Chart Review 12/04/24
Right, no jokes ths time. It's back to the weekly grind.
Hello, comrades, and I am here to introduce you all to the most unpredictable and KRAZY listings of contemporary music in all of the globe, the UK Charts. Given I've been doing this gig for nearly a year now, it sure gets harder trying to come up with new ways to make you all guffaw. But alas, your predictions that my intellect would outweigh my comedic talent have fallen on deaf ears. I'm here, I've got gear, and I'm here to sneer (that's enough rhyming after last week's fiasco).
Kicking off this week's catch-up of all things POP is....
Not the singles. The singles are dead.
The ALBUMS!!! Yeah, they may be rotting like a stinky old carcass as of late, but this particular chart has more new albums in the upper echelons than your average week, so let's get the ball rolling. Throwing Beyoncé off her porch for seven days only are everyone's favourite band as of 2003, The Libertines, who nick their 2nd Numero Uno Albumo with their latest indie-powered magnum opus. And their first No.1 since that self-titled one from 2004. Sadly, All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade is far, FAR from the standard they should be meeting in my opinion. You see, back in the days when Shakira was ACTUALLY popular (instead of nowadays where we're the only ones not to care), these lot were supposedly the saviours' of British rock-n-roll. They had the tunes, they had the songwriting, they had the inevitable punch-ups and alcohol addictions. They were perfect. Now they just sound like Grade F-Meat they feed Liam Gallagher whenever he records his solo material. I've got no clue why all the radio DJs I listen to hype this up as if it's Up The Bracket Pt.2, when in reailty it's more closer to a bunch of Blossoms B-Sides. And I don't like Blossoms, so that tells you all y'need to know. Still though, congrats on the No.1 lads, but do better next time. Aight?
Conan Gray's at 4, indie-chancers The K's are at 3, Newport's finest Feeder land at 8, Bryson Tiller crawls to 34, The Black Keys tank at 13, Vampire Weekend don't fare any better at 11, and Benson Boone's debut is also here, Fireworks & Rollerblades entering at 16 today. Now, normally whenever a man with massive success on the singles releases an album, you'd expect him to run riot on the singles and lock up the Top 10. Welp. You're all wrong, because Slow It Down creeps up to 23 today, new contribution Cry is at 67, and former chart-topper Beautiful Things is reluctant to move away from the No.2 spot. This leaves the pavement clear for Beyoncé to assert her dominance again by...
Falling down to No.3. Wait what?
So she ain't at the top anymore, and Teddy Swims sinks to 4, meaning out of literally nowhere, the new best-selling chart-swaggering song of the moment is the first for County Wicklow native Andrew John Hozier-Byrne. Or Hozier, to you and me. You'd be a brave man to predict a few years ago that this man would be at the summit, considering he was revered in many lands as a 1-hit wonder for his ubiquitous Take Me To Church reaching No.2 nine years back. It's taken as long for him to return to prominence as it is for me to post this on time (if my mum didn't ask for me to help with storage I wouldn't be in this situation). Alas, anyone who made a makeshift tombstone for him will be sorely dissapointed, as Too Sweet crawls up to the top on its 3rd week amongst it. As the first Irish artist since Westlife in 2006to be king of the hill, he will be showered in utter euphoria by many people all around the globe. Especially the Irishmen. They'd give him a knighthood if they could.
The only other chart name to make waves into the best-sellers today results in the first Top 10 smash for Dasha, proving that country is very much the zeitgeist at present, even though I'm not really a fan of it. Although Beyoncé is making me think twice about that judgement.
4 new tracks to us to digest this time around, but none of them have done better than the most surprising movement this week, from Bakar. You know him, don't you? The guy who sang Xell N Back? It did alright chart-wise last year? Well he certainly remembers, given he put out a new version of it with Summer Walker on guest duties, and it's resulted in him re-entering at 26. Because that's how music works folks! Also the OCC censored a word rhyming with, ahem, "bell", so now I have to call this song Xell N Back. What's the point. Anyways, he's still a 1-hit wonder though, unlike Artemas, who is now Top 5 material as of late despite sounding virtually inaudible to the middle-aged auntie. Now his previous release if u think i'm pretty creeps up to 39, and which makes his other chart smash sound like Sixpence None The Richer in comparison. Glad to see new British talent making waves, and his recent ascent up the notoriously-biased and boring Capital Big Top 40 is a sight to see. Even though he's done worse than UB40's ode to Birmingham City. Thank goodness iTunes is practically dead nowadays.
