Mystic Masterton
This week's column is brought to you by two undeniable truths.
Sometimes I am right about stuff.
You don't love Olivia Dean nearly enough.
As predicted in these very pages a week ago, a curious set of circumstances have aligned. Last week's No.1, Opalite by Taylor Swift was something of a one week wonder, diving 1-8 quite unceremoniously. Its two main challengers - Raindance and Where Is My Husband - both exit the scene thanks to a dive to ACR. And Bad Bunny, while not quite the one week wonder of his own that we boldly predicted, still in unable to advance on last week's post-Super Bowl momentum and remains stranded at the lower end of the Top 5.
That means as if by default last week's No.5 single is propelled in some style to the summit of the market. Rein Me In by Sam Fender & Olivia Dean is top of the Official UK Singles chart.
No, Get Out
To call this single's journey to the summit an extraordinary one is to call the weather so far in 2026 "a little damp". An accurate statement for sure, but one which undersells it to a large extent. Rein Me In began life as Track 8 on Sam Fender's People Watching album, released a year ago last week. Little-regarded at first, it shot to public attention last June when the singer brought Olivia Dean onstage during his gig at the London Stadium to perform the song in a duet, the pair repeating the performance a week later at St James' Park in Newcastle. A week later a studio version of the duet appeared online and it is this recording which finally charted for the first time.
So essentially Sam and Olivia's collaboration predates the Livvy-mania which has accompanied her The Art Of Loving album but has somehow been swept along as part of it. No other Sam Fender song has enjoyed this kind of support and appeal and for this long as well. For those having lost track, Rein Me In began its chart life at No.86 on the last chart of June last year, originally credited to Fender solo. The release of the duet version prompted it to surge to No.6 a week later, prevailing chart rules entitling it to a credit change meaning Olivia Dean was listed alongside Fender as the performer. That No.6 peak was initially as good as it appeared to get, the track sinking into the Top 20 a week later whereupon it spent the rest of the summer hurtling between 13 and 17 while never threatening to return to the Top 10.
But that was until the aforementioned Livvy-mania. Concurrent with the release of The Art Of Loving the Sam Fender track gained second wind, easing its way back to the Top 10 where it took up semi-permanent residence from mid-November onwards. The only time it dipped lower than No.9 was two weeks over Christmas where it was a mere 14 and 34 respectively, but that's kind of understandable.
This climb then to No.1 has been protracted and is indeed officially a record. 36 weeks doubles the previous unbroken chart climb (by Ed Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud), although Official Charts are preferring to overlook that first week at No.86 and are selling it as 35 continuous weeks in the Top 40 which is fair enough. It all counts. Note, the emphasis here is on "unbroken". Several songs have taken literal decades to make it to No.1 (Running Up That Hill for example), while there are others that topped the charts deeper into their chart life (such as All I Want For Christmas Is You which hit No.1 in December 2020 in its 104th week on the singles chart) but which had exited and returned before reaching the top. The continuous climb of Rein Me In sets a benchmark all of its own.
So perhaps this feat is finally what the single deserves. I continue to note with amusement that it is a Sam Fender song, but the love felt for it is entirely down to its belatedly added female part, even though Dean's vocals don't arrive until two minutes in. The song's video pays homage to its origins, consisting of spliced together footage from those two concert appearances she made.
It is Sam Fender's first No.1 single, besting the chart peak of his 2021 track Seventeen Going Under which peaked at No.3 on the first chart of 2022 - fully six months after it had first charted. Olivia Dean has been here before, this her second No.1 single following Man I Need at the end of last year. Of which more we must now talk.
Talk About Her. Look At Her. They All Work
For yes, the vaccum at the top means that this is another Olivia Dean-dominated chart. At one stage it was clear that although she was all but guaranteed another No.1 it was not immediately clear which song it would be with. That is because So Easy (To Fall In Love) topped at least one of the midweek sales flashes, all thanks to a heart-shaped physical release designed to capitalise on Valentine's Day. In the end the Astrud Gilberto-sings-Burt Bacharach track comes to rest at No.2 to finally peak the No.3 peak it originally scaled at the start of December last year.
