Good For Her!
It was always going to take an earthquake, or at least its chart equivalent, to at the very least interrupt the domination of Rein Me In. And as I hinted last week, this is precisely what has occurred.
Olivia Rodrigo appears to occupy a place in her own universe; her music it seems destined to make a powerful impact whenever it drops. The fact that a former Disney Princess-turned-post-punk-performer was booked for a major Glastonbury stage last summer without anyone batting an eyelid only enhances the mystique. Olivia, late-night on the Farm, should not have worked. But it did.
Perhaps it is the way she performs everything with her entire being, each of her songs imbued in a sense of drama as befits the kind of slightly psychotic women who are the protagonists of each of her biggest hits. So when she dropped a new song last week, you really had to take notice and listen.
That said, when I first head Drop Dead I wasn't that blown away. It is still very her, suitably dramatic and immaculately performed and produced. But the woman in the song seems a little too normal. If she sang it about me I'd be enchanted rather than scared. Which feels odd. Perhaps the fact that the chorus is delivered in a 'none-more-Taylor' multitrack makes this feel more derivative than it should. Still, I suppose aping Taylor’s production is a step up from having to add her to the credits—as was the case with 'déjà vu,' which was more derivative than was legally advisable.
But who is a critic to argue with the results? Drop Dead smashes the rest of the market to bits, at a stroke her fourth No.1 hit single in the space of the last five years. It follows Drivers License, Good 4 U (both 2021) and Vampire (2023) to the summit, although the new single is perhaps most notable of all for being her first No.1 single where she doesn't say "fuck".
What's In A Name?
Only four Olivias have ever had chart singles, and three of them have enjoyed No.1 hits in their time. This week also marks a fascinating chart first, the only time in 73 years that two directly credited artists with the same first name have had back to back No.1 singles - Olivia Rodrigo shunting Olivia Dean aside.
While a deep dive into group rosters might turn up shared forenames, this is the first time it has happened for primary-credited soloists. The only occasion when anything remotely similar took place was in December 1990 when The Righteous Brothers were knocked off the top by Vanilla Ice. The former's performance of Unchained Melody although credited to the group was actually a solo performance by Bobby Hatfield while the Ice Ice Baby performer's real name was Robert Van Winkle. So Bob replaced Bob, even if neither man was credited as such.
What happens next week should be truly fascinating. Drop Dead has a sales lead over Rein Me In of around 9,000. Instant No.1 hits are hard to call - is this an artificial high from lots of people checking it out, or is this the base from which it will grow still further? If it is the former, just how big will that Week 2 sink be?
Oh yes, and Sam and Livvy regardless of ultimate chart position are not going away any time soon. The bloody song has only gone and reset its ACR clock again.
Oh Baby
Coachella weekend 2 has only served to fan the flames of interest in the catalogue of some of its performers - but none more than the extraordinary way vintage Justin Bieber is suddenly the hottest stream in town. After re-debuting at No.11 last week his 2012 collaboration with Nicki Minaj on Beauty And A Beat has exploded still further, rocketing now to another brand new peak of No.3 to finally become a Top 10 hit more than 14 years after it was first released. Nicki Minaj was last in the Top 5 back in 2023 with her movie soundtrack contribution Barbie World, but she has not enjoyed a Top 3 single since her cameo on Little Mix's Woman Like Me which was a No.2 single in November 2018.
Back to Bieber though and his second largest hit of the moment also barges its way into the Top 10. Nine months after it had a cup of coffee at No.1 Daisies takes a ten place leap to No.5, a rung it last occupied during the fifth week of its initial seven week Top 10 run. This is curiously now the second year in a row that a former No.1 single has made a significant chart comeback a year after its first run - Beautiful Things by Benson Boone performing the honours in 2024 and 2025 respectively.
But the Biber stuff gets even more ludicrous, or should that be Ludacris. The elegant rapper was his co-performer on Baby, the track that gave the then-teenage star what was arguably his breakout smash hit in this country. Originally a No.3 hit in March 2010, the alarmingly twee sounding slice of teen pop escapes ACR and barges its way back to No.17
Bieber also enjoys a fourth hit thanks to the three singles limit only applying to singles where you are the primary credited artist (something Olivia Dean has been exploiting for months). Also escaping ACR for a chart comeback is Eenie Meenie, another song of 2010 vintage on which he duetted with Sean Kingston. A No.9 hit back in the day, it is now Top 40 once more at No.32.
