Week Ending March 5th 2026

And The Winner Is...

We are, as I write this, 24 hours away from the Brit awards where it seems almost certain that Livvy-mania will be consolidated. So it only seems appropriate that the status quo is maintained at the very top end of the Official UK Singles chart. Our Queen Olivia Dean remains No.1 with the Sam Fender duet Rein Me In for a second straight week. This alone is actually quite notable as it is the first single to spend more than one week at a time at No.1 since End Of Beginning back in January. Meanwhile Olivia solo remains No.2 with So Easy (To Fall In Love), A Couple Minutes rises to No.17 and tucked between them is the massive elephant-shaped Man I Need which although it is nudged down to No.7 this time around is still de facto No.1, 27,900 ACR-affected sales translates to 55,200 full fat ones - more than the 46,000 posted by Rein Me In.

One relevant question posed of me online by regular reader Martin Roe is just how Rein Me In has managed the extraordinary feat of surviving 37 weeks (so far) on the singles chart without falling to ACR status and being cut off at the knees. To fully understand, we have to break down its weekly chart sales ever since its tenth week (the earliest at which said axe could fall). So let's break out a table.

Now, there are actually gaps in our (my) knowledge here. Without access to the full chart database the only reported weekly sales we have for Rein Me In are those published in Music Week, and Alan Jones did not always reference them for those weeks in which the song was lurking outside the Top 10. Nonetheless, we can still make inferences. So here goes.

As you can see, there are only two maybe three occasions where the track hit two consecutive weeks of decline and was at risk of being cut off. And none of them have been in 2026 so far. Ironically, its ascent to No.1 means it is now at greater risk of a cut than ever before, largely thanks to the surge in streams it enjoyed a week ago as it moved to the top of the market. Although it has increased once more to what you can see is its largest weekly consumption figure yet, this is now a higher peak from which to fall, and a momentum it cannot maintain indefinitely.

Man I Need, by the way, tumbled to ACR in its 11th week on the chart. But that was fully four weeks after its solitary week at the top of the charts, and you can entirely understand the label feeling that the track had run its course and served its purpose to get people to snap up the album. But as we know it had not run its course. This week its unadjusted chart sale is over 50,000 for the 26th week in a row. No single in the 32 year history of the Kantar Millward-Brown era of the chart survey has ever achieved that kind of consistency.

If you are reading this after Saturday night and she hasn't got a family of Brit Awards to put on a shelf in the downstairs toilet, there's something very badly wrong. [Life is good, all is well].

USA Bound

Other songs to talk about. Yes, there are many, don't panic. Indeed the rest of this week's Top 5 takes on an unusually fresh look thanks to several up and coming hits accelerating to exciting new peaks. Most exciting of all is Stateside which after a few weeks lurking at the bottom end of the Top 10 now rockets up to No.3. It is now the second Top 3 hit for Vicky 'PinkPantheress' Walker, arriving just a few weeks shy of three years since her first Boy's A Liar peaked at No.2. We still need to note that the bulk of the track's appeal comes via the remix which adds new vocals from Zara Larsson who is denied a credit by prevailing chart rules, the track only becoming a duet after the song was already in the Top 40. This, incidentally, is why Olivia Dean is credited on Reign Me In, the version with her contribution to the song being released while Sam Fender's original languished at the lower end of the Top 100.

PinkPantheress is promoting in America and littering social media with clips of her dancing and posing for the camera. Her transformation from shy, anonymous bedroom creating teenager to full-fledged pop personality remains one of the more unexpected metamorphoses of the decade.

Belle Bella

The biggest jump of the week is the 26-4 surge enjoyed seemingly out of nowhere by Bella Kay with iloveitiloveitiloveit. The five week old track must have found its way onto some prominent playlists somewhere, as it spent the week steadily surging up the ranks - it was nowhere on the Sunday First Look, No.13 on Monday's first full update and No.9 on Wednesday's final public flash. The success of the track has also now had a halo effect on her previous chart single. The Sick reached No.72 last summer but has now reappeared itself and sits this week at a new peak of No.53. There's still no official video for her Top 10 hit, but she dropped this live performance video a few days ago so that will do.

To round off the Top 5, Sombr's Homewrecker jigs its way up two places, just one place shy of the peak scaled last year by Undressed which for now remains his highest charting hit.

Also making progress and stuck outside the glass ceiling: Just The Way You Are from Milky which rises to No.11 and pleasingly Chains Of Love from Charli XCX which jumps to No.12. Dominic Fike's Babydoll is newly arrived in the 20 with a five place climb to No.18.

But while I continue to bang on about Man I Need, perhaps it is also worth noting the false positions of four other Top 20 singles, all languishing on ACR but for the moment refusing to be properly snuffed out. Where Is My Husband, Raindance, Ordinary and Golden all occupy lower rungs but would otherwise be competing for Top 5 positions still. It truly is the most disjointed singles chart since the ACR rules were introduced.

It Is Not Twenty One

This week's highest new entry is Drag Path which lands at No.23 for Twenty One Pilots. This is a track with a strange and storied history, available for all of five minutes when it first squeaked out as a blink and you'll miss it exclusive last September. Fully released it becomes the band's third-biggest hit to date.

As also predicted, a friendly ACR reset propels Kate Bush's 1978 No.1 hit Wuthering Heights back into the Top 40 for the first time since its original chart run as it winks into life at No.40.

Triiiiio

The top end of the albums chart has a curious look to it. Mumford and Sons are apparently still a thing, their new album Prizefighter is comfortably No.1, landing the banjo superstars their second chart-topping album inside a year. Hard on the heels of Rushmere which hit the top in April 2025.

Olivia Dean is No.2, which she almost always will be if there's no gap at the top for her to fill. But taking third rung is Leigh-Anne with her debut release My Ego Told Me To. That's intriguing because she is the third Little Mix star in a row to reach No.3 with their debut album - Jade and Perri having also each done so in the last six months. Technically Jesy Nelson isn't part of the group any more, but we still await her solo album - and its chart position - with interest.