Chart Watch Weekly - May 15th 2023
My word, what a large gathering of new faces. Welcome friends old and new to another weekly newsletter as we attempt to peel back what is left of the curtain shrouding the weekly rankings of music.
Yes, the Eurovision Song Contest was all very exciting/miserable/outrageous/predictable (delete as applicable) but before we deal with the fallout from Liverpool’s weekend party there is other stuff going on to deal with. So let’s get down to it.
Also joining Germany down the voting dumper this week:
Big or small, Ed Sheeran is here for us all.
If we censor c**t, do we really have to censor K**t too?
America’s extraordinary Kill Bill love affair.
And OK then, just what’s going to happen to Loreen?
Lego A-Team Mansions
We anticipated it, and lo it came true. After a fashion.
When Ed Sheeran releases an album, everyone sits up and pays attention. So it proved, as his sixth mainstream studio release duly became his sixth No.1 record in a row, Subtract smashing its way to the top of the charts with what has now become a customary huge sale.
Subtract’s sale of 76,263 is far and away the highest this year, the biggest weekly sale since Taylor Swift moved more than 200,000 copies of Midnights six months ago and duly more than most of the rest of the Top 30 put together. And yet by his own lofty standards this is actually something of a letdown. Until now the album of his with the smallest opening week was his debut Plus which moved 102,350 copies upon release in 2011.
Naturally, his high water mark - 2017’s Divide which opened with a colossal sale of 671,542 - is on a scale he is never likely to repeat. But the fact that this new release has barely managed half of the 139,107 of Equals just two years ago is eyebrow-raising to say the least. Although Ed himself seems happy enough.
All things in context though. Sheeran himself has acknowledged the almost conscious un-commercialism of Subtract. Its very title suggests a sense of back to basics. This isn’t intended to be a commercial behemoth like Divide, rather it is his take on the Taylor Swift Folklore concept. A toe dip into the alternative world that an artist with nothing else left to prove is free to indulge in. You listen to the album and its lead single Eyes Closed sticks out like a sore thumb, a leftover from the Divide sessions bunged on there to ensure it contained at least one smash single.
But the label still wants it to do relatively well. And they have splashed out on a video album for it, all the tracks having their own lavishly produced clips. We should still note that a huge sale for Ed is one that is beyond the dreams of all but a few of his contemporaries. Subtract also seems set for a good Week 2 - the album chart midweeks suggesting it is in line for a second week at No.1. Something no album has managed to achieve for months.
One Hit Wonders (x5)
With tracks from Ed’s album not quite doing the streaming business of old, it meant the door was open for the week’s highest singles chart new entry to be something lovely and subversive.
Despite briefly flagging and threatening to be no more than a minor Top 30 entry the release of no fewer than 31 different mixes featuring various guest contributors of Krown Jewelz’ Scrap The Monarchy meant it barged its way to No.9 and achieved its creators’ aim of putting an alternative point of view at the heart of popular culture following the Coronation celebrations.
Its creators are of course The Kunts, an act whose very name and previous chart history causes even the Official Charts site to have an attack of the vapours. Because being family-friendly is all.
The man behind The Kunts (and indeed their spiritual predecessors Kunt And The Gang) is a man who has worked hard to remain as anonymous as he can and indeed has been rather more successful at this than Pinkpantheress was at concealing her identity. However his real name is discernable if you know where to look and join other available dots. DSP rules on song metadata means that few people can remain incognito forever.
My view on these scatological satires has over time hurtled between disdain and appreciation, although that is mainly because sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. But in any event, it is hard to argue with the track record of the group, leveraging social media support (and a fair amount of gaming of the chart rules) to assemble the kind of discography you see in the screenshot above. Their apparently annual invasion of the Christmas chart, plus other topical one-offs such as this week’s stunt means that The Kunts (and their pseudonyms) are developing a chart record that puts some other comedy novelty acts to shame.
As I noted in the main Chart Watch piece this week, Scrap The Monarchy is one of the more worthwhile of the five hits to date, eschewing straightforward profane abuse for something that is genuinely witty and worthwhile.
