French charts are not immune from the phenomenon of the biggest hits just hanging around and getting in the way forever - No.3 single Die from Gazo was, as regular readers will recall, first Top of the French charts in August last year. But it is still as popular as ever.
The presence of Freed From Desire by Gala at No.8 appears to be a strange oddity, but that’s easily explained by its use by the French national side (amongst others) as their “goal music” at the recent FIFA World Cup. And with the French ending up just a couple of penalty kicks away from becoming World Champions it inevitably caused a surge of interest in the 1997 hit.
Midweek Teases
It seemed reasonably safe to presume that RAYE and 070 Shake were locked in for a long run at No.1, but their most immediate challenge this week comes from a single that has been floating around for a few weeks.
Clearly, there’s a burning desire for Lewis Capaldi to maintain his proud record of chart-topping singles. Or perhaps he was telling the truth when he begged people to buy up stocks of CD singles that were “kicking around the warehouse”.
Either way the track has enjoyed a convenient surge in support this week, and after reaching a new peak of No.15 last week it is to general surprise leading the chart race as of Monday evening. At the time of writing the track has 29,000 chart sales to RAYE’s 17,000. But fully 17,000 of these are as a result of physical sales.
But this story is by no means over yet. Yes, Lewis has sold lots of CD singles this week. But significantly he won’t add many more to that total. And it now all depends if Escapism has enough excess streaming support to close the gap before Thursday.
Taylor Swift seems set to remain at No.1 with Midnights which is now by some distance her most successful album (charts wise) to date. The shock new arrival of the week though is Phorphorescents from Gabrielle Aplin which is currently placed at No.4. If it maintains that kind of position it will return her to the Top 10 for the first time since her debut English Rain hit No.2 almost ten years ago.
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Bloody Mary isn’t featured in Wednesday. Fans took to using it over clips of the titular character’s school dance scene. The actual song used is Goo Goo Muck by the Cramps, which would have been refreshing to see in the chart!