Once again, the singles chart has to thank the album market for providing it with some activity.

1. Adele – “Easy On Me”

That’s five weeks, her joint biggest hit. “Someone Like You” also managed five weeks total, with a week’s interruption. The record that knocked it off for a week was “Don’t Hold Your Breath” by Nicole Scherzinger, which I haven’t thought about for over ten years until I looked it up just now.

Adele’s album is out today, so we can assume she’ll have two more singles on next week’s chart.

3. Taylor Swift – “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”
18. Taylor Swift – “State of Grace (Taylor’s Version)”
22. Taylor Swift – “Red (Taylor’s Version)”

Here we are again with Taylor Swift’s project of re-recording her back catalogue. At the start of the year, she released a re-issue of “Fearless”, her 2009 album; “Love Story” got to 12, “Mr Perfectly Fine” to 30. “Wildest Dreams”, released out of sequence as a single, got to 25. But now we’ve reached the second album release, “Red”, which was her first number 1 album in 2012, and the start of an uninterrupted run of number one albums that continues this week with… er,�“Red (Taylor’s Version)”.

“All Too Well” is the lead single from this album; it wasn’t a single the first time round, but it’s widely regarded as one of her best songs. Whether it really benefits from being extended to 10 minutes to become the soundtrack of a 15-minute short film, I’m not quite so sure, but to be fair, it’s really intended more to be watched as a film. (The album also includes a straight remake of the original.)

“State of Grace”�was a single the first time round, but it only got to number 36 in the UK. “Red” was also a single, and got to number 26. As for why these two tracks have wound up being singled out… well, they�are the first two tracks on the album, but that doesn’t usually make much difference. Still, they’re very much fan choices rather than the obvious ones from this album – the original “Red” album had four top ten hit singles on it, and these aren’t among them. (They were “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”, “I Knew You Were Trouble”, “Everything Has Changed” and “22”.)

25. Juice WRLD – “Already Dead”

This is a track from his upcoming second posthumous album “Fighting Demons”, which in turn serves as the soundtrack to a documentary about him. The words “second posthumous album” normally signal that barrel-scraping has begun, but this track is very good and absolutely deserved a release.

35. Little Mix – “No”

This is the second bonus track from their greatest hits album “Between Us”. The first one only managed a week at 33 as well, which is a bit underwhelming. The album itself enters at number 4.

40. Gayle – “ABCDEFU”

Or GAYLE, if you must. She’s a teenager from Nashville and this is her first UK hit. The title kind of gives you the idea (the fact that she’s from Nashville is very much a red herring here). She is the first Gayle to have a top 40 hit, unless you count Crystal Gayle and Michelle Gayle, but then again even Wikipedia only lists a total of three Gayles (as distinct from Gails).

Mind you, no Gails have had top 40 hits either. There have been three top 40 hit singles by Abigails, though:�“I Just Can’t Get Enough” by Herd & Fitz featuring Abigail Bailey, a generic dance track that reached number 11 in 2005;�“Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Abigail�(Abigail Zsiga), a dance version which reached number 29 in 1994 (it’s better than you’re probably imagining), and�“Full Metal Jacket (I Wanna Be Your Drill Instructor)” by Abigail Mead & Nigel Goulding, which reached number 2 in 1987 and is absolutely insane. It’s way odder than I remember it being.

And even Abigail Mead wasn’t a real Abigail – it’s a pseudonym for Vivian Kubrick. Anyway, the moral is, if you want to have a hit single in the UK, don’t be called Abigail. Or join a band.

This week’s climbers:

• “Seventeen Going Under” by Sam Fender climbs 22-9. giving him his first top ten hit.
• “Coming for You” by SwitchOTR featuring A1 & J1 climbs 14-10.
• “Smokin’ Out the Window” by Silk Sonic�climbs 28-12, while the album�“An Evening With“ enters at number 9.
• “Do It To It” by Acraze featuring Cherish climbs 36-24.
• “Ghost” by Justin Bieber climbs 35-32

On the album chart… we’ve already had Taylor Swift at 1 and Little Mix at 4.

5. Rod Stewart – “The Tears of Hercules”

Gosh. That’s… a very odd video. There’s actually some good stuff in this song, but some, er, questionable choices too. Anyway, the last two Rod Stewart albums both reached number 1, but it’s a busy week.

6. Idles – “Crawler”

Last year’s album got to number 1, so on paper we’re going backwards but… again, busy week. I really like the editing of stock footage in that video.

7. Damon Albarn – “The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows”

God, Damon Albarn is 53. This is his third solo album, the second to chart – the other was “Everyday Robots”, which reached number 2 in 2014. (The one that didn’t chart was his 2012 opera about John Deed, which is fair enough, really.)

8. The Wanted – “Most Wanted – The Greatest Hits”

Sure, why not? The Wanted were never Take That, but they had three top ten albums, ten top ten singles, two number ones – that merits a greatest hits album.

Number 9 is Silk Sonic. Number 10 is a re-entry for Kylie Minogue’s “Disco”, which was a number 1 just last year, but is being re-issued in an expanded edition.

11. The Reytons – “Kids Off The Estate”

Yorkshire indie band. It’s their debut album. They managed to sell out the O2 in Sheffield as an unsigned band, which is pretty impressive.

15. Ronan Keating – “Songs From Home”

That’s quite low for a Ronan Keating album – his previous four albums all made the top 5.

31. Courtney Barnett – “Things Take Time Take Time”

Ouch, that’s low. Her last album, in 2018, reached number 9. So this is… seriously disappointing, to be honest.

34. Red Rum Club – “How To Steal The World”

They’re from Liverpool. It’s their third studio album, but the first time they’ve made the album chart.