Chart Watch Weekly - November 21st 2022
Bossing It
As anticipated, the big chart battle of the week was the head to head between Bruce Springsteen and Louis Tomlinson which was actually rather closer than anyone expected until right at the death. The chances of The Boss overcoming the deficit he held over his boy band rival were always going to be slim, despite a renewed promotional kick in the week when it became clear the goal of yet another No.1 album was in sight.
It is exactly ten years to the week that One Direction landed their first No.1 album with their second release, so it seems entirely appropriate that the latest of their members to repeat the trick solo does indeed do so with his second album - Tomlinson's debut release Walls made No.4 in February 2020.
That his new work Faith In The Future should make such a huge impact is perhaps a little curious given that the singer has all but dropped off the radar as far as the charts are concerned, none of the singles from the album having made the published charts. But his own fans remain steadfastly loyal and it is not impossible that the plethora of different physical formats encouraged more than a few multiple purchases. Faith In The Future landed itself 35,239 sales. Walls opened with a mere 14,729. Make of that what you will.
A few weeks after Walls was released, Tomlinson's erstwhile bandmate Niall Horan topped the charts with (entirely coincidentally) his own second solo album Heartbreak Weather, meaning he was the third One Direction star to top the charts solo. It means Louis Tomlinson is now the fourth - breaking the record first established by The Beatles who saw John, Paul and George all land No.1 albums with poor Ringo the only one to miss out.
The record for a group seeing its members achieve solo No.1 singles is held by The Spice Girls with the two Melanies, Emma and Geri all clocking up at least one chart-topper each (only 3/4 of The Beatles managed it). You will note that One Direction lag behind in that respect, with only Zayn and Harry having landed No.1 singles of their own to date.
All She Wants Is Records
Surprising as it may seem there are still new records for Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas Is You to set and new benchmarks for the damn thing to scale. The celebrated(!) 1994 track barges its way into the Top 40 this week for the first time this year, but has notably done so earlier than it ever has before. That possibly says more about the mindset of the bad dangers relentlessly listening to Christmas songs already, but no matter. We should note too that the festive classic's chart position is depressed by the perma-ACR rule which applies (mostly) to all vintage catalogue hits. Without this it would already be loitering just outside the Top 10.
As I noted in the main Chart Watch column a couple of weeks ago, this is now the 80th week the famous track has spent in the Top 40, now putting it one behind the all-time record of 81 currently held by Fairytale Of New York.. And as The Pogues' famous hit has yet to make its chart bow in 2022 it seems almost certain that AIWFCIY will draw level next week and may even surpass it in the next fortnight.
Note, that the above stat contradicts the Official Charts' website which lists the main entry for Fairytale Of New York as having spent 79 weeks in total in the Top 40 - but this fails to include the chart run of a 1991/92 reissue of the single which adds two the total. Separate physical releases pre-2007 get their own distinct entries in the database for historical reasons.
Now And Then
Since I was gifted the very first volume of the series as an 11th birthday present I've been a loyal and dedicated collector of the Now That's What I Call Music series. The shot above is of the original LP copy of Vol.13 that I unwrapped with some joy on Christmas morning 1988 alongside the brand new CD reissue of the edition, complete save for Phil Collins' A Groovy Kind Of Love which was caught in licensing hell for reasons that aren't entirely clear (the remix of In The Air Tonight made it onto the re-release of Vol.12 after all).
Your fun trivia hit of the week is to note that Now 13 is one of only two albums to ever top both "artists" and "compilations" tables of the albums chart - a consequence of it being released just prior to the listings being separated. The re-release will inevitably be No.1 on its own countdown next week, meaning the same album is the first-ever and current No.1 on the Compilations chart, returning after a gap of almost 34 years.
The other album to top both artists and compilations chart? I'll reveal all at the end.
Oh Quack
A small sense of normality returns to the American charts this week with half of the Drake and 21 Savage hits melting away and allowing other hits the space to return. There were some sour grapes expressed from the Drake camp last week at the way Anti-Hero shut him out from the top of the charts, almost as if it was felt he had an automatic right to be there. But the Taylor Swift track holds steady just as it does here for a fourth straight week. It matches the American chart run of Shake It Off as her second-biggest hit on the Hot 100, second only to the seven-week run of Blank Space.
Anti-Hero is the most-purchased song of the week in America, but Rich Flex is indeed the streaming champion. To further confuse matters Unholy remains at the top of the American airplay charts. All three measures are of course used to compile the Hot 100.
A Land Down Under
I spent last week in the strange (and privileged) position of being Australian speech radio's music pundit of choice, appearing on a surprisingly large number of local and national breakfast shows. All wanted to talk about the 70th anniversary of the British charts, a topic which clearly holds more fascination to them than the state of their own countdown. Although being on the phone as a series of elderly ladies phoned up to recount their teenage memories of encountering Al Martino was quite the experience.
Anyway, as you will see the Swift/Drake/Smithtras trio continue to dominate matters on the Australian charts, although they share the same fascination with the Meghan Trainor comeback as we do. It is still climbing the charts in a far slower fashion in her home country.
Back in Australia and Dean Lewis' How Do I Say Goodbye remains the highest-charting single of the moment by a local act, rising to No.22 this week.
Forza Not At The World Cup
Since we last swung around Italy way they have had a ding-dong battle play out at the top of their always pleasingly eclectic charts. Ricordi by Pinguini Tattici Nucleari and The Loneliest by Maneskin twice took turns at the top, but they have since both been eclipsed by the track you see there at No.1, the snappily titled Quevedo: Bzrp Music Sessions Vol. 52 as performed by Bizzarap and Quevedo. As the title may tease, it is the longest in an extended line of collaborative singles by Argentine EDM producer Bizzarap, this the fourth in which he has collaborated with a Spanish artist.
Italians are largely immune to the charms of Taylor Swift. Anti-Hero languishes down at No.47.
Midweek Teases
Is Taylor Swift destined to remain top of the charts until things start to get a bit stupid at Christmas? She is certainly heading that way, Anti-Hero some distance clear in the race to be No.1 for a fifth consecutive week. No.2 is a two-way battle between Unholy and Made You Look which remains a far bigger hit than I ever would have expected.
The week's highest new entry will be comfortably inside the Top 10, Rocket Science by Clavish featuring D-Block Europe.
Dermot Kennedy, of all people, is the present leader in the albums race, his new album Sonder has more than 20,000 sales to its name, and no other new release this week is destined to even come close.
Mind you, "new" releases are this week contending side by side with deluxe re-releases of older material, a situation which you may regard as either representative of the continuing parlous state of the albums market or a sign of what might yet save it. It means that special anniversary re-releases of The Miracle by Queen, Thriller by Michael Jackson, The Number Of The Beast by Iron Maiden and Erasure by Erasure should all feature once more in this week's albums chart.
Before I forget - the only other album to top both compilations and artists tables? The Greatest Showman, a consequence of a rule change in 2021 which relegated all "original soundtrack" collections to the compilations table after they were previously considered 'artist' work.
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