The Week in Number Ones: Dave, Glass Animals, and Chico sit atop the charts
Welcome back to The Week in Number Ones, where all the biggest movers from the US and UK charts get condensed into one article. Last week, Glass Animals rose to the top of America’s pop mountain by finally landing ‘Heat Waves’ at the top of the chart. Meanwhile, Luude was able to notch a top ten hit from a ridiculous reworking of Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’ while Kate Bush became the first woman to score a number one hit in the UK with a self-written song, the lush and dramatic ‘Wuthering Heights’.
In a two-artist for the top UK album, Welsh alt-rockers Stereophonics have come out on top with their latest LP, Oochya!, managing to outsell fellow throwback artists Marillion and their 20th studio album An Hour Before It’s Dark. This gives Stereophonics their eighth number one album in the UK, putting them in a rare category shared by the likes of Led Zeppelin, R.E.M., and Oasis. It’s still a mighty ways away from the 15 number one albums that The Beatles scored a yet-to-be unbroken record with, but it’s incredibly impressive nonetheless.
A little further down, The Coral’s 2002 debut LP has made a return appearance on the UK album charts. The original album peaked at number five when it was first released in the summer of 2002, made some scattered appearances throughout the rest of the year and into 2003, and then slowly fell off the chart. A strong, if not incredibly notable, debut for an indie band at the turn of the new millennium.
But now, feeling the wave of nostalgia that a 20 year birthday comes with, The Coral has landed back in the top ten for the first time in more than 18 years. The band have been playing the album in its entirety on their most recent tour, and evidently, enough people are rediscovering the charmingly jaunty debut for it to land back on the charts.
Over in the US, the album chart is one of the only places that Encanto is still sitting at number one. It’s been a strong run for the Disney film and its cross-cultural blitzkrieg, but the tides are starting to turn. There’s a new Disney film out (Pixar’s Turning Red), and Encanto-mania seems to have finally hit its inevitable expiration date. Turning Red isn’t a musical, but it does have three new songs written by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell, so perhaps there’s some room for more Disney chart domination in the near future.
This week, Dave rises to the top with his second number one in ‘Starlight’. Meanwhile, Glass Animals continue to dominate the American singles charts with the now-unstoppable run of ‘Heat Waves’. We also take a look at the bizarre phenomenon of Chico and wonder when it ever stopped being Chico Time as we round up all the best chart news of the modern-day and of the recent past.
Current UK Number One: ‘Starlight’ – Dave
After seven weeks at number one, ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ has finally fallen from the top spot. Even more surprisingly, the Encanto track has tumbled all the way back down to number nine, nearly dropping out of the top ten altogether. Just like Woody’s nightmare in Toy Story 2, it appears as though people just don’t want to play with Encanto anymore.
In its place comes British rapper Dave, who is making some of the most insightful and impactful hip hop of the current day. 2019 was the year that David Orobosa Omoregie truly showed that he was here to stay, dropping the number one Mercury Prize-winning LP Psychodrama. But Dave had already notched chart success before the critical acclaim came rolling in, having landed a number one single back in 2018 with the Fredo collaboration ‘Funky Friday’.
Now, Dave has notched the second number one single of his career with ‘Starlight’. His first solo chart-topper, ‘Starlight’ finds the rapper in a contemplative mood, having found love and wishing to settle down. Paired with a jazzy backing track and a hard-driving beat, ‘Starlight’ isn’t actually all that much of a composition – the line between the chorus and the verses is thin, and there’s no real hook or melody to bring people back.
Instead, the entire song rests on the charisma of Dave. That’s perfectly fine, since the rapper has a truly magnetic presence that can elevate even some of his least insightful works. ‘Starlight’ isn’t much of a game-changer, but it’s the perfect vehicle for Dave to solidify his unmatched rule of the rap game. He makes it all sound easy, like he’s barely breaking a sweat doing it.
