A few years ago I started a series of posts after concluding modern chart music was about quantity over quality. 99% of chart music I've recent times is rubbish and at the same time the number of Top 40 hits some individual artists have been having each year is at levels never seen before.
This series of posts became the Top 40 Leaderboard with the winner being the chart act with the most Top 40 hits that year. I quietly retired them because it was getting a little tedious, lots of weeks of not much happening ending with the inevitability of Drake finishing the year at the top ahead of a few British rappers.
It's been a relatively quiet year chart wise for both Drake and British rap. Drake had is 99th Top 40 hit in August but his 100th is yet to come. On this years leaderboard he would come joint 4th.
As a one off I thought I'd bring back the leaderboard. This time though instead of leaving a list of mostly meaningless names to those over 30 I'm going to countdown the 3 artists to have had more Top 40 hits than Drake this year.
3. Sabrina Carpenter (6 Top 40 hits)
Back in the summer I was in the beer garden of a pub near Hyde Park on a Saturday night. Big crowds of 12 year old girls walked past the pub and it reminded me it was that time of year where were get concerts in Hyde Park. Who was playing that night? I asked someone, their answer was Sabrina.
How did a singer with just one big hit in the 80s manage to sell so many tickets I wondered. Turns out it wasn't that Sabrina, it was one with a surname.
She's the latest in a long line of child Disney actresses who's taken up singing. She had 3 chart toppers last year but just the one this year with "Tears". Her album is called "Mans Best Friend" and amongst the singles are "Manchild" and "My Man On Willpower"
Given the proper Sabrina's big hit in the 80s was called "Boys (Summertime Love)" is this a coincidence or is she trying to make some sort of statement?
2. Tate McRae (8 Top 40 Hits)
First of all Tate McRae is no relation to the late great rally driver Colin McRae as far as I'm aware. That's the first thing that sprang to mind when I read the name but looked like it was even more of a possibility when I saw her first Top 40 hit of the year was called "Sports Car".
She's not even Scottish though, she's Canadian. That's the same country as Drake and Justin Bieber who have both churned out lots of hits in a short space of time in recent years.
1. Olivia Dean (9 Top 40 Hits)
The way I'm most likely to identify a modern record these days is if I keep hearing it on the radio and find it particularly irritating. This was the case when Olivia Dean had a song about a vampire that kept coming on.....
Oh hang on, that was a different Olivia. Who is Olivia Dean then?
Well prior to this year she had one Top 40 hit to her name with a cover of "The Christmas Song" in 2021. This year she's been all over the charts quite literally with her highest being a number 1 and lowest being a number 38.
Quite impressive given that had I not made this post I would have never heard of her.
