Chart Review 13/10/23
Well this just .
Another No.1 bites the dust, and we all have to embrace whatever madness is contained within the next chart-topper, making the rest of the songs feel like garbage in comparison. A bit of a shame that after all these fabulous rulers we've had over the past couple of months, we're officially back to clutching at straws. Not that I hate the new No.1 or anything, but it still feels a little wrong. Streaming champion she is, now potentially crowned the greatest lady in the UK for a week. Step forward, Kenya Grace.
The success of Strangers has made everybody go into raptures about how top notch she is, and how she can TOTALLY not be a 1-hit wonder. I get the hype and all, but I would prefer it if you made better songs, Kenya. That way I wouldn't be writing this review in a sulk. Then again, none of the Top 3 screams imaginative. Runner-up for the first time is the less than admirable Ferrari Horses remake that is Prada, with cassö deciding he may as well be anonymous for all the love RAYE and D-Block Europe get. Oh, and Tate McRae's stuck at 3. Make your own bottlejob joke, I've run out of creative things to say about songs like this. More length, more substance I say.
But alas. Drake happened. And that's not the kind of thing anybody hypes themselves up for. Another chart-topping album in the form of For All The Dogs means that 3 new "hits" predictably squawk their way into the Top 10, with First Person Shooter landing at 4, IDGAF at 5 (not the Dua Lipa song), and Virginia Beach at 6. None of them are particularly memorable in any way. That's it. Can I go now? Can I stop talking about the mundane nature of these tracks? PLEASE!?
Drake wasn't the only guy to stick an album out and watch the money roll in. Nines for some reason decided to make ANOTHER CROP CIRCLE LP, just in case the last one didn't force you to drink. Having said that, Crop Circle 2 did produce a Top 10 song in the form of Tony Soprano 2, but the chart positions of the hits from Crop Circle 3 leave a lot to be desired. His Daily Duppy I don't remember rises back up to 23, and can be joined by I Do at 35 (which didn't get picked for Radio 1 duty), and Toxic at 37 (which DID get picked). Again, trying to find anything constructive to say about these drives me to drink, so let's just move on with our lives and never talk about this again.
Bit of a shame that Doja Cat got officially screwed over by the laws and physics of ACR, which sees her relatively safe status suddenly plummet to 12th place in the chart. Not exactly giving us anything to smile about there, are you. This does mean that my over-confident support of Sonny Fodera and MK can finally pay off, as Asking glides into the Top 10 with little pressure. Given the upper end of the chart now looks like the kind of chart that wouldn't have been thinkable back in the stale world of February, this couldn't be any more deserved. Now to start getting my back behind Jungle, who crawl up to 30 this week in a not-too awful fashion. Even though that ecstasy song is also in the Top 30 now. And still not getting played.
There are some HUGE falls in the chart this week though. O-Rod witnesses vampire FINALLY succumb to ACR at the 15th attempt, with Tom Odell also suffering an unexpected slip out the 40 today. Jung Kook also crashed down to 22 this week, but come on. That was expected. You knew this was going to happen the second last week's chart ended. It probably won't even be in the CHART by the time his solo album comes out next month, and that is saying a HECK of a lot. Still, at least he has last week to fall back on. The fraud.
The other 3 new entries hardly inspire any confidence in me, especially when one of them is a BLACKPINK member. And look, if the K-Pop fanbases weren't so vicious, we'd probably have a better life, but NOOOOO. Instead, here's You & Me, the work of JENNIE from the band, but is so bland and unmemorable that I honestly forgot what the song sounded like the second it concluded on the Radio 1 Chart Show. And I didn't like Jisoo's FLOWER in high regard either, so you know you've messed up. Then again, Radio 1 is still playing Usher songs some 10 years after he was last relevant, so maybe I should've expected this.
Also giving people like me the shivers whenever they do anything are Lovejoy, who clock up a 2nd hit of the year with Normal People Things, the kind of song that I would probably like more if they weren't lead by Wilbur Soot. And anything that hias his name on it I just can't trust. The mental scars from Your New Boyfriend still run way too deep in my veins. Also making it 2 Top 40 efforts is Noah Kahan, or Kanah, or however you say that surname. I know I can't ;). Anyways, Stick Season suddenly rockets up about 40 places to sit at 28, and you can put most of it down to O-Rod tearing it apart in Radio 1's Live Lounge last week. No other reason I can find as to why it's done this well, but he too has his biggest hit yet. And I couldn't care less.
Also here this week is the latest No.41 award winner, Me & You by African superstar TEMS, Campbell & Alcemist clearly don't want me to have any fun with their reworking of that trumpet song from 1998. Especially given that Caity Baser is involved. And that just isn't a good sign, given how atrocious Pretty Boys was.Joel Corry's 2 month old set of streaming playlists were finally etched onto iTunes and the like, meaning that he FINALLY has a hit album to his name. Even though he clearly can't get a hit to save his life nowadays, the absolute flop. And just remember, that no matter how hard he tries, James Arthur just isn't relevant anymore. If he didn't make lame ballads like it's 2017 all over again, he'd probably do better than 81. You could realy learn something from Bring Me The Horizon, bro.
Speaking of BMTH, they have a new song out now for next week, along with a bunch of other rejects. Troye Sivan, Bad Bunny and Holly Humberstone have albums out, PinkPantheress, Ice Spice and Fred Again.. are out here to prove a point, and the world holds it's breath to see if Loreen can actually follow up her Eurovision success this time. 'Cause it didn't work in 2012, and it presumably won't here. Or maybe I'm just hedging my bets. BYE.
(P.S. Make your own ending joke about Ed Sheeran, or Rema, or blink-182, or any old artist I can think of. It would probably give me more Brownie points to spend on Skittles and M&Ms. Or is that not how Brownie points work.)