UK Singles Top Ten (Week of March 16th, 2022):
- ‘Starlight’ – Dave
- ‘Peru’ – Fireboy DML & Ed Sheeran
- ‘Where Are You Now’ – Lost Frequencies/Calum Scott
- ‘Make Me Feel Good’ – Belters Only ft. Jazzy
- ‘Down Under’ – Luude ft. Colin Hay
- ‘Seventeen Going Under’ – Sam Fender
- ‘House on Fire’ – Mimi Webb
- ‘Overseas’ – D-Block Europe ft. Central Cee
- ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ – Disney’s Encanto Cast
- ‘Where Did You Go’ – Jax Jones ft. MNEK
Current US Number One: ‘Heat Waves’ – Glass Animals
Here’s a fact I didn’t know until just now: ‘Heat Waves’ is one of the first songs written by a single songwriter to top the Billboard Hot 100 for nearly half a decade. Any guesses on what the last pre-2022 song was? If you went with ‘Perfect’ by Ed Sheeran, then you would be correct! ‘Perfect’ came out in the fall of 2017 and was both the final number one single of 2017 and the first number one single of 2018. When it was replaced by Camilla Cabello’s ‘Havana’ in late January, a long drought of solo-written number ones began.
One-songwriter number ones used to be everywhere. Especially during the singer-songwriter boom of the 1970s, number one songs written by a single person could be found on charts every year. Classics like Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Dreams’, Prince’s ‘Kiss’, and Dolly Parton’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ aren’t just some of the greatest songs ever written, but they were written by a one person, in one writing session, using one brain.
In the 21st century, only 14 songs written by one songwriter have reached number one. Some of those are stone-cold classics as well: ‘Hey Ya!’ by OutKast, ‘We Found Love’ by Rihanna and Calvin Harris, ‘Crank That (Soulja Boy)’ by Soulja Boy (no shame, that song is awesome). But there are also awful butt rock duds like ‘Bent’ by Matchbox 20 (bad song, surprisingly solid band), ‘Everything You Want’ by Vertical Horizon, and ‘How You Remind Me’ by Nickelback.
This could all be twisted into some strange narrative promoting the simplicity of indie pop or the necessity of solo songwriters over unwieldy corporate groupthink pieces like Encanto… except for the fact that ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ was also written by a single songwriter, Lin-Manuel Miranda. As it happens, the other two number ones of 2022, ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ and ‘Easy On Me’, each have only two songwriters credited: Walter Afanasieff and Mariah Carey for the former, and Adele Atkins and Greg Kurstin for the latter. So before you go all Damon Albarn on the number one songs, be sure to check the songwriting credits to see how many (or how few) songwriters there actually are.
US Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten Singles (Week of March 1th, 2022):
- ‘Heat Waves’ – Glass Animals
- ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno’ – Disney’s Encanto Cast
- ‘Super Gremlin’ – Kodak Black
- ‘ABCDEFU’ – Gayle
- ‘Stay’ – The Kid Laroi & Justin Bieber
- ‘Easy On Me’ – Adele
- ‘Ghost’ – Justin Bieber
- ‘Bad Habits’ – Ed Sheeran
- ‘Shivers’ – Ed Sheeran
- ‘That’s What I Want’ – Lil Nas X
This Week in Number Ones: ‘It’s Chico Time’ – Chico (#1 on the UK Singles Chart, March 17th, 2006)
I’ve always wondered how so many people got roped into appearing on the Identity Parade during Never Mind the Buzzcocks. For a brief segment on the legendary panel show, a bygone star would have to swallow their pride and stomach some cheap jokes at the expense of their now-anonymity. Surely it must have come with a paycheck, but part of having a number one hit is believing that you’ll never have to sacrifice your ego ever again.
By the time Chico Slimani appeared as one of five different variants of himself in the Identity Parade, he was less than two years removed from landing at number one with his goofy self-referential hit ‘It’s Chico Time’. It’s basically the equivalent of Lewis Capaldi going on the revival of the series back in 2021. Time is always a fleeting concept, but Chico Time seemed to race by like it was being measured in dog years.
