New Number One?

According to the official charts midweek update we may have a new number one on Friday, the debut solo single from One Directions Harry Styles.

I'll be honest, it's all a bit of a mystery to me as to what will succeed in the charts these days and what won't. Initially I stopped following the charts many years ago, but I started following them again at the start of the year if anything to see just how ridiculous they had become.

These days you get the likes of Little Mix reaching positions in the charts which would have got them dropped from their label if they were around 10 years ago, but as far as I can tell they are the biggest girl group around at the moment. Last year we had Drake at number one for 15 weeks, but whilst he flooded the charts with several tunes a few weeks ago, he seemed to pose no threat to Ed Sheeran. This is also despite most his tunes not being on YouTube, presumably because YouTube views don't count towards the charts.

I was aware Harry Styles had a new single but didn't know if it would pose a threat or not. Yes he was a member of the most popular boyband of this decade, but aside from Robbie Williams who would try and distance himself from his Take That days, what other British boyband members have had a solo career of any significance.

The latest news today is that it's very close between Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles so could go either way, presumably the Ed Sheeran fans heard the mid week chart update and have put him on repeat on Spotify.

I did discover an advantage Harry Styles has though. Yesterday I was searching for some music completely unrelated and found something from Deezer in the search results. I clicked on it and the new Harry Styles song automatically started playing. I'm not sure how much of the track you need to listen to for it to count, I stopped it as soon as I could but I may have unwillingly contributed to Harry Styles chart position.