Voices. Unchanged.
An unchanged Top 3 on the Official UK Singles chart is the herald of what is, let's not kid ourselves here, a week devoid of much in the way of sensation. But that does mean there is little to distract from what is another superlative week for Kpop Demon Hunters, a topic we've left alone for a little while but which still continues to motor on in the background. Golden by Huntr/X remains comfortably No.1, ahead of the chasing pack by the usual considerable distance. For those who have now lost count (because I'm starting to), this is week No.5 in succession and week No.6 in total - the single now in touching distance of the eight weeks Sugar Sugar by The Archies spent at No.1 in 1969 as the most successful cartoon-performed hit of all time.
If you want a chink of light at the end of the tunnel, this is the first week that chart sales of the track have dipped (to tad over 68,000 this time around) meaning for the first time Golden has suffered a tick of the ACR clock. But all it takes is a small increase to reset that again.
Livvy 2s
Sympathies once again are due to Olivia Dean. Man I Need is once again No.2 (for the third week in a row) and with what is by any measure a colossal sale of its own. The 61,000 it posted would have been more than enough to guarantee the No.1 position on fully 2/3 of the charts published since the start of 2025. And Christmas week aside (where the usual rules go out the window), hers is the highest sale for an unsuccessful No.2 single since July last year when Sabrina Carpenter was sweeping all before her. So truly, even if Man I Need never actually manages to top the charts, it will almost certainly go down as one of the bigger hits of the year.
Speaking of Sabrina Carpenter, she enjoys three simultaneous Top 10 hits for the second week in a row as the Man's Best Friend album enjoys an unusual second straight week at No.1. Tears holds firm at No.3, Manchild slips to No.6, but the third is a new entry as all the tracks from the album play chart hokey-cokey with each other. Last week's No.7 hit My Man On Willpower is nowhere to be seen, as When Did You Get Hot takes over as her third largest track of the moment and so winks into life at No.9. These things happen.
Also brand new to the Top 10 after a couple of weeks waiting in the wings, 12 To 12 by Sombr which manages a two-place leap to No.10 to hand the bewilderingly good New Yorker a third such hit of the year so far, hard on the heels of Back To Friends (No.7) and Undressed (No.4).
I Know I'm Drunk
She may never again quite hit the heights of automatic success that befitted her status of 15 years ago, but somehow people always manage to make a big deal out of new Lady Gaga releases. Her brand new single The Dead Dance is the biggest new release of the week as it rallies after a midweek slump to debut comfortably at No.13. But you know what, it really should be bigger. I approach her music with caution as every utterance she makes on record is hailed by the Little Monsters online as the greatest thing ever - but in this case they may actually have a point. Another double down on the electropop/disco fusion that has served her so well in the past, The Dead Dance is another suitably epic pop masterpiece with a killer chorus, a blistering attitude and of course an eye-popping video that has had a great deal of money spent on it. It is part of a new special edition of her last album Mayhem and features on the soundtrack of the second season of the Netflix horror series Wednesday. Hence the theme of the Tim Burton-directed video.
It is the kind of package you would like to think amounts to a smash hit, which is why it is not unreasonable to furrow a brow or two at this entry point. Gaga hits have no consistency, either long running smashes or one week wonders. Will this track be the former like Die With A Smile (10 weeks in the Top 10) or Abracadabra (8 weeks in the Top 10) or will it be one of the latter like Disease (No.7 and sinking like a stone after) or Garden Of Eden (No.23 and forgotten about a fortnight later). Keep the faith - but she hasn't had two Top 10 hits in the same calendar year since 2020.
The real fun thing about this week's chart is the way it barely resembles any of the early sales updates. Spotify suffered data transmission issues early in the week, meaning that both the Radio One "first look" chart on Sunday and the Monday midweek update revealed by Music Week were missing any streaming data from the largest of all the DSPs. It wasn't until the (unpublished) Tuesday flashes and the Music Week-revealed Wednesday update that anything approaching a true picture began to be revealed. But it was fun watching everyone try to second-guess everything.
Just-Don't
Possibly not having anticipated the lukewarm reaction to his er, different Swag album, Justin Bieber last week made a surprise drop of a "Part 2" of the set. Rather than a separate new album however Swag II was just a new set of tracks added to the original as an expanded edition. It has sent the Swag album overall soaring back up the charts (to No.10 albeit with a miserable 6,000 sales as that is all it takes) but has had very little impact on his singles prospects overall. Indeed it is older tracks Daisies (No.11) and Yukon (No.17) which edge back up very slightly, the only Swag II cut to make the charts at all is No.51 new entry Speed Demon.
Scotsman
Calvin Harris is a bit like Lady Gaga, an act whose halcyon days were a full decade ago but who is still capable of pulling something spectacular out of the back every now and again. But that does mean you just never know what a new hit of hit is going to do. His first offering of 2025 was Smoke The Pain away which bombed out at No.45, but that was then followed by Top 3 smash Blessings which duly became his highest charting hit for three years. So who can say what will happen next? Anyway, this is my way of telling you that the veteran Scots producer is back once again with the last of this week's new entries, Ocean debuting at the worryingly miserable No.34. It is, if the Official Charts database is to be trusted, his 46th Top 40 hit since his 2007 debut. But it is also the third credited chart hit for Canadian singer Jessie Reyez, a longtime Harris collaborator (she wrote 2018 monster One Kiss) who was last seen as the co-credited performer alongside Harris on the Sam Smith track I'm Not Here To Make Friends which peaked at No.23 in February 2023. That hit deserved far better than that - as does this one in truth. So keep the faith.