Number 7 on the album is the latest mixtape from J. Cole, whose first music of note since 2021 sees him get the knives out for his fellows members of the rap community, with disastrous conseuences. H.Y.B. has Central Cee on it, and given his omnipresence it's no surprise to see it do better than the other Top 40 hit this mixtape contains, the 3:30 minute long 7 Minute Drill (so much for being honest, eh?). Basically just a diss track to Kendrick Lamar after Kendrick dissed HIM on that massive Future/Boomin tune Like That (down to 11 today), it's the classic case of rappers not knowing when to stay silent, and given how well Kendrick's doing at present, No.38 seems a little poor by comparison. His other song Crocodile Tearz enters at 53. Ah well, J. Cole. His only hit of note was surprise Top 10 smash Middle Child from 2019, and by that I mean that no one talks about it nowadays. Like, at all. You never hear it from the stereo systems any more. Then again, it wasn't that good to begin with, so they may have a point.
The other new combatant is the return of dance's greatest nuisance, David Guetta. 21 years have passed since his first chart appearance, and since then it's been a relentless showing of generally good club smashes, occasionally exceptional pop classics, and loads of abysmal dance drivel which makes up a lot of his recent output. Was this outrage the reason why his retread of Scooter's The Logical Song failed to make the 40? Probably, but David clearly hasn't learnt his lesson, given he's roped fellow pop whipping boys OneRepublic for I Don't Wanna Wait, which at the very least debuts at 37 and gives Mr. Guetta his 48th Top 40 entry. Just a shame it's the usual EDM tripe.
Elsewhere and Tyla and Gunna jump (geddit?) to 43, so you can't really rule them out in the future, yes, and? is on ACR, so that's officially red flags in the Ariana campus, d4vd's contribution to brilliant superhero drama-death-dad Invincible goes in at 59, and Outside of Love by Becky Hill goes nowhere, so she's now in fraud territory again.
No.64 sees the first hit for Chappell Roan who makes The Last Dinner Party look like Shrek, if looking at the cover-art for Good Luck Babe is anything to go by that is. Obviously not in song quality, because it's sorta average, which is something I can also say for No.76, the debut for Jojo Siwa, whose move from child star to pop star in the O-Rod mold has gone down about as well as that King Kong film with the Twin Towers. Two places lower and Imagine Dragons are also in trouble, given how big you'd think their return to the music industry would be, Camila Cabello is a flop, 92nd place goes to Lay Bankz and her tender ode to telling 'ur' girlfriend with the power of 80s keyboards, and if you thought the Natasha Bedingfield infatuation would die down soon, well no, because No.91 is a dance reworking of These Words by some guy named Badger. And it's an insult to the original in so many ways, that I'm not even gonna continue talking about the chart. It's that disgraceful.
Out today for your ears to endure include albums from recent chart-adventurer Mark Knopfler (that doesn't sound right, surely), baggy survivors James, and Linkin Park's long overdue greatest hits compilation shindig didgery-doo fandango collection thing.
Oh, and Future and Metro Boomin wasting our time again. And the singles sees Dua Lipa continue her sad decay into mediocrity (sorry, but Illusion is mid), Sabrina Carpenter attempting to capitalise on her new-found fame, D-Block Europe coming around again, Fred Again.. naming his songs horribly, Mimi Webb exiting her 1-year hiatus from music, and Maggie Rogers winning over the public in everything BUT sales figures. Also, the debut single from Little Mix's Perrie Edwards is out today as well. Which is co-written by Ed Sheeran. Run for your lives, you lot. I'll be waiting on the other side.
(P.S. So Billie Eilish is getting ready for album number three/four/3.5 then. The hype train is obviously huge and all that, but you get the weird feeling that she won't be able to overcome all the Taylor Swift hysteria. 'Cos it's only 9 days until her new album hits the shelves. Get ready to buy every single vinyl we can like the obsessive fans we are.)
