Seventy-Three Years, Broken! Oh yeah, and 5 Songs That Don’t Suck!
A chart record that stood since 1953 just fell, and the way it fell says more about how we listen to music now than the record itself ever did.
Frankie Laine’s “I Believe” spent eighteen non-consecutive weeks at Number 1 on the UK singles chart back in 1953, a record that survived Bryan Adams, survived Wet Wet Wet, survived seventy years of pop music trying to knock it down. This year, Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s “Rein Me In” finally did it, logging nineteen separate weeks at the top after nearly eight months just to first reach the summit.
Here’s what makes it interesting instead of just trivia: Laine’s record was a monoculture flex, one song on one chart with basically no competition to speak of. “Rein Me In” got knocked off by Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande, and Taylor Swift, and clawed its way back to the top four separate times over a year and a half. That’s not dominance, that’s people actively choosing to return to a song in an environment built to scatter your attention in a hundred directions at once.
It’s optimistic because it proves persistence and merit can still win out over one algorithmically engineered opening weekend. It’s depressing because it took eight months of grinding through noise just to get a foothold Laine got by being good and being on the radio. Somewhere in that four-times-back-to-the-top stubbornness, a little bit of the old Casey Kasem patience survived, and that’s worth paying attention to.
The Songs
The Bites bring “Whenever You’re Ready,” the third single off their upcoming album, and it’s got everything that makes this band a go-to: a pre-chorus and chorus built for singing along live, a bridge that drops hard back into that chorus, and the kind of easy good time this band always delivers.
Cigarettes @ Sunset serve up a genuine anomaly with “Gasoline,” a southern-drawled, fiddle-soaked track that reads country on paper but hits with full grunge energy in the guitars and drums. It shouldn’t work as well as it does.
Tough Cookie follows up “Sandcastles” with “Mercy!,” a track with more teeth this time around, still rooted in an acoustic foundation but backed by big drums and backing vocals that fill out the sonic space in a genuinely interesting way.
Grace Bowers steps out from Grace Bowers and the Hodge Podge with “Eat Shit and Live,” bringing full Joan Jett attitude, killer riffs, and solos that make it clear she’s steering her own career now, and it’s a great direction.
The Streetlights close things out with “Coming Good,” a raw, primal slice of Manchester rock that splits the difference between a heavier Travis and a more subtle Oasis. It’s the kind of band built for a seedy dive bar, and proof rock is still very much alive if you know where to dig.
