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Sam Fender and Olivia Dean have broken Wet Wet Wet’s ۳۲-year record for a British act’s run at No ۱ in the UK singles chart.
Fender and Dean’s duet Rein Me In has racked up its ۱۶th week at No ۱, beating Wet Wet Wet’s Love is All Around, which spent ۱۵ weeks at No ۱ in the summer of ۱۹۹۴ after it appeared on the Four Weddings and a Funeral soundtrack. Unlike Wet Wet Wet’s consecutive run, though, Fender and Dean’s song has dropped in and out of the top spot since February.
“Take that, Marti Pellow!” Fender told the Official Charts Company as the news was announced. He added that the success of Rein Me In has been “ridiculous – every Friday, it’s been an excuse to party”.
Rein Me In also scores the longest consecutive run for a song in the Top ۴۰, with ۵۵ weeks, beating Ed Sheeran’s record for his ballad Thinking Out Loud.
But Fender and Dean are yet to beat two non-UK acts who have an equal or greater run at No ۱ in the UK. They draw level with Canada’s Bryan Adams, whose (Everything I Do) I Do It For You spent ۱۶ weeks in a row at the top in ۱۹۹۱ – like Wet Wet Wet, Adams’ song was a determinedly corny power ballad aided by a prominent film placing, in Adams’ case Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
US crooner Frankie Laine has the longest run at No ۱, with ۱۸ non-consecutive weeks in ۱۹۵۳ for his epic ballad I Believe (“for every drop of rain that falls / a flower grows …”), back when the UK chart featured just ۱۲ songs.
Rein Me In started life as an album track on Fender’s chart-topping, Mercury prize-winning ۲۰۲۵ release People Watching. A wracked mid-tempo number about self-sabotaging a romantic relationship, it shows off Fender’s knack for kitchen-sink poetry: “Every flagstone of this town bears our prints / And all the bars round here serve my ghosts and carcasses … I’m working myself up to a nice, warm bliss / All my memories of you ring like tinnitus.”
Dean added her own verse, voicing the other figure in the relationship, and the duet was released as a single in June ۲۰۲۵. “Olivia putting the alternative narrative on it made the song really universal – that opened the floodgates,” Fender told the Official Charts Company. “There’s two sides to the story.” The pair have also performed it together at Fender stadium concerts in Newcastle and London, and it won them song of the year at the Brit awards in February.
Dean has enjoyed considerable chart success of her own in tandem with Rein Me In: her single Man I Need topped the chart in October ۲۰۲۵ and its parent album The Art of Loving has had an astonishing run, not leaving the top five since its release the same month, including eight weeks at No ۱. This year she won three other Brit awards, plus three Mobos and the Grammy for best new artist.
The long-running success of Rein Me In is all the more impressive given that the Official Charts Company introduced a rule in ۲۰۱۷ to prevent songs from hanging around too long and making the charts feel stale.
After a song has been in the Top ۱۰۰ for ۱۰ weeks, if it has three weeks of declining streaming numbers in a row, the value the Official Charts Company ascribes to the streams is halved – so the song essentially requires twice as many streams to keep the same level of chart success. It is a somewhat controversial metric, as a song can remain massively popular in real terms, but be beaten in the Top ۴۰ by songs with lower streaming numbers.
Since the introduction of the rule, only four songs have been able to make it past ۱۰ weeks at No ۱: Ed Sheeran’s Bad Habits, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee’s Despacito featuring Justin Bieber, and Tones & I’s Dance Monkey all managed ۱۱ weeks, while Alex Warren’s Ordinary achieved a ۱۳-week run last year.
Elsewhere in this week’s singles charts, Oasis’s Wonderwall reaches No ۱۱ after being aired at the close of England’s victorious World Cup matches, while this year’s official World Cup song, Dai Dai by Shakira and Burna Boy, is at No ۱۳ and Baddiel, Skinner and the Lightning Seeds’ Three Lions is at No ۲۱. US country singer Ella Langley gets her first UK top five single with Choosin’ Texas, and Journey’s ۱۹۸۱ hit Don’t Stop Believin’ is unexpectedly back in the charts at No ۲۷ thanks to a wave of online virality.
Madonna is No ۱ in the album chart with Confessions II, her sequel to ۲۰۰۵’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, bringing her back to the top after her previous two albums could only reach No ۲. She becomes the first US female artist to earn UK No ۱ albums across five decades.
She prevailed in a chart battle with Sienna Spiro, the trad-styled British pop singer whose debut album Visitor scores the biggest UK debut of the year, but could only reach No ۲.
