Welcome to James Masterton's Chart Watch UK – your essential weekly deep dive into the Official UK Charts!
As the longest-running British music column online, we bring you the ultimate guide to this week's Top 40, unraveling the stories behind the biggest new singles and chart-topping hits. Plus, explore our extensive archives, a treasure trove of nearly 1800 articles documenting three and a half decades of popular music history and expert analysis.
This lady is not Michael Jackson. But she is one of the stars of the newly-minted video for a song that becomes a major chart hit for the very first time ever in this country. It is a bizarre world where the golden oldies are taking over. And the songs of 2026 are increasingly struggling to be heard.
Michael Jackson's 1983 face heralds a week in which he lands a surprise No.1 album on a technicality, invades the Top 3 for the first time since his death and almost - almost! - eclipses the big news of Rein Me In landing ten weeks at the top. Meaning Madonna and Sabrina are almost an afterthought.
Why is one broadcaster treated as toxic while a complicated pop legacy continues to print money? Between the "chart hokey-cokey" of the Top 40 and the technical wizardry of Michael Jackson’s streaming credits, we explore the strange paradoxes of this week's countdown. Plus: I told you so about Olivia Rodrigo. (Sorry, not sorry).
It’s a week of "Olivias" making history, Justin Bieber making an improbable comeback, and Taylor Swift making a glittery dent in the Top 20. But while Olivia Rodrigo’s latest No.1 suggests a changing of the guard, the story of the week lies in the "vintage" tracks refusing to stay in the past. From Glastonbury triumphs to the dwindling fortunes of the Now! series, we look at what’s actually moving the needle—and why the "First Look" can sometimes be a complete mirage.
