Chart Watch Weekly - May 8th 2023
Charlie has his bauble and life can try to go back to normal. But here's a newsletter to break up your bank holiday blues anyway.
It is another of those weeks where nothing really exciting seems to be happening, but when you peel back the layers there is much to discuss. But first we have to pay full attention to everyone’s favourite viral obsession of the moment.
Also holding onto useless rods in the Abbey this week:
The case of the vanishing albums.
Numbers matter, and we explain why.
Germany recently had the worst record ever at No.1. Standard.
Draw Back Your Bow
A quiet UK Top 10 this week is enlivened by the continuing rise of a single that has been on the radar of many people (and YouTube short creators) for some weeks, but which has still been defying expectations.
Cupid by Korean girl group Fifty Fifty is a Top 10 single after what is by any standards an impressive two months of steady growth. Since it first appeared back in March the track has moved 91-61-34-26-18 and now makes a further flying leap to sit pretty at No.9.
That fact alone makes it pretty significant because, for all the hype about K-Pop artists, these apparent global superstars always turn out to be by and large one-week wonders. It is one of those strange chart facts that no single by either BTS or Blackpink has ever improved on its first-week chart position. They generally enter high and sink back, suggesting that they enjoy enormous initial support from dedicated (and vocal) fanbases but never quite manage to crossover. Even BTS’ best and most enduring hit single Dynamite only actually spent a week in the Top 10. For the rest of its life in 2020 it floated gently around the lower end of the Top 20.
But Cupid truly is a law unto itself, and so significantly the four women find themselves the first ever all-female Korean act to have a UK Top 10 single. This is all the more impressive when you consider that unlike the aforementioned K-Pop acts who are the carefully crafted product of major corporations (BTS “owned” by Big Hit Entertainment, Blackpink similarly a sub-brand of YG Entertainment) Fifty Fifty are by contrast a more conventional pop act, signed initially to a small independent label before Warner Records worked to turn them into an international proposition.
And if you haven’t paid any attention to the music so far, you really should do, because Cupid has gone viral for a reason. The song exists in two versions: the original which is cleverly sung mostly in Korean apart from the final two words of each line of the verses, and a “twin” version which is entirely in English (albeit with slightly rewritten words and which frustratingly ditches the mid-song rap).
Whichever version you prefer, make no mistake it is the standout and most notable pop record of the spring, and there will be far more stories to tell about its worldwide success before we are done.
The Case Of The Vanishing Albums
The first midweek sales flashes from the albums market are never the most representative of the final shape of things. It isn’t uncommon to see new releases dominating the Top 10 of the Monday update thanks to their strong physical day one performance only for all the hot new releases to sink lower down as the week progresses and they add precious few more to those initial totals.
But for the past two weeks many of the biggest new works have managed to sustain their chart numbers, meaning that for two weeks running every one of the Top 4 records of the week have been new entries. Which is lovely, apart from the fact that none of them came close to sustaining that momentum.
The “this week” and “last week” columns on this week’s albums chart tell their own story. Seven brand new entries do indeed give the chart a very fresh looks, but the albums that maintained their chart positions week on week were not the biggest ones of last.
In fact you will be hard pressed to find many of last week’s Top 10 new entries in the Top 100 this time around. Admittedly two of them (from The 1975 and Taylor Swift) were limited edition Record Store Day releases whose stocks were exhausted, but having made such a push for success it is something of a shock to not find Enter Shiraki anywhere on the published chart and Everything But The Girl merely clinging on at No.63.
So it is with some fascination we await the imminent fate of this week’s crop of new arrivals. The Lottery Winners may find their luck has run out, Nines should at least maintain a respectable placing thanks to his streaming popularity, but Jessie Ware and The National I suspect are further destined for a disappointing performance.
The albums market has turned into the singles one from two decades ago. Enter high and plunge low. So we move on and just release more.
It Figures
I told you we’d peel back the layers so let me give you one bit of headline news with rather dipped under the radar.
This is, as the title indicates, the table tracking the total size of the singles market each week this year. It ignores ACR and all the other paid/unpaid rules that govern the main singles chart. All streams are converted in a 100:1 ratio to paid purchases. And after a curious low point over the Easter holiday a few weeks ago the market has since had a rocket placed under it. In fact this week for the first time ever the overall market for singles has topped 27 million for the first time ever.
To give you some idea of just how dramatic this trend is, here is the overall graph for the decade so far:
When people tell you the market for streaming music is still expanding, they genuinely aren’t lying.
All that brings me on to another fascinating stat that Alan Jones brought up in Music Week a few weeks ago, but which I’ve not highlighted until now. This week’s No.1 single Miracle posted around 50,000 (admittedly adjusted for chart purposes) sales. This means the very biggest single of all over the last seven days still only accounted for 0.19% of the singles market overall. Or to put it another way, 99.81% of all music consumption this week was of songs other than the current No.1 record.
