The charts of 2016 are a still pond into which a stone occasionally falls.  This makes them fairly tedious to follow week to week, but at least the big stuff stands out.  The Official Charts Company are well aware of this, and of the need to remind the public of the chart’s ostensible function as a barometer of public mood.  So it didn’t take long after Prince died before the OCC put out an excitable announcement, which several papers dutifully parrotted, that he was on course to have a number 1 hit.  Which he wasn’t, but we’ll come back to that.

First, this month’s actual number ones.  “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” by Mike Posner hung on for another couple of weeks, managing a total of four.  And then we had “One Dance” by Drake featuring WizKid & Kyla, which doesn’t have a video, so you’ll have to make do with Spotify.

This was an unpromoted midweek release, which entered the chart at number 21 before leaping straight to number 1 the following week.  Technically it’s his second number one, but the first was his guest appearance on Rihanna’s “What’s My Name” back in 2010, and she gets most of the credit for that one.  His biggest hit as lead artist was (until now) “Hotline Bling”, which got to number 3 last year.  As for the two featured artists, WizKid is a big name in Nigeria, and Kyla is credited because the hook is sampled from her 2008 single “Do You Mind”.  It was a pretty decent single to start with, actually, but “One Dance”‘s sparser, moodier mix improves it.

By way of an honorary mention, here’s a nod to “Cheap Thrills” by Sia, which suffered the frustration of being stuck at number 2 for the whole month.

But Prince.

Two things about the OCC’s press release stood out.  First, it was based on sales flashes from the first day of the chart week – which was Friday, the day after he died, and which was always going to be one of the biggest days for sales.  The reality is that the surge of sales when an A-list star dies tends to last about half a week.  And second, though this was buried in the small print, those estimates were based entirely on sales, even though about half the final chart position now comes from streaming data.  Or rather, it is for the vast majority of artists who are on the major streaming services.  Prince isn’t; he’s excluaive to Tidal, and its subscriber base is tiny compared to the likes of Spotify.  So the OCC was comparing the entirety of his chart data against roughly half of everyone else’s.

The result is that Prince lands three singles in the current top 40, and they’re largely the ones you’d expect, from a fairly narrow window of his commercial peak: “Purple Rain” at number 6 (a new peak, since it only got to 8 on release in 1984), “When Doves Cry” at 26 (originally a number 4 hit in 1984), and “Kiss” at 38 (it got to number 6 in 1986).  None of which, of course, are on YouTube either…  That week also saw a deluge of entries from Beyoncé, which we’ll get to – if they hadn’t been there, “Raspberry Beret” would have just crept into the top 40 too.

Notably absent from the list is his only UK number 1, “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World”, from 1995.  That’s because you can’t buy it or stream it – because of his contract dispute with Warners at the time, it was released through a different label, and apparently it’s never had a digital release at all.  For generations too young to remember Prince in his prime, the barriers to entry are remarkably high, compared to pretty much every other artist.

Prince did wind up dominating the album chart, with three of the top four albums.  As with most impressive feats on the album chart these days, that’s partly a testimony to his popularity, and partly a reflection of how weak the album market is these days.  But what about the month’s other new entries?

April 1 was another largely dead chart, with only one new entry: “No” by Meghan Trainor, which entered at 30 and went on to peak at 11.  It’s the lead single from her second album, and a drastic departure from the doo-wop pastiche on the first album.  Another album in that style would have pigeonholed her as a novelty act, but the flipside is that now she sounds exactly like everyone else.  It’d be a decent enough Little Mix single.

April 8 had four new entries, the highest being “One Dance” at 21.  Further down, “I Found A Girl” by the Vamps – the third single from their current album – stiffed completely, landing at number 30 and crashing out of the top 75 the next week.  They’ve never come lower than 12 before, but the sluggish streaming-era chart is not a friendly place for fanbase acts.  “Famous” by Kanye West entered at 33 and has been hovering around there ever since.  Officially this is the lead single from “Life of Pablo”, and it’s got uncredited vocals by Rihanna.  Officially it doesn’t have a video either, but since the Eric Wareheim clip below is still on YouTube two weeks after getting tons of coverage, West is presumably happy enough to have it out there.

And at number 39 (it’s since climbed to 12), there was “No Money” by Galantis, which is the lead single from their second album.  It’s okay.  “Peanut Butter Jelly” was better.

The April 15 chart had four new entries, with the highest being the latest winner of The Voice UK, Kevin Simm, with his winner’s single “All You Good Friends”.  Maintaining the show’s flawless track record for failing to generate stars, it entered at number 24.  This isn’t even the highest place Kevin Simm has reached, since in a previous incarnation he was a member of Liberty X, the band formed by the runners up who didn’t get into Hear’Say.  They had a number 1 in 2002.

I think that’s Kevin doing the middle eight.  Ahem…  Number 27 was technically a re-entry for “Desire” by Years & Years, which originally got to number 22 in 2014, but has been re-issued in a new version featuring Tove Lo.  Number 33 was the other Drake single, “Pop Style”, which got no further, completely overshadowed by the number one.  And 39 saw “I’m In Control” by Alunageorge featuring Popcaan pop its head into the chart in the middle of a month of hovering just below 40.  It’s quite good, I’ve no idea why it didn’t do better.

The 22 April chart actually musters six new entries, all of them way down.  Highest was “Panda” by Desiigner at 27.  He’s an American rapper, this was his debut commercial release, and it got to number 1 in the US, partly because it was heavily sampled by Kanye West on a track from “Life of Pablo”.  It climbed to 25 the next week.  At 31, “Hair” by Little Mix, which previously got to number 35 as an album teaser but is now being given a full promotion as a single.  It climbed to 19 the following week.  Number 32 was “Just Like Fire” by P!nk, a track from the Alice Through the Looking Glass soundtrack, which crashed the next week.  At 33, climbing to 18 the next week, we have the fantastic credit that is “Middle” by DJ Snake featuring Bipolar Sunshine.

At 34, “Man” by Skepta, which proves that somebody is still making the sort of video that showed up for five seconds on The ITV Chart Show.  (This is not a bad thing.)

And at 40,  “Dancing on my Own” by Calum Scott, which is a cover of the Robyn single by a guy from Britain’s Got Talent, so you know what you’re getting there.

That brings us to 29 April, which has three re-entries for Prince and six new entries for Beyoncé, thanks to extensive cherrypicking from “Lemonade”.  The tracks in question are “Hold Up” at 17, “Formation” at 31, “Sorry” at 33, “6 Inch” at 35, “Don’t Hurt Yourself” at 36, and “Freedom” at 40.  More Beyoncé can be found at 44, 52, 57, 60, 69 and 85.  Which means that every single track on the album did enough individual downloads to make the top 40.  “Formation” is the one that had its video officially released earlier in the year, while “Hold Up” has evidently been seized on as the obvious single.

“Lemonade” does (naturally) enter the chart at number 1, mainly on the strength of downloads, though it also did surprisingly well in streaming, especially since it’s only available on Tidal.  (For now.)  Still, the appearance of the album on the singles chart as a collection of twelve disconnected tracks is interesting in its own right – is this some sort of reaction to the inability of most people to stream the whole thing, or just a further symptom of the collapse of albums as a format?

Oh, and for completeness: number 34 was Disturbed‘s rather bombastic version of “The Sound of Silence”, a cover of the Simon & Garfunkel song which was a number 1 in the States, but was never released as a single in this country, probably because the Bachelors got there first.