All Change Please
Well, this is awkward, why pretend otherwise?
As it was written, the script was that Lewis Capaldi would return as the great conquering hero and reclaim his place as the undisputed King of the housewife moistening ballad. He may have had the misfortune to release his song in the same week that the Queen died, but it still made it to No.1 nonetheless even with limited promotional opportunities. A good starting point you would think for a long unbroken run at the top of the charts.
But at least for the moment, things haven't worked out that way. Today the reign of Lewis Capaldi comes to a crashing halt as he is outpaced by I'm Good (Blue) by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha which ascends to No.1 after a four-week climb. The Franco-American collaboration clocked up 50,988 chart sales, leaving Capaldi trailing more than 4,000 behind.
But fair play, this has indeed been coming. I've not quite grasped just what makes this hit so unspeakably better than anything David Guetta has produced in his current chart comeback, but having been inching towards the top of the charts across the globe it makes perfect sense that the single makes it to the top here. It takes David Guetta's tally of No.1 hits to seven (as a performer, he's produced even more for other people), more than any other European act save for Abba (who have nine). More impressively it is his first No.1 single after a gap of just over eight years. His last single creation to hit the dizzy heights of the top was Lovers On The Sun (featuring Sam Martin on vocals) which enjoyed a week at the summit in August 2014.
For Bebe Rexha I'm Good (Blue) is her first No.1 hit, her patience rewarded given she made her own chart debut in 2014 as the featured singer on Cash Cash's Take Me Home (a No.5 hit). Prior to this month that was her biggest chart hit despite a string of collaborations with artists as diverse as Louis Tomlinson, Chainsmokers, Doja Cat and Florida Georgia Line. Guetta is 54 years old, Rexha 33 giving the pair a combined age of 88 years as a duo, although we should duly note that this pales into insignificance next to the combined ages of former No.1 duets from the likes of Ed Sheeran & Elton John (104 last December) and Captain Tom Moore & Michael Ball (157 in 2020).
As has been well documented I'm Good (Blue) owes a large debt to Italian outfit Eiffel 65's Grammy award-winning Blue (Da Ba Dee) which was a worldwide smash (and a British No.1 hit) way back in 1999. Guetta and Rexha's re-sing of the track actually surfaced as long ago as 2017 when the DJ casually dropped the demo into his set at the Ultra Music Festival that year, but it was apparently a surge of interest in the original on Tik Tok earlier this year which prompted him to finally finish the track off.
So is that it for the Lewis Capaldi single? Well we will have to see. As I keep hinting, his comeback is supposed to be a very big deal, the expectations were for Forget Me to have the same kind of impact as his previous smashes. So I very much doubt that the label is giving up on it just yet. For now it is one of those increasingly rare sights on the UK charts - a one week wonder No.1 single.
There's nothing new to report across the rest of the Top 10, save for the return of Luude & Mattafix's Big City Life at No.9 after it dipped out last week. It is glass ceiling time then for Steve Lacy, Bad Habit climbing to a new peak of No.11 after an 11 week climb but for the moment struggling to make it any further.
The Empress Returns
https://twitter.com/AnneMarie/status/1573375761473736707
As the lady herself notes, the highest new entry of the week is the enormously entertaining Psycho from Anne-Marie & Aitch which enters at No.16 - awkwardly two places below the current position of Aitch's other hit of the moment, his Ed Sheeran duet My G. But this is an Anne-Marie track first and foremost as she narrates the tale of a woman who has discovered her lover has been doing the dirty on her and is confronting him with the evidence, Aitch's response being to try to bluster his way out of it. As a production it sits as an uneasy hybrid of her pop sensibilities and his need to retain some form of grime credibility, but it is for sure the most notable record you will hear this week. Psycho is Anne-Marie's biggest chart hit since the Little Mix-featured Kiss My (Uh Oh) made it to No.10 at the tail end of last year.
Ooh Bey-La
A No.14 hit when the album first came out last month, CUFF IT from Beyonce is now making the most of its promotion to full single status and after having reappeared on the Top 40 last week now makes a flying leap back to No.20. The track owes its own debt of gratitude to a near-miss from the past, Tina Marie's 1988 single Ooh La La which most notably ended up as the basis for the Fugees' breakthrough single Fu-Gee-La eight years later.
A frantic week for new albums means there is an all-new Top 5 so full marks to Blackpink for managing to emerge from the morass with their second full-length album Born Pink which takes them to the top of the charts for the very first time. The Korean female army still remain of niche appeal, although that niche remains far larger than you might expect. Their ability to turn that into large hit singles is still in question, although for the first time they have side by side Top 40 singles with album cut Shut Down the second highest new entry of the week at No.24 and its predecessor Pink Venom clawing its way back to No.38.
Fishy
The final new entry of the week is possibly the most intriguing of all. Montell Fish is the performing alias of American Montell Fraser, a former teenage R&B artist who experienced a religious awakening back in 2014 when his father dragged him to a prayer service after catching him stumbling home stoned (I'm not making this up, I swear). Since then he has devoted himself to preaching a gospel message through a series of R&B and rap-based albums, the religious aspect of his lyrics deliberately subtle but easy to tease out. Yet with his last album Jamie he pivoted slightly, dialling down the Jesus part of his lyrics in a step towards the mainstream. Now thanks to some Tik Tok inspired virality the one-off track Hotel has now become an unexpected hit. The dark and melancholy track about the perils of toxic love is well worth four minutes of anyone's time. This week's No.27 single, even if it progresses no further I'm actually quite delighted it has made it here.
