Blood From A Stone
We are all friends here, so I'm going to be honest with you. There have been times over the past month or so where I've looked at the new chart on a Friday afternoon and thought to myself: "this won't take very long to write about", only to discover midway through the creative process that there are actually plenty of stories to tell.
This is one of those very weeks. So I'm taking on this journey of discovery with due warning as we learn just how long it will take to recount precisely three matters of interest.
The first of these is what we must increasingly regard as the final semblance of normality in 2026. Babydoll by Jamie Miller remains comfortably No.1 for a third week in a row. Said comfort is derived entirely from its utter dominance over the market. For the second week in a row it posts a chart sale of just shy of 70,000 units, the only record this year to reach that kind of level for more than a solitary week. Indeed, the last single to achieve this was The Fate Of Ophelia by Taylor Swift which posted sales of 132,000 and 90,000 just over a year ago. Babydoll's chart sale is 80% more than its nearest rival, the similarly static Housewife by Tate McRae which has but 38,000 units to its name.
To continue the debate over which version of the song is the "proper" one, you'll note that its performance on Strictly the week before last (the closest TV now comes to a pop showcase) saw both Miller and Cipriano singing the song. So it is duet to the fore, even if Spotify still begs to differ.
It is now hard to see the Welshman's song being anything other than the final non-festive No.1 single of the year. A matter which we will come to in due course.
You'll All Be Doing It Tomorrow
But first there is the swarm of songs that are now an established part of the cadence of the year. Horror-themed favourites (and surfaced unknowns) that now form their own mini-canon and which return to prominence for the final week of October year in year out. And just like Christmas tracks they are inevitably the same ones in the same order every time. Albeit with one newer arrival that on initial evidence may have forced its way to perennial status.
Leading the pack is - inevitably - Thriller from Michael Jackson, but I suspect few expected it to land as high as it has. Having scaled a brand new all-time peak in 2025, the vintage single now reaches yet another as it surges to No.5. This is Thriller's 45th week as a Top 75 single, meaning it further consolidates second place on the "most weeks on chart before reaching peak position" table that was first noted here earlier this summer. The only song to spend more time on the Top 75 before reaching its peak is Heatwaves by Glass Animals which took a total of 46 weeks to get there. And to note once more that if you take Top 100 weeks into account Thriller is already the all-time champion, now reaching a new peak after 65 weeks around.
The table also excludes Christmas tracks (and as a now annual-returnee Thriller arguably should have that same kind of filter applied). I hereby restate my pledge to compile the list of slowest-peaking festive songs for the last chart of the year. Which will at least give me something to write about on New Year's Day.
Back to Halloween songs though, and taking second place this year is Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jnr, its No.12 position this week once more its highest chart placing since it peaked at No.2 first time around in 1984. Next in line is Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell (which famously also features an uncredited Michael Jackson on backing vocals). That's at No.14, a new high for it in the digital era after it first made No.6 in 1984.
Songs With BITE
A new addition to the canon is clearly Dracula from Tame Impala, which was barely a thing a year ago when it staggered to No.21 on first release. The arrival of the JENNIE remix earlier this year propelled it to No.2 and it has not dropped off the chart since. It had plunged to a low of No.80 a fortnight ago before rising to No.68, qualifying for an ACR reset and thus a charge back to No.15. We await its return in 2027.
Monster Mash by Bobby 'Boris' Pickett is No.19, another digital era high, the song's all-time peak coming in 1973 when it belatedly made No.3 after failing to chart when first issued in 1962. Notably not reaching a new modern day peak is Danny Elfman's This Is Halloween, the soundtrack single becoming part of the canon in 2023 when it made No.14. This year it is No.22 in its best showing since. Andrew Gold's Spooky Scary Skeletons (dating from 1996) first charted in 2022, reached the Top 40 for the first time ever last year and now lands at a brand new peak of No.23.
Two other more contemporary songs see chart revivals as they found their way onto spooky playlists, although the relevance of Rihanna's Disturbia (No.39) and even Ariana Grande's Petal (No.43) is surely tenuous to say the least. I repeat my own annual cry that the best Halloween-themed pop record of the century remains unloved and ignored. Things That Go Bump In The Night by AllStars is a no-brainer for a party surely. But we never see it back on the chart in October. Consider this plea a Halloween tradition.
Oh Shit
So Jamie Miller is story 1. Halloween songs is story 2. The third?
It isn't yet Christmas. You know it, I know it, the shops are trying to nudge the argument, and you can if you really want stock up on tinsel at B&Q already. And there is nothing festive about fireworks after all.
But walking amongst us, blending into our day to day lives without anyone noticing, are people so clearly deranged that they are succumbing to urges to stream Christmas songs already. Chart Watch readers I present to you Last Christmas by Wham! sitting at No.54 (at the start of what we can only presume to be its annual pilgrimage to the top of the charts), followed by All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey at No.82. This is officially the earliest in the year both have ever charted, meaning it is now time to once more break out the Chart Watch Yule Log, the annual week by week tally of just how many Christmas songs dominate the singles chart.
And so the last vestiges of singles chart normality are slipping through our fingers. Don’t despair, we are all in this together. We'll get through this, no matter what it takes.
