Cheers Lauren
Chart Watch this week raises a glass to the very wonderful Lauren Kreisler who this week departed Official Charts after 15 years as their official brand director. Her name may not be familiar to all, but it was her hard work which transformed the business from, in her words, "a logo and a few spreadsheets" to the massive consumer brand it is today. If we kept track of these things I'm sure I'd owe her a thousand favours of my own, so I will miss her enthusiasm very much.
This week we need to talk about expectations and how they are not always fulfilled. The song which was lazily trailed last week as the nailed-on cert to top the charts, simply because of its name value, is not actually top of the charts. And extraordinarily it isn't even No.2 either. And neither is it credited to who we expected. Read on, as this gets interesting.
Interesting
First, we celebrate possibly one of the greatest new No.1 singles of the year. Ending a trajectory which has seen it rise in chart position for eight weeks in a row, Babydoll from Jamie Miller ascends majestically to the summit. Regular readers will know this is one of two songs that these pages have been cheerleading for weeks, and to see the public take so wholeheartedly to its joyous, fresh, uplifting sound is quite glorious to witness.
The 29-year-old Welshman first came to public attention in 2017 when he finished in third place on The Voice UK. His success today owes precious little to that ten-year-old reality appearance, but he can at least take his place among the show's most successful alumni. The only other performer "discovered" by the show to reach No.1 is Becky Hill who topped the chart as the singer on Oliver Helden's Gecko (Overdrive) back in 2014.
In what turns out to be a quite a topical theme, Babydoll is available in two different versions - both its original solo recording and a latterly-released duet version featuring Off Campus actor Antonio Cipriano. There's a fascinating split between the two versions - the solo track is the one that has blown up fully on Spotify and the only one in the Daily Top 50 at the time of writing. On YouTube however it is the duet version that is leading the streams - primarily because the duet performance by the two is the only thing the song has to an official video. And that fascinatingly remains unique to YouTube for the moment, you cannot watch it on Spotify.
So the credit remains Miller's alone. In the process he ends a decade and a half-long drought for Welsh acts at the top of the charts, the first of his countrymen (or women) to reach No.1 since Sian Evans was the featured singer on Louder by DJ Fresh in 2011. He's the first solo Welsh star to top the charts since Duffy in 2006 and the first solo male since fellow TV talent show discovery Chico Slimani (It's Chico Time, 2006) who, despite his Italian name, did indeed hail from the principality.
Jamie Miller is I guess simultaneously prince of Wales and the king of the charts. Which version of the song is better? I leave both here for your delectation. (Clue: it's the duet).
Wifely
New entries as high as No.2 have been a rarity of late, so let's appreciate one now we have one. Having threatened all week to make a somewhat impressive debut, Tate McRae took all by surprise when she enjoyed a late surge and lands smartly in second place. Her brand new single Housewife takes over as her highest charting hit to date, besting her prior trifecta of No.3 hits You Broke Me First (2020), Greedy (2023) and Sports Car (2025). I remain personally unmoved by much of the work of the Canadian singer, this single like so many of her others fails to elevate beyond the level of Temu Ariana Grande, but neither is it my place to argue with an instant No.2 single. Her celebrity origins as a contestant on the American series So You Think You Can Dance in 2016 means she has something in common with Jamie Miller - coming to prominence on a TV talent show that ultimately had no connection with their subsequent chart success.
Olivia Does Remixes Now
And so what then of the song that notably isn't No.1? It is indeed Expectations as performed in the first instance by Olivia Rodrigo. The 12th track (of 13) on her You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love album, it arrives at the point where most listeners have long lost interest and so in many ways serves as a pleasant dose of energy, performed as it is in early-80s synth-pop style. An ersatz Thompson Twins meets Talking Heads track if such a thing was ever required to exist.
But the single version takes it a step further, adding in newly-minted vocals from Chappell Roan and now with a video all of its own. Roan's contribution fulfils the same role that Billie Eilish did on Charli XCX's Guess - crashing the party and turning the song gloriously and spectacularly queer. The video casts the two women on opposing sides of numerous TV gameshows, and in a blatant nod to its inspiration features none other than David Byrne (he of Talking Heads fame) as the host.
It is in short a quite brilliantly realised package, and being spoken of as this generation's Telephone (the Lady Gaga track which added in Beyonce in a collision of two icons of their own era). Tailor-made you might say to rocket to No.1. And so the fact that it doesn't and only ends up in third place (after what is, admittedly a very tight race) is the surprise of the autumn so far. Just how tight was that race? Babydoll posted 47,458 chart sales, Housewife 46,992 and Expectations 45,822. It could all have turned out very different.
