Quack
Oh Aubrey, you didn't think you were going to get it all your own way did you?
Easily the biggest story in music last week was the latest chapter in the large book of Drake's great indulgences. The alarmingly prolific rapper and droner has demonstrated in the past that quality control or self-restraint is not his thing; his 2018 album Scorpion and its 25 tracks having created a trend for bloated streaming era releases. Although there is of course method in the madness: in an age when you are paid for each track of yours that people consume it makes perfect sense to have as many as possible in the market and generating revenue.
This week however, he has surpassed himself, releasing not one but three albums simultaneously. And of course, all of them are bloated and crazy. Iceman has 18 tracks, Habibiti a further 11, and Maid Of Honour 14 further (although not all are full-length and some are brief interludes). Impossible to consume in one sitting and making it vanishingly hard for most of the cuts to stand out. But Drake is gonna Drake.
That they would be the biggest deal this week was beyond a doubt. The only question was to what extent. And the truth is he manages a clean sweep of neither British chart this week.
Iceman is the No.1 album this week, his seventh in total and the first since 2023's For All The Dogs also landed at the summit in its first week. The other two were generally treated as lesser, side releases even by their marketing and so perhaps their weaker performance is understandable. Maid Of Honour just has the edge and charts at No.6, Habibti one place behind at No.7. Together they mark his 15th, 16th and 17th Top 10 albums respectively - a total made up of albums, mixtapes and co-credited collaborations.
He duly becomes the first artist in history to enter the Top 10 with three brand new albums simultaneously. In the early 90s there was a brief fad for releasing two albums at once: most notably Guns N' Roses with their two Use Your Illusion releases in 1991 and Bruce Springsteen with Human Touch and Lucky Town a year later. The only man ever to match Drake's three at once is Prince, who in September 1993 simultaneously released the compilations The Hits 1 and The Hits 2, alongside a combined premium The Hits/The B-Sides collection. All three also made the Top 10 at once. But they were, as the title suggests, collections of previously released tracks. Drake has trumped everyone with three brand new original albums.
Feathered
Despite brief early promise however, Drake was not able to manage the chart double. His three permitted hits all make the Top 10 for sure, but they are unable to shift Rein Me In from the top - of which more in a moment. His three tracks are all from Iceman, which is, I guess, logical. Janice STFU is the surprise winner and enters at No.2, National Treasures is No.3 while Make Them Cry - the album's opening cut and surely the one everyone plays at least once - is languishing at No.6.
Janice STFU is his biggest chart hit since his co-credit on the J Hus track Who Told You, also a No.2 hit, in 2023. It is his first under his own steam to peak this high since Girls Want Girls became the runner-up in September 2021. So perhaps he was due. Together the trio take his tally of UK Top 10 hits to a nice round 50 - at least as far as the Official Charts database is concerned. Alan Jones in Music Week suggests he has 51 to his name, a total I'd be inclined to agree with. The discrepancy is the Travis Scott hit Sicko Mode, a No.9 hit in the summer of 2018, which featured co-vocals from Drake although the charts failed to fully credit him. Hence it is missing from his roster of "official" hits.
The three aren't the first cuts from the albums to chart though. Teaser cut What Did I Miss (from Iceman) reached No.27 and Central Cee collaboration Which One (from Maid Of Honour) peaked at No.4 - both of them in 2025. Curiously his other hit from last year, Doghouse, did not make the cut for any of the three albums. Although as that only peaked at No.54 he perhaps does have some degree of quality control after all.
Dirty Dozen
Back to the top of the charts though, as Rein Me In spends a triumphant 12th week at No.1, drawing level with the cumulative total notched up by Last Christmas over the past few years. Only seven other tracks in chart history have been No.1 for longer. But the question remains how many more will it manage. Consumption of the hit is down for the second week in a row, meaning two ticks of the ACR clock. It needs a boost to save itself and ensure it spends the first anniversary of its release at the top of the charts. Rule nothing in or out.
Three new Drake tracks at once near the top puts some slight downwards pressure on the rest of the market, so the entry point of some of the other new releases of the week may be a slightly false one. A little over a year ago Gracie Abrams was threatening to become one of the biggest stars around, her hit single That's So True spent 8 weeks at No.1 either side of Christmas 2024 and earned her the soubriquet of Bizarro Taylor Swift on these pages. But save for her co-credit alongside Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez on No.28 hit Call Me When You Break Up she has been largely invisible ever since.
So perhaps the release of her brand new single Hit The Wall could have been a bigger deal. It is breezy enough but suffers from the same problem of being both Bizarro Taylor Swift and Generic American Woman by being utterly unmemorable. Although I personally never took to That's So True and would be hard pressed to whistle it today, so go figure. No.18 it is then, but I'm not holding my breath for Top 10.
Not Skrillex
Fun fact: Watching the Eurovision Song Contest last Saturday night I grabbed my phone and placed a bet on Bulgarian entry Bangaranga the moment its performance had finished, so obvious it was that it was going to do very well indeed. So it proved, the first entry since 2017 to win both public and jury votes and fully justifying the nation's return to the competition after a few years of absence.
The track's performer Dara is well established in her home nation but now charts on these shores for the first time ever - and in all probability is the only solo chart star from her country ever to appear on the UK listings. Bangaranga lands at No.21 but is notably the only track from the contest to make the singles chart this week - even UK entry Look Mum No Computer failed to make the grade - the first time for many years this has occurred. Bangaranga beats the No.53 peak of last year's winner Wasted Love by JJ, but falls short of the No.18 peak scaled by The Code by Nemo from 2024. In the 21st century only two Eurovision winning songs have made the Top 10 - both of them performed by Sweden's Loreen. 2021 victors Maneskin only made No.17 with their Eurovision winning song Zitti E Buoni but had simultaneous Top 10 hits with their other works within a matter of weeks.
A Stick Up
Precious few other tracks make forward progress this week, so we can at least give credit to Stella Lefty's Boston which becomes a Top 30 hit for the first time as it shifts to No.27. As the second big crossover country hit of the year it is mentioned in the same breath as Choosin' Texas just about everywhere, so there's no reason why this column should be any different. Also entertaining though are the constant references to the way it "interpolates" Noah Kahan's Stick Season, hence his writing credit on the track. This is entirely due to the way Boston's chorus melody is indeed identical to said former No.1, in such a way that you can't help but wonder if it was accidental plagiarism rather than an intended tribute.
New Religion by Bebe Rexha is No.47 this week and so misses the Top 40 for the 11th week in row. But at least it does better than last week's big new entry Rock Music. The Charli XCX track drops out of the Top 100 after just a single week. I've known mayflies with a longer appeal.
