Oct 22

Charts – 20 October 2023

Posted on Sunday, October 22, 2023 by Paul in Music

Not a big-selling week, but quite a busy one anyway.

Two weeks. It was very close over “Prada” at number 2 – the equivalent of 800 sales, or roughly a 2% margin. It’s also one of the lowest-scoring number ones in a while, so I don’t fancy her chances of staying at the top for long. And while there aren’t any new entries in the top ten, there are a bunch of climbers. But we’ll come to that.

16. Fred Again & Jozzy – “Ten”

Perfectly timed, as the previous single “Adore U” hits its tenth week on chart, encounters the downweighting rule, and dives from number 8 straight out of the top 20. So that’s a second consecutive top 20 hit, and it’s not one of his more commercial tracks, either.

Jozzy gets his first UK hit; his previous claim to fame, in chart terms at least, was co-writing Billy Ray Cyrus’s verse for the remix of “Old Town Road.”

17. Troye Sivan – “One of Your Girls”

This is the release week single for his album “Something To Give Each Other”, which enters at number 4 (in a busy week, as we’ll see). That’s his highest position on the album chart, although 2015’s “Wild” got to number 5, and 2018’s “In Bloom” was a 10.

Surprisingly, it’s the highest placing single from the album – I thought “Rush” was pretty strong, and it stuck around a while, but it never got above 21. In fact, number 17 is the highest position Sivan’s ever reached as a solo artist, though he did appear as a guest on Lauv and Charli XCX singles that did better than this. His previous single “Got Me Started” re-enters at 36, and “Rush” is still at 27.

21. Drake featuring Sexxy Red & SZA – “Rich Baby Daddy”

This is the three-song limit rule at work. Last week, when his album came out, Drake had “IDGAF” at 5 (it falls to 10 this week) and “First Person Shooter” at 4 (it falls to 13). And he had “Virginia Beach” as his third hit, but it drops below “Rich Baby Daddy” on week two, so it gets starred out and this track registers as a technical new entry. By Drake standards it’s positively perky, although that’s more a reflection of the production than Drake himself. It’s the first top 40 credit for rapper Sexxy Red.

28. Skepta – “Can’t Play Myself (A Tribute To Amy)”

This is Skepta’s first single in two years, and it’s his highest chart position in two years – despite his profile, he hasn’t had that many big hits. The “Tribute to Amy” bit is because it samples the late Amy Winehouse’s “Tears Dry On Their Own” (number 16 in 2007). It’s an interesting choice of comeback single, since Skepta doesn’t actually do any vocals on it; this is him purely as a producer.

31. Bring Me The Horizon – “DArkSide”

Yes, that’s how they say it’s capitalised. Don’t ask me. Number 31 is their highest position since 2020 (when “Parasite Eve” scraped the bottom end of the top 30), but Bring Me The Horizon remain an unusual example of a guitar band who still regularly place their singles in the top 40.

35. Campbell & Alcemist – “Would You (Go To Bed With Me)”

A rather generous credit for what’s basically a remix of “Would You?” by Touch & Go (number 3 in 1998). There’s a vocal version which has Caity Baiser rapping over it, but it only really makes sense as an answer record if you’ve already heard it without her.

Touch & Go were a jazz pop outfit and “Would You?” was their only hit. The vocalist on the original was uncredited and apparently anonymous (so it presumably wasn’t the woman in the video). The line apparently comes from a 1978 psychological study which seems a bit ethically dodgy to me.

37. Bastille – “Pompeii”

This is an odd one. “Pompeii” was a number 2 hit in 2013 – it was held off number one by Justin Timberlake – and the reason why it’s here now is because of a 10th anniversary orchestral version made with soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer. However, the record company hasn’t taken up the option to list it as the main version of the song, and so technically this is classed as a re-entry for the 2013 original, with the new version simply being an alternate version. (All versions of the same song by the same artist count towards a single chart position – the chart company got rid of the rule that capped the number of permissible remixes years ago, because it’s not so open to abuse in the streaming era.)

And so Hans Zimmer doesn’t get a chart credit for this. Don’t feel too bad for him, because he did reach number 23 in 2007 with “Spider Pig” from the Simpsons movie.

This week’s climbers:

“Water” by Tyla climbs 7-4.
“Baddadan” by Chase & Status, Bou & Flowdan climbs 11-5. Chase & Status haven’t been this high up the singles chart since 2013, when “Count On Me” also reached 5. “Disconnect” with Becky Hill rebounds to its previous peak of number 6 this week, too.
“Asking” by Sonny Fodera, MK & Clementine Douglas climbs 10-7.
“My Love Mine All Mine” by Mitski climbs 13-8 to give her a surprise top 10 hit.
“DNA (Loving You)” by Billy Gillies featuring Hannah Boleyn climbs 17-12.
“Stick Season” by Noah Kahan climbs 28-18, which just goes to show what a cover by a higher profile star can do for a song.
“Liquor & Cigarettes” by Chase & Status featuring Hedex & ArrDee climbs 32-23 – and no, they don’t have an album out this week.
“Back on 74” by Jungle climbs 30-25.
“I Remember Everything” by Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraces vlimbs 29-26.

There are seven new entries this week plus four re-entries – Troye Sivane, plus minor re-entries at 38, 49 and 40. That’s “On My Love” by Zara Larsson & David Guetta, “Anti-Hero” by Taylor Swift and “Agora Hills” by Doja Cat. This is partly because we had two albums placing the maximum tracks in the top 40 last week and only two of those tracks stood around. The 11 (!) tracks leaving the top 40 this week are:

“Virginia Beach” by Drake gets disqualified for placing fourth in his catalogue after a single week at numbe 6.
“Bad Idea Right” by Olivia Rodrigo hits the downweighting rule; it peaked at number 3.
“Daily Duppy” by Nines featuring GRM Daily managed two weeks, peaking at 23.
“Snooze” by SZA peaked at 18 and managed four weeks on this run.
“Normal People Things” by Lovejoy managed a single week at 27.
“I Do” by Nines featuring Tunde & Mugzz got a single week at 35.
And “Toxic” by Nines featuring the Bad Boy Chiller Crew got a single week at 37.
“Desire” by Calvin Harris & Sam Smith peaked at number 6 and had 5 weeks in the top 10.
“You & Me” by Jennie got a single week at 39.
“Calm Down” by Rema spent two weeks as a re-entry at 40.

Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” is still the longest running single on the chart, with 21 weeks. It’s at number 29.

On the album chart…

1. Ren – “Sick Boi”

Unexpected number one for the self-released album by Welsh singer-songwriter Ren Gill, who’s released a load of tracks about mental health on YouTube over the last year or so. It’s not a quiet week, either. But his music can be quite compelling.

2. Rick Astley – “Are We There Yet”

This was very nearly Rick Astley’s third number one album – the others being his 1987 debut, and 2016’s “50”.

Number 4 is “Something To Give Each Other” by Troye Sivan, and we’ve covered that.

5. Holly Humberstone – “Paint My Bedroom Black”

Debut album. She won the “Rising Star” award at the Brits last year. She’s yet to have any singles success.

7. The Streets – “The Darker The Shadow The Brighter The Light”

Officially this is being billed as his first studio album in 2011, but that depends on you accepting that 2020’s “None of Us Are Getting Out Of Here Alive” – which got to number 2 and was 40 minutes long – was just a mixtape.

8. Pink Floyd – “The Dark Side of the Moon”