But now for the other thing we didn't quite expect. Expectations was already charting before the Chappell Roan remix, and indeed placed at No.35 last week as an album cut credited to Rodrigo alone. As noted last week and per most recent precedent, that should have disqualified the song from being eligible for a credit change - and yet you will see the charts do indeed list the song as being performed by both women. There are conflicting stories as to why this is, the most plausible of which seems to be that the solo credit last week was, shall we say, unintentional. The duet version did actually land online on Thursday of last week (October 15th) and a request for a credit change was made at the same time. If that had been processed in time then Chappell Roan would have been entitled to receive her credit last week - the week the song made its Top 40 debut. So this is a free pass if you like. Or alternatively something that stops the UK charts looking a bit out of step, given that Expectations is going to chart worldwide as a hit for both women together.
Finally, before we leave this topic, let us note that in the whole of chart history just two songs with the word "Expectation" or "Expectations" have been hit singles. And both of them are in the Top 5 this week. Mind you, only two songs in chart history have been called "Babydoll" and both have reached their own chart peaks this year.
Zach Attack
We've bemoaned so many times the way new singles struggle to make a chart impact and require patience and understanding to get where they end up. So this week we should celebrate the uncharacteristically large number of new arrivals. Indeed there are not one but two brand new entries in the Top 10 alone. The second of these sits at No.7, Lies the work of Zach Bryan and Lana Del Rey. It is the biggest of three new entries for the former, all spawned by Bryan's new album Young Manhood And Other Donatable Organs which may only have arrived at No.11 on the long players' chart but enjoyed enough streams to emit three chart hits. The others: Lodi When at No.33, and Robot Killed The Working Man at No.46. Lies is Zach Bryan's first foray into the Top 10, before today his chart best was the No.14 peak of I Remember Everything in 2023 - coincidentally also a duet with Kacey Musgraves on guest vocals. 2023 was also the last time Lana Del Rey had a Top 10 hit single, Say Yes To Heaven reaching No.9 that year. Lies is her biggest hit since she joined Taylor Swift on Snow On The Beach, a No.4 hit in 2022.
Speaking of Taylor, after a three week run at the top of the charts Patient Zero plunges 1-10. The fact that she's now run out of physical singles to ship is surely a coincidence.
Da Chart-Toppers
The No.1 album of the week goes to Fontaines DC, the five Irishmen celebrating their second chart-topping record and third Top 3 placing in a row. Dopamine Chamber moved an impressive 70,000 units last week to land one of the bigger first week sales of the year. But the way they are broken down is absorbing, because they uniquely are a rock band able to command just as many streams as they do direct sales.
So here is how it works. They sold 14,000 CDs, 37,000 vinyl albums, a few cassettes and digital downloads, but were also credited with 15,094 sales-equivalent streams. And that alone is quite damn impressive. The knock-on effect of that is to ensure they pepper the upper reaches of the singles chart with several of its cuts.
The biggest of these is the already-charting Marianne, a track which has already established itself as one of their most successful to date. Released back in August when it was a No.19 hit, the track hasn't left the charts since. Having drifted to No.41 last week it now surges back to a new peak of No.12 to further consolidate itself as their highest-charting track ever. But having until now only enjoyed one Top 20 hit they now boast two more - Japan is new at No.14 and Demolition follows hard on its heels at No.18.
More Emeralds
The Irish end of things is kept up further by the arrival at No.25 of Think Of You by Kettama, the performing alias of 29 year old Evan Campbell. He made his chart debut last month with Comes And Goes which limped its way to a No.54 peak a few weeks ago (and which is No.72 this week) but now reaches the Top 40 for the first time with this new track. Co-credited are the currently startlingly prolific Prospa who now have two concurrent hits to their name, languishing also this week at No.30 with Good Girl. The singer on Think Of You is Rohan Pinnock-Hamilton, a multi-faceted entertainer whose career has seen him span child actor, musical theatre performer and dancer. This is his second collaboration on a Prospa track, his being the voice on their hitherto uncharted track Dreams.
We live in a world where even computer games come with their own promotional soundtracks. Taken from the bytes of the eagerly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI comes Flower In A Hurricane which begins with a Dire Straits-aping guitar riff and proceeds in a direction you just did not anticipate. The track is the work of French production duo Justice who have composed the original soundtrack of the game in its entirety. This is only their second Top 40 single, arriving a mere 20 years after their first - We Are Your Friends which peaked at No.20. The duelling male-female vocals on the track come courtesy of Tame Impala and SZA, and although this seems to only be a one week wonder of a hit it is well worth the three minutes it takes to enjoy.
Dammit Mike
The final new Top 40 arrival of the week is notification of a now regular part of the chart cycle, Michael Jackson's Thriller arrives for its second chart run of the year in anticipation of a number of other ghostly-themed tracks all populating Halloween playlists. But don't listen to that, go listen to Ashe's Girl Of Your Dreams album which debuted this week at a mere No.85 on the albums chart. Perhaps that's entirely down to my own streams of it, who knows.
