At last, we have the first new number one of the year.

1. Lola Young – “Messy”

This has had a long road to number 1. The track was released last May. It didn’t make the top 100 until November and didn’t reach the top 40 until just before Christmas. It spent the last three weeks stuck at number 3. Lola Young herself has been around for years and seems to be a rare case of a major label sticking by someone until the hits came.

She’s been signed to Island since 2019. She was nominated for the Brit Award for Rising Star in 2021. Nothing happened, at least in terms of hits. She did a cover of “Together In Electric Dreams” for a John Lewis advert.  It didn’t chart. She came fourth in the BBC’s “Sound of 2022” list. Still no hits. She released an album in 2023. Still nothing. But TikTok liked “Messy” (eventually) and now she has an international hit. And she does have two albums worth of material and a history of good reviews to try and capitalise on it.

By an odd quirk, she does not go onto the one-hit wonders list with this track, because she’s also  on “Like Him” by Tyler, The Creator, which is currently at number 34. As of this week she’s been given a featured artist credit on that track too.

6. Central Cee featuring 21 Savage – “GBP”

This week’s highest new entry – on an admittedly short list – is the final pre-release single from Central Cee’s album “Can’t Rush Greatness”, which will be on next week’s album chart. Central Cee is one of those rappers who can get singles to the top 10, and does so regularly but not consistently. 21 Savage might well be the sort of collaboration that brings in more attention – this is his first top 10 hit since 2022, when he was collaborating in turn with the likes of Drake and the Weeknd, but “Redrum” only just missed the top 10 last year.

26. Bad Bunny – “DTMF”

The other new entry this week is interesting. Bad Bunny’s album “Debi Tirar Mas Fotos” was number 13 last week, and placed three tracks just outside the top 40 – pretty impressive in itself for a Spanish-language record. But “DTMF” actually climbs to become Bad Bunny’s first solo top 40 single. He’s charted before as a collaborator but getting over the language barrier with this track is genuinely a surprise.

This week’s climbers:

• “The Days” by Chrystal climbs 5-4. It’s worth saying that the streams are coming heavily from the Notion remix rather than the original, but it’s not an especially radical remix.
• “Do I Wanna Know” by Hozier climbs 26-18.
• “Carry You Home” by Alex Warren climbs 25-23.
• “Denial is a River” by Doechii climbs 31-24.
• “Indigo” by Sam Barber featuring Avery Anna climbs 39-33.
• “Headlock” by Imogen Heap climbs 37-35.

There are two new entries plus a re-entry fro Gracie Abrams’ “I Love You I’m Sorry” at 38. The three tracks leaving the top 40 are:

• “Stargazing” by Myles Smith, which reached number 4 way back in August 2024 and had another three weeks post Christmas.
• “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan, after three post-Christmas weeks.
• “I Always Wanted a Brother” by the Mufasa cast, which had a single week at 34.

On the album chart:

1. Robbie Williams – “Better Man – OST”

Technicality time! This is not a Robbie Williams greatest hits album but a set of new recordings of his songs taken from the biopic Better Man. (“A crowd-pleading musical that will have you saying ‘That chimpanzee REALLY loves cocaine!'” – Nathan Rabin) The technicality is that most of the vocals on this album are not by Robbie Williams, but by the movie cast. But he does contribute some vocals to every track but one (on which plays the mellotron), and apparently that justifies crediting it as a Robbie Williams album.

If you’re willing to accept that argument then this is Robbie Williams’ 15th number one album. It’s easier to list the Robbie Williams albums that didn’t make number one: 2003’s “Live at Knebworth” and 2009’s “Reality Killed the Video Star”. They both got to number 2.

16. Mac Miller – “Balloonerism”

Mac Miller died in 2018 and this is the second posthumous release from his estate. He recorded it four years before he died and didn’t release it, which would normally suggest a degree of barrel scraping, but the reviews have been positive and the track above is surprisingly good. His highest placing album in his lifetime was his final album “Swimming”, which reached number 17; his first posthumous release “Circles” made number 8.

25. David Gray – “Dear Life”

There’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. David Gray was last in the album chart in 2019 when “Gold in a Brass Age” reached number 21. His 2021 album “Skellig” missed the top 40 altogether and he hasn’t released anything since. He should be pretty happy with this position.