Is it unusual to have so many vintage tracks cluttering up the singles chart? Not necessarily. 39 years ago back in 1987 we had the strange sight of Stand By Me by Ben E King ruling at No.1 over When A Man Loves A Woman by Percy Sledge at No.2. Both tracks well over 20 years old at the time with both reissues inspired by TV adverts. By that standard Bieber's brace of 2010 hits with one more from 2012 look positively modern.
Believe Nothing
Every Sunday afternoon Official Charts publishes what it calls the "first look". An early midweek sales flash designed solely to give Radio One something to broadcast in the traditional Sunday evening chart show slot (and to counter the Big Top 40 show that goes out on commercial networks at the same time). It is rarely more than of passing interest, circumstances meaning it is rarely based on more than a single day of streaming data - skewing in favour of any mass purchased tracks whose full sales for the two days have been posted. It is a fun clue as to what the eventual chart on Friday might look like, but it can rarely be relied upon.
This week that was more the case than ever, the initial Top 20 countdown was dominated by a fair smattering of Record Store Day special releases. All of which had sold out their pressings on Saturday and which would only fade away as the midweek updates went on.
So it proves, the only one of the big RSD drops to survive the cut as it were is Elizabeth Taylor by Taylor Swift. A surprise No.2 on the First Look, it sags to a still none too shabby No.14 - up from the No.73 berth it occupied last week. However of the 21,000 chart units the track registered this week, fully 15,000 of those are through purchases of the "violet glitter" 7-inch release. Without which it would have struggled to make the Top 50 and to where it will most probably sink next time. A live performance of You've Got A Friend by Olivia Dean, taped from Later With Jools Holland was No.8 on the first look but ends up starred-out somewhere between 60 and 65, eclipsed by all of her other hits.
Looking Up
Sombr's Homewrecker is two and a half months old, but despite a continuing residency in the Top 10 the American singer has deemed it appropriate to fling another new track at us. Like all his tracks it debuts low but with the potential to go much further, and there's no pun intended there as Potential is effectively the highest "new" new entry with a debut at No.31.
Other movers at the bottom end can be found in the same place. Malcolm Todd's 2024 track Earrings makes another leap after stalling slightly last time out, now up to No.29. Meanwhile Free Your Mind by Prospa/Cloonee which crept unnoticed by me into the Top 40 last week is also on the move, rising to No.30. We will take our new blood where we can get it.
Lush Water
Also debuting, No.40 plays host to the intriguing combination of Tyla and the getting close to ubiquitous Zara Larsson with their collaboration She Did It Again. It means the Swedish star has a say in 10% of the Top 40 this week, with her own two singles Lush Life (No.9) and Midnight Sun (No.18) joining her invisible participation on Stateside (No.26). We are still waiting for the appearance of a PinkPantheress jump-on remix of Midnight Sun, a collaboration fandom is still convinced will happen and who are desperately trying to will into existence.
A peep at the singles chart cannot finish without noting the frustrating chart run of New Religion by Bebe Rexha and Faithless. Now seven weeks old, it has appeared inside the Top 40 of midweek sales flashes on numerous occasions only to fall short every time. Its chart run reads 43-41-43-43-50-49-46 where it rests this week. Another to add to the list of hits that somehow never were?
No Longer In The Moment
Top of the Official UK Albums chart this week is You Got This which finally gives Welsh noisemakers Skindred a No.1 album. Their chart sale of 20,000 copies is in marked contrast to the utterly miserable 6,088 with which the latest edition of Now That's What I Call Music debuts on the compilations chart. I noted on Twitter in the week that my purchase of Volume 123 of the legendary "hits" collection series was motivated by little more than sheer force of habit. I've been collecting them all since I was 10 years old and see no reason to stop now. But insipid chart turnover means the compilers run out of current hits to feature about eight songs in, stuffing the rest of the running order with songs by legacy acts that you might have heard once on Radio 2 and then never again. The presence of not just one but two tracks from flop TV-promoted boyband December 10 smells of desperation. A hunt for content in a desert of alternatives.
Just over 10 years ago the series was up to Volume 93. That debuted at No.1 on the compilations chart at the end of March 2016 with a sale of 246,889. But then almost every single one of the featured tracks was a proper chart hit single.
