Aus Chart Stagnant As Harry Styles & Kate Bush Swap Places (Again)

Harry Styles returns to the #1 singles slot this week with As It Was, its third run at the top in Australia.

As It Was is now logging its eighth overall week at #1 in Australia, while the song remains at the singles summit in Canada for a 16th week, plus Harry's latest album Harry's House also regains the top of the Albums Chart this week, it too scoring an eighth week at #1, and Harry's track also logs its 20th week within the Top 10 (and Top 3), the equal 17th longest.

Harry's long-running #1 first spent a single week at the top on April 11th, before regaining the top spot on May 2nd for a further six weeks, and now eleven weeks later As It Was is again at #1, and of the 34 weeks of the year that have been so far, this is now the 27th week where an English act has held the #1 slot for this year, which is the most since 2017, with a list below showing the previous years and weeks where an English act held the top spot...

19 weeks in 2021

NO weeks in 2020

1 week in 2019

10 weeks in 2018

21 weeks in 2017 (thanks to Ed Sheeran)

Harry's return also becomes the fourth longest gap between #1 returns for this decade, as Mariah Carey's annual end-of-year seasonal song is the leader with 53 weeks, followed by Heat Waves for Glass Animals at 48 weeks, Stay for The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber with 14 weeks and now Harry's As It Was with a gap between previous and current #1 spots being 11 weeks. Harry Styles also moves up the listing for 'Accumulated Weeks at #1: Singles (1940 to 2022)' to now equal 72nd alongside The Bee Gees, George Harrison, John Lennon, Richard Marx, Queen, Helen Reddy and Savage Garden who've all previously racked up nine weeks from two #1s in the past.

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Swapping places with Harry is the song that has kept As It Was in the #2 or #3 spot for the past eleven weeks, Kate Bush and Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God), which drops back down to #2 after nine broken weeks as the #1 song in Australia, after which is a non-moving peak at #3 for Steve Lacy and his Bad Habit track, a second week at that peak and it matches its position in New Zealand this week (after peaking at #2 last week).

The highest new entry for the week comes in at #4, Super Freaky Girl for Nicki Minaj, the first track from a forthcoming fifth studio album (no date or title known as yet), which would be her first album in over four years (Aug 10, 2018 was her last issued album). The song heavily samples the Rick James classic Super Freak (HP-26, peaked late April 1982), which would later be used in MC Hammer's first hit U Can't Touch This (#1 for five weeks from July 22nd, 1990). Australia is (so far) the country which has placed this track the highest, with the song also entering at #5 in New Zealand and its next highest entry spots are in Ireland (#14) and England (#15), plus this new entry for Nicki becomes her twelfth Top 10 in Australia, as she was last within the ten on the 6ix9ine track Fefe (HP-8, August 6th, 2018).

With Harry's track cracking 20 weeks within the Top 10 this week, it's now a quarter of the lead tracks 'Longest Running Top 10 Entry' for the Glass Animals song Heat Waves, as that single holds at #5 for a third week, logging its 80th overall week within the Top 10. Dropping two places to #6 is the OneRepublic single I Ain't Worried, which holds for a second week at #1 in New Zealand (still it's only worldwide #1 slot).

Swapping places are About Damn Time for Lizzo and Doja for Central Cee, with Lizzo rising one spot to #7 and C'Cee's song dips a place to #8, after which are the third and fourth non-movers within the Top 10, as Joji holds at #9 with Glimpse Of Us (same spot in NZ this week) and I Like You (A Happier Song) for Post Malone and Doja Cat at #10, a third week in that position.

UP

Nicky Youre and dazy have so far landed within the Top 10 in their home country of the US (#8) and Canada (#3), while Australia could be its third Top 10 location next week, as their track Sunroof jumps up four places to score a new peak at #11 in its eleventh week within the Top 100 (10th within the T50), while the two other Top 20 tracks which score new chart heights this week are Under the Influence for Chris Brown (newly Gold (●) in sales), and SNAP for Rosa Linn, which both climb a single place each to new peaks of #19 and #20 respectively.

Kid LAROI's Thousand Miles rises back up two spots to #25, followed by another Aussie act in Amy Shark whose teaming with R3HAB on Sway My Way moves up to a new peak of #26 this week. Another overseas/local teaming which moves up this week is the Mac Miller and The Temper Trap song Love Lost, moving up five spots to a new peak of #34. Two of the four Top 50 entries for The Weeknd rise up this week, both of them from the last decade, with his recent new entry for the 2017 song Die for You moving up to a new peak of #38, while his 2016 album-titled track Starboy with Daft Punk jumps back up seven places this week to sit at #50.

After leaping into the Top 50 last week to #49, this week the second Marshmello and Khalid collaboration Numb jumps into the Top 40, rising nine places to land at #40, while further Top 50 returned tracks are Someone You Loved for Lewis Capaldi (53 to #42) and Left And Right for Charlie Puth and Jung Kook (51 to #45). J. Cole's long-running low-charting entry No Role Modelz regains its former #43 peak for a third time, moving back up a couple of places this week, having previously peaked here on July 25th and August 1st, 2022.

The current #1 song in England for the past seven weeks has been the dance track for Scottish production duo LF System (Conor Larkman and Sean Finnigan) called Afraid to Feel, which this week has jumped forty-three spots to land at #49 locally, with this their second ever issued single and first chart entry, which samples the 1979 Silk song I Can't Stop (Turning You On), with the new remix using the original Silk lead singer Debra Henry's vocals.

FURTHER NON-MOVERS

Apart from the four stable tracks within the Top 10 this week, there are a further seven non-moving songs this week too. At a fourth consecutive week of not-moving is Cold Heart (PNAU Remix) for Elton John and Dua Lipa at #14, while for a third straight week Ed Sheeran has not moved from #17 with Bad Habits and Shivers at #18, while a third-three-week-holder is another Dua Lipa track in Levitating at #32. Wait For U for Future and Drake remains at #33, Olivia Rodrigo's Good 4 U is stable at #46 and Ed's third rooted-in-place track is his duet with Camila Cabello at #48 with Bam Bam.

DOWN

After two further weeks within the Top 10 at a peak of #6, the current US #1 single for Beyoncé (2nd week) with Break My Soul (HP-6x2, WI10-4a) drops down seven places to #13, but the song does pick up its first sales certification of Gold (●) in sales this week. The other Top 20 dropping track is Jack Harlow's First Class, which moves down four places to land at #16.

Drake has two songs within the Top 30 this week, as he dips two places to #21 with Jimmy Cooks, which after eight weeks within the Top 20 is now leaving the twenty-region for the first time, while his new entry from last week as a guest on the DJ Khaled track Staying Alive is down eight places this week to #24.

Latto's Big Energy falls five places to #31, with the next major decline being the Imagine Dragons track Enemy, down four places to #41, while Lil Nas X's Industry Baby also has a five place slump to #47, while last week's #31 entry for Benny Blanco with BTS and Snoop Dogg with Bad Decisions has left the Top 50 this week.