And this is what it comes down to. Whether you agree with his political points or not, Clements (as the vast Kunt And The Gang catalogue illustrates) is a fabulously talented and quite hilarious songwriter and poet. He retired from performing solo a few years ago (partly from nervousness over the sort of following he was gathering) to revert to post-punk revivalism. But as this week’s No.9 hit shows, he still has it in him to weave a lyric that leaves you breathless. And fighting the world’s profanity filters.
My Hundred Is Hotter Than British Spring
The latest American charts see things ticking over nicely at Billboard. Their love affair with Morgan Wallen shows no signs of abating, single Last Night spending a sixth week in total at the top of the Hot 100 adding 60.2 million radio audience impressions, 34.3 million streams and 9,000 downloads to its already impressive totals. Meanwhile parent album One Thing At A Time notches up a 10th week at the summit of the Billboard 200, matching as it so happens the chart run of its predecessor Dangerous: The Double Album. Wallen is the first male artist in American chart history to have back-to-back 10-week No.1 albums.
Meanwhile still lodged at No.2 is SZA’s Kill Bill, which had its brief moment in the sun at the top of the Hot 100 but perhaps most notably is now on its 20th week at the top of the genre-based Hot R&B/Hip Hop Songs. Hot on the radio, hot on streams. It is the hit that just will not die. In Britain Kill Bill has long since descended to ACR status but is consistently in the Top 10 most-played hits on Spotify, ensuring it still floats around just outside our Top 20.
New to the US Top 10 this week is this track, the debut hit single for rapper Toosii. Favourite Song belatedly debuts at No.87 on the UK charts this week.
Down Under
Alas, I’ve got nothing here, the Australian singles chart resembling last week’s in almost totality. The one move is a small rise for Ed Sheeran, coinciding with (inevitably) Subtract debuting at No.1 down under too.
In case you are wondering (and we do need to ask the question after all), there is no sign of their Eurovision entry Promise by Voyager in the ARIA Top 50.
Euphoric
We don’t often journey to Scandinavia in these pages, but given the events of this week it seems entirely appropriate to do so. And indeed there she is, making her way up the Sverigetopplistan in her native land is 2023 Eurovision Song Contest winner Loreen.
For now she has to wait in the wings. Sweden’s No.1 single for the past four weeks has been this single, the latest smash from four-piece group Bolaget who were previously responsible for Kan inte gå which was Sweden’s most-streamed track of 2022.
The Blasts From The Past
Five years ago: Few changes at the summit, alas, but Childish Gambino lands the biggest hit of the week with what turned out to be his most famous piece of work. Visually, if not musically.
Ten years ago: Crazy times on the albums chart as Hugh Lawrie and Dutch jazz performer Caro Emerald have two of the biggest new releases of the week. The highest new entry on the singles chart though is a track which has almost been memory holed, sad really given the clear love for it I had at the time.
Twenty Years ago: “…wonder how a man accused of breaking what is one of society's last great taboos has managed to remain so popular in his professional capacity…”
Midweek Teases
There’s a massive European elephant in the room this week. The impact of the Eurovision Song Contest on the UK charts tends to blow hot and cold depending on the quality of the songwriting on display. This year however the added interest in the show given its staging in Britain (the Saturday night TV audience was apparently one of the highest ever) seems almost certain to have a knock-on effect on the chart prospects of Britain’s favourites.
So it proves for the latest midweeks. Despite an abysmal response from both judges and voters at the weekend Mae Muller’s UK entry I Wrote A Song is finally set to come into its own, charging to No.6 on the latest midweeks. A few paces behind is the victorious song Tattoo by Loreen, the Swedish star with her sights on matching the Top 3 chart placing her 2012 winner Euphoria landed. Although that was a very different time. There’s something of a Nordic flavour to the tastes of the British public with Norwegian entry Queen Of Kings and Finland’s jaw-dropping Cha Cha Cha (winner of the UK televote) both tracking for Top 20-ish new entries.
A note of caution though. The post-show appeal of Eurovision hits tends to be vanishingly brief, and these chart positions are benefitting from an inevitable surge in both streams and paid digital sales on Saturday and Sunday (although today’s midweeks are almost certainly devoid of streaming data for Sunday). I can’t help but feel things will have calmed down by the end of the week.
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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 you can read my own detailed charts analysis - now celebrating its 32nd year online - at chart-watch.uk.
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