Contrast that with the sales era. 25 years ago this week the No.1 single was Under The Bridge/Lady Marmalade by All Saints. It sold 106,956 copies, representing a huge 8% of the total singles market that week of 1,334,048.
My Hundred Is Hot(ter) Still
For those who have lost track (and who can blame them), Morgan Wallen’s Last Night is currently on its third spell at No.1 on the Hot 100 since March. It enjoyed a single-week run w/e March 18th before giving way to both Flowers (returning for its own second stint) and Jimin’s rather spectacular in-and-out single Like Crazy. It returned for a further fortnight before being deposed by two weeks ago by SZA’s Kill Bill before returning again. This week is therefore the C&W track’s fifth week in total at the top of the American charts, its second in a row. Will it manage three weeks on the bounce for the first time? Tune in to find out!
The other big story on the US charts is the continuing rise of what is still awkwardly called Regional Mexican. Ella Baila Sola continues its impressive chart run, having been joined in the Top 10 last week by Un X100to by Grupo Frontera & Bad Bunny which you can see is still loitering at No.7.
Cupid by Fifty Fifty is continuing to make slower progress in the States than it is in many other English language territories. It was up to No.41 last week, we await the full Hot 100 chart tomorrow to learn where it is now.
And finally for America, we need some compulsory whimsy from Lewis Capaldi who has achieved a remarkable Billboard 200 chart feat but correctly notes it has come at the wrong era for him to retire on it.
Click through the link to find out. Twitter and Substack are still being childish about each other and I don’t have time to play games.
https://twitter.com/LewisCapaldi/status/1655646425898704914
Down Under
Will Australia become the first country where Cupid makes it to the top? It is on the edge of doing so, up to No.2 with a bullet.
Meanwhile from the category of “acts you have never heard of but are shockingly successful” comes 26-year-old Sharlee Curnow alias Peach PRC whose TikTok celebrity hasn’t translated into any hit singles but has propelled her to the top of the Australian album charts with her debut album. This video may be the first chance for the rest of us to find out if she is any good.
Germany Calling
Germany’s No.1 single is the same one we saw last time we swung this way two months ago, Komet from rapper Apache 207 and the 76-year-old veteran musician Udo Lindenberg. This is its 12th week in total at the top of the German charts, although it has done a “Morgan Wallen” and ended up there for three separate spells.
Its most recent absence from the top was last week when it was deposed by quite possibly the worst record ever made, the second No.1 single for Twenty4Tim following on from Goenn Dir last year. And there’s surely a story to tell about how this shot straight to No.1 in Germany but is nowhere to be seen on the Top 10 the second time around.
The Blasts From The Past
Five years ago: Just as now Calvin Harris is top of the charts as One Kiss extends its run to three weeks. But this was also the week that Post Malone released an album and dominated the Top 10, to the ultimate detriment of a single whose own Top 10 appearance was never Meant To Be.
Ten years ago: Daft Punk are No.1 with a very famous No.1 hit. And as we are in the year when the digital download reached its absolute peak they are selling in some quite extraordinary numbers.
Twenty Years ago: A famous rave classic is No.1, a track which you probably haven’t heard for ages unless your radio is tuned to Kisstory. It denies what would otherwise have been a rather famous No.1 for Craig David and guest performer Sting as he becomes the second person in the matter of months to gain inspiration from the same song.
Midweek Teases
Bank holidays are always awkward, Official Charts taking the day off along with everyone else meaning that not only is there no “official” Monday update on the stage of the markets but the entire chart database doesn’t update either, leaving even the industry in the dark.
Still, Ed Sheeran has a new album out so it isn’t a huge stretch to assume he’s going to dominate everything. Although surprisingly not the singles charts, as the days of him threatening a clean sweep are either over or temporarily suspended owing to the more “alternative” nature of the Subtract album.
All we have to go on though are the notoriously unreliable Sunday first look flashes, but they suggest Ed’s Eyes Closed will rise back to No.3 with Curtains and Boat somewhere just outside the Top 10. However like I said, this is based on the “first look” chart which will be lacking a great deal of streaming data. And Spotify’s daily charts haven’t updated for a couple of days either so we really are left scrabbling around in the dark.
That will make it all the more intriguing to find out later this week where the latest party-crashing stunt from The Kunts will end up. Timing it carefully to arrive after the Coronation rather than during it, their Scrap The Monarchy ditty, released under the pseudonym of The Krown Jewelz was No.17 on the first look sales flash. The track actually has more of a sense of humour than their past offerings, a throwback to the style of the satirists previous releases as Kunt And The Gang. As you can imagine the group have been hammering it on social media ever since. It may well end up the highest new entry not performed by Ed Sheeran.
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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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