The problem starts, as it usually does, with The X Factor. I am fascinated by the direct connection between success on the British singing programme and long-lasting chart success. Keep in mind, The X Factor failed when it was brought to America. Its closest stylistic equivalent, American Idol, only had five artists notch six number one hits in its now-20 year history. By comparison, The X Factor literally has seven times the number of number ones with 42.
Very few of those hits have had any real staying power. Leona Lewis’ ‘Bleeding Love’ has aged quite well, but the rest are predominantly stilted covers and uninspired originals that are tepid and saccharine at best and downright insulting at worst. Was anyone really clamouring for Joe McElderry’s horrendous cover of Miley Cyrus’ ‘The Climb’ back in 2010, or was the winner of The X Factor just given a number one by default?
That’s why Chico remains such a fascinating case study. Riding high on charisma and confidence, the flamboyant singer managed to get voted through the initial wave of auditions of the programme’s second series, despite a walkout from Simon Cowell. What Chico lacked in vocal chops he more than made up for in performance: leaning into a Latin Lover persona (despite being ethnically a Moroccan Muslim), Chico charmed his way into the final five of the series before his novelty began to wear off.
Before he left, Chico made history by performing the first original song on The X Factor. By week six, Chico had refined his style, largely throwing away any desire to be a straightforward singer and leaning into the camp ridiculousness of his personality. A catchphrase soon followed, which was turned into a song, which eventually turned into a number one hit in March of 2006.
‘It’s Chico Time’ is not a good song. It’s barely even a song: a three-minute funk-pop track that blatantly lives and dies on its central character, ‘It’s Chico Time’ is a theme song for a real-life cartoon character. The message of the song is as simple as the man himself, with Chico emploring the audience that “You can get delirious / if you take life too serious”. Questionable grammar aside, ‘It’s Chico Time’ lies in the death zone of being too bad for anyone to actually like but too undeniably catchy to ignore. At the time, it was easy to be won over by someone who was as gonzo and unpolished as Chico, someone who wasn’t letting a lack of singing talent stop him from becoming a singer. Cowell himself said it best: Chico was a “born entertainer.”
Except that he wasn’t. His follow up single, a cover of Ottawan’s ‘D.I.S.C.O.’, peaked at number 24 before Chico’s inane lunacy became too much for the general public to handle. Scattered reality television appearances followed, but in 2010, Chico made another grasp for the mainstream. After having a “vision” that England would win the 2010 World Cup and fans would be singing ‘It’s Chico Time’ throughout the streets, Chico re-recorded his biggest (and only) hit as ‘It’s England Time’ in anticipation of a major victory. Instead, England lost 4-1 to Germany in the round of 16 and ‘It’s England Time’ failed to chart.
In retrospect, Chico acts as a barometer for just how massive The X Factor was as a pop culture and pop music phenomenon. I’ll add in another allusion for the American Idol crowd: imagine if Sanjaya recorded a song about how awesome his hair was, and that single rose to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 after he got the boot from Season Six in 2007. Today, Chico is probably busy at an anti-mask rally somewhere, but the rest of us can reminisce about the wonders and horrors of having lived through one of the original pandemics, ‘It’s Chico Time’.
UK Singles Chart Top Ten (Week of March 17th, 2006):
- ‘It’s Chico Time’ – Chico
- ‘No Tomorrow’ – Orson
- ‘Beep’ – Pussycat Dolls ft. will.i.am
- ‘Red Dress’ – Sugababes
- ‘Put Your Records On’ – Corrine Bailey Rae
- ‘Touch the Sky’ – Kanye West ft. Lupe Fiasco
- ‘Sorry’ – Madonna
- ‘Thunder in My Heart Again’ – Meck ft. Leo Sayer
- ‘Sewn’ – Feeling
- ‘Nasty’ – Notorious B.I.G./Diddy/Nelly
