Stormzy and Chase & Status to the rescue!
After 32 weeks without an all-British UK No.1 single, the pairing of the rap star and drum & bass duo has delivered a chart-topping single on debut with Backbone (58,554 sales – Official Charts Company). It’s also the first No.1 for 0207 Def Jam (in partnership with EMI).
Of course, the British chart drought ended the previous week with the No.1 on debut of Guess, Charli XCX’s collaboration with US star Billie Eilish, which was the first chart-topper of the 2024 charts for a British act. The No.1 success of the single – down to No.4 this week – was credited to the version featuring Eilish.
It follows the huge streaming impact of Charli XCX’s Brat album, which is already certified gold with consumption of 112,333.
In the brand new edition of Music Week, we analyse the chart challenge for domestic talent with insights from industry figures across the BPI, AIM, YouTube and artist management.
Despite a couple of No.1s switching the narrative in the past few days, at the top of the charts the picture has been bleak for UK talent in 2024 with only Stormzy and Chase & Status, Charli XCX, Myles Smith, Central Cee, Dua Lipa, Artemas and Casso (alongside Raye & D-Block Europe) cracking the Top 5 with a current release. New singles by UK artists have claimed just 15 out of 165 Top 5 positions during those 33 chart weeks, although that goes up to 21 if including 2001 single Murder On The Dancefloor by Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
The No.1 for Stormzy and Chase & Status is the first all-British No.1 since Wham!’s 1984 single Last Christmas, which claimed the honour at the end of 2023. Before that, it was The Beatles’ Now And Then – an old recording that was released thanks to new technology – in November. So, arguably, the last genuinely new, wholly UK single at No.1 was Strangers by Kenya Grace in October 2023.
Last Christmas was replaced by Noah Kahan’s Stick Season in the first chart week of 2024 and the US singer-songwriter went on to hold the No.1 title for seven consecutive weeks in total.
There were also No.1 singles this year by Beyoncé (Texas Hold Em – five weeks), Benson Boone (Beautiful Things – two weeks), Irish singer-writer Hozier (although signed to Island in the UK) (Too Sweet – two weeks), Taylor Swift (Fortnight feat. Post Malone – one week) and Eminem (Houdini – two weeks).
With 12 combined weeks at the summit for her singles Espresso (1,117,331 sales to date – Official Charts Company) and Please Please Please (584,792 sales to date), Sabrina Carpenter has been the main reason for the No.1 drought for UK talent.
As reported in Alan Jones’ charts analysis, Charli XCX’s result with Guess brought to an end the run of No.1s by wholly overseas acts to eight (including two by Carpenter). That equalled the record set in 1958, and subsequently matched in 1999, 2005 and 2013. However, the 1958 run kept UK acts for 38 weeks, so 2024 has not been quite so tough for British talent.
But UK acts are facing a sustained chart squeeze from American stars amid intensifying streaming competition. New singles that have just dropped include Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars, California Sober by Post Malone feat. Chris Stapleton and Pretty Slowly by Benson Boone.
Looking ahead, the new Sabrina Carpenter album Short n’ Sweet drops on August 23, which could mean another spell at No.1 in the singles chart.
In our magazine piece on the chart challenge for UK talent, we look at the cyclical issue with key British acts not currently in contention as they are not releasing music.
There have been past fluctuations in UK artists’ performance with homegrown talent responsible for all of the year-end Top 10 singles in 2022. Looking back further, in 2016 UK talent was held off No.1 for 33 weeks.
Furthermore, high chart rankings and consistent consumption are not the same thing.
Streaming longevity has, for instance, helped Jungle’s Back On 74 to become a BRIT certified gold single (449,102 sales) by the BPI despite only peaking at No.19. Similarly, Fred Again’s Delilah (Pull Me Out Of This) has been certified gold (454,014 sales), even though it has never got higher than No.35.
As we reported on the streaming impact of Arctic Monkeys last week, artists can amass huge amounts of consumption without troubling the singles chart. The band’s biggest single globally on Spotify is I Wanna Be Yours with 2.35 billion streams – yet it peaked at No.99 in the UK (where it is certified double platinum) almost a decade after release.
However, there may be some concern that the rise of domestic repertoire via streaming– so-called ‘glocalisation’ – in other international markets is not being replicated in the UK. Notwithstanding Stormzy’s No.1 with Backbone (a drum & bass collaboration with Chase & Status) and the success of Central Cee, it’s been notable that UK rap has tailed off in terms of its recent chart impact.
In terms of artist albums, we report in the latest issue how consumption growth of releases by UK-signed domestic talent lags behind overall market growth.
In the albums market, there has been more success for British acts in terms of No.1 results. However, there was no current album by a British artist in the overall Top 20 for the half-year – Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism was the highest at No.26.
Increasingly, the focus is on the wider opportunity globally from streaming. Encouragingly, UK artists including Dua Lipa, Central Cee, Charli XCX Artemas and Myles Smith have made an international impact this year.
See the new edition of Music Week to read more on the proposed solutions to support UK talent amid the squeeze from global talent.
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