And yes, the massive velvety classy elephant makes its presence known once more the aforementioned Man I Need also surges back up the chart and comes to rest at No.4, a position it was also last at in early December a fortnight after it first tumbled to the ACR status (meaning its streams count for half their regular weight) with which it has been saddled ever since. Officially the track posts just under 30,000 chart sales - but that gives it an unadjusted total of almost 60,000 - fully 17,000 more than the 43,425 units with which Reign Me In is credited. I repeat myself for the benefit of any casual readers popping in to read about this week's record breaker. On seven of the eight singles charts published so far this year, Man I Need has been the de facto most popular track of the week - only Harry Styles' Aperture has managed a sale that would beat its unadjusted total. Man I Need physically cannot escape ACR (its constantly huge sale inhibiting any chance of the 25% jump in streams required for this to happen), and as we've seen her label are busy promoting other tracks and seem to see no reason to request a reset.
Whether anything changes two weeks hence remains to be seen. Olvia Dean is performing at the Brit Awards in Manchester this Saturday next and appears to stand a very good chance of "doing a RAYE" and marching off with all five of the trophies she is nominated for. She's set to be anointed the current Queen of British pop on prime time TV. Imagine how odd it will look for her to potentially not have the No.1 single when she really is supposed to.
Hoovering Up
The chart vacuum also had a beneficial effect on Zara Larsson's reactivated Lush Life as it shifts up a gear to No.3, equalling the peak it first scaled exactly 517 weeks ago - or ten years next month to you and me. All this amusingly to the detriment of her current modern-day single Midnight Sun which this week spends a second week at No.22, down from the No.20 it scaled a fortnight ago.
As also predicted in these pages a week ago, Sombr's Homewrecker continues its ascent on its way to becoming his biggest ever hit as it takes a flying leap to No.7.
Also on a surge, the reactivated Just The Way You Are by Milky which rises to a new 2020s peak of No.14, a position it last rested at in September 2002, one week after it first peaked at No.8. I'm still trying not to think about the fact that revival is down to a completely terrible remix which treads all over the simple beauty of the original. Sniff.
BRATcliff
This week's No.1 album is, you may be surprised to learn, not The Art Of Loving by Olivia Dean. Instead the charts are topped by Charli XCX's unique soundtrack to the new movie retelling of literary classic Wuthering Heights. Her eighth chart album, it is her third to reach No.1, following Crash and Brat. The album also spawns its requisite batch of three eligible chart hits, all of which make a respectable showing. Chains Of Love is the biggest, clanking its way to No.17 as the highest new entry of the week to beat the No.26 it first scaled when released as a teaser single in November last year. It is joined by Dying For You at No.27, which amusingly heads up a trio of 'death' tracks as Die With A Smile is No.28 and Die On This Hill is No.29. Bringing up the rear is Always Everywhere at No.33.
"I can't believe they have made a movie out of that Kate Bush song" is a Twitter joke I may well have stolen during the past seven days. Although it is not connected with the film (even if it does tell the same story), don't be surprised if Kate Bush's 1978 No.1 hit of the same name makes a chart return of its own in the wake of Bronte-mania.
Latin Lapin
The British rediscovery of Bad Bunny continues with DTMF at No.5 and Nuevayol at No.16, but they are joined in progress as it were by his older 2022 single Titi Me Pregunto which originally featured on his fifth studio album Un Verano Sin Ti. Don't ask me what any of that means, I'm just copying and pasting them. A Top 5 single on the Hot 100 and a chart-topper across Latin America, it has never before charted here but this week takes over as his third most-streamed hit to chart at No.18.
From the file marked "making good chart progress lower down" come Dominic Fike's Babydoll which accelerates to No.23 and Bella Kay's Iloveitiloveitiloveit which advances to No.26. However notably stranded for now is Ella Langley's Choosin' Texas which is marooned at No.35.
Ay Bee Cee
We end this week with an acknowledgement of another chart success for drill rapper Central Cee, as two tracks from his forthcoming new album All Roads Lead Home land on the chart. The biggest pokes its nose inside the Top 40, Iceman Freestyle impacting No.37, while the J Hus duet Slaughter takes a more low key bow at No.54. The former is his first Top 40 credit since he appeared alongside Drake on Which One, a No.4 hit in August last year and his first such hit since the trio of cuts from his Can't Rush Greatness all made the Top 20 just over a year ago. That kind of suggests we'll see these two hits make a bigger impact next month when the new collection finally hits the stores.
