In which Beyoncé has an album out. But first…

1. LF System – “Afraid to Feel”

That’s five weeks, but it only holds on by the equivalent of about 3,000 sales. Still, even past its peak, it’s able to keep Beyoncé at bay.

2. Beyoncé – “Break My Soul”
14. Beyoncé – “Cuff It”
16. Beyoncé – “Alien Superstar” 

That’s the maximum three tracks from her album “Renaissance”, which enters the album chart as her fourth UK solo number one. ( “Cuff It” and “Alien Superstar” are just album tracks; “Break My Soul” is the trailer single, which has been on the singles chart for seven weeks now, mostly hovering between 4 and 6.

This sort of thing might seem like a foregone conclusion, but it’s not quite that clear. It’s been six years since her last studio album “Lemonade”, and while it did get to number one, its profile wasn’t helped by being exclusive to Tidal on streaming for the first three years. None of the singles from that album made the top 10. Number 2 is Beyoncé’s highest singles chart position since she appeared on Lady GaGa’s “Telephone” thirteen years ago.

Even so, I’m surprised she didn’t get a couple of tracks into the top 10 from this, particularly in another quiet week. The only other new entry on the singles top 40 this week is…

38. JAE5 featuring Dave & BNXN – “Propeller”

JAE5 is a producer who’s worked with the likes of Dave, J Hus and Burna Boy, but this is his first time being credited as an artist. It’s a really good production job, mind you. Also getting his first hit is BNXN, a Nigerian Afrobeat singer who used to be called Buju but changed his name this year to something much more confusing. It’s pronounced “Benson”, somehow.

This week’s climbers:

• “I Ain’t Worried” by OneRepublic climbs 12-10, finally giving them a fifth top 10 hit. The last one was “Love Runs Out” from 2014.
• “Bad Habit” by Steve Lacy climbs 18-17.
• “Ferrari” by James Hype & Miggy Dela Rosa climbs 36-25, which is more like it.
• “Big City Life” by Luude & Mattafix climbs 37-28.

And… that’s it. There are the three new entries listed above, plus a Becky Hill single re-entering at 39 (which has just been hovering around the fringes of the top 40). The four records leaving the top 40 are:

• “TV” and “The 30th” by Billie Eilish, which drop straight out after a single week at numbers 23 and 33. Clearly labelling two perfectly good songs as an acoustic EP is not the way to go.
• “Elegant & Gang” by D-Block Europe and Ghost Killer, which entered at 18 a couple of months back and has been slowly drifting down ever since.
• “Heat Waves” by Glass Animals, which has been around forever, peaking at number 5.

On the album chart, Beyoncé is number 1…

6. Maggie Rogers – “Surrender”

Her second proper album (discounting a couple of self-released early records); the first got to number 25, but it was a number 2 hit in America, and the UK seems to agree this time round. She’s the one who went viral based on a video of Pharrell Williams reacting to one of her songs during a masterclass.

13. The Cribs – “Men’s Needs Women’s Needs Whatever”
20. The Cribs – “The New Fellas”
23. The Cribs – “The Cribs”

This is an unusual approach – re-issuing your first three albums in the same week. Their 2004 self-titled debut and 2005’s “New Fellas” are charting for the first time, but “Men’s Needs Women’s Needs Whatever” somehow manages to land at exactly the same place as it did back in 2007.

19. Orbital – “30 Something”

Finally, this career retrospective album – mostly in new mixes based on the current live versions of the tracks. It was originally due out in 2019, which would have been the 30th anniversary of the group forming, in which case the title would have made sense – they had their first hit single in 1990 with “Chime”. There are also a handful of new tracks including the above.