London Grammar's Hannah Reid: 'I'm not rock 'n' roll' and the secret pain of indie pop
Their rise continued, through the release of Truth is a Beautiful Thing (2017) and California Soil (2021), chart-toppers both, and their return last autumn with The Greatest Love. That fourth album, recorded in their own space within Damon Albarn's Studio 13 complex in Notting Hill, pushed them even higher. London Grammar now enjoy more than three million monthly listeners on Spotify and have reached arena-scale success — on their last tour they sold out the O2. Along the way there were multiple support slots with old friends Coldplay, most recently in summer 2022 when they joined the band on their (still ongoing) Music of the Spheres stadium tour.
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BBC News
13 hours ago
- BBC News
Alex Warren's Ordinary becomes longest-running UK number one this decade
US singer Alex Warren's smash hit Ordinary has notched up its 12th week at number one in the UK - the longest chart reign since Ed Sheeran's Shape of You in which the 24-year-old wrote for his wife after their wedding last year, has been streamed 107 million times in the UK, according to the Official Charts has broken the 70-year-old record for the most consecutive weeks at number one by a US artist - surpassing Slim Whitman's Rose Marie, which spent 11 weeks at the top in shows no sign of going away - it remains by far the biggest song on Spotify in the UK, with 33% more streams than its nearest rival in the service's latest daily rankings. But it has some way to go before it catches the longest-running number ones of all number ones in history:Frankie Laine, I Believe - 18 weeks, 1953Bryan Adams, (Everything I Do) I Do It For You - 16 weeks, 1991Wet Wet Wet, Love Is All Around - 15 weeks, 1994Drake ft Wizkid & Kyla, One Dance - 15 weeks, 2016Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody - 14 weeks, 1975/6 & 1991/2Ed Sheeran, Shape of You -14 weeks, 2017Alex Warren, Ordinary - 12 weeks, 2025 Warren found fame as one of the founders of the Hype House, a TikTok collective who lived together in Los Angeles and entertained millions of teenagers during the first reached the top 10 with Carry You Home last year, then his career as heartfelt folk-pop singer-songwriter exploded with Ordinary, which is currently also number one in the US."It has been enormous," said James Masterton, who writes the Chart Watch UK blog. "It's a crossover hit single in a good old-fashioned sense, and in a way we haven't seen for quite some considerable time."It's the kind of record that sat comfortably on the playlists of both Radio 1 and Radio 2, but ironically it's dropped off both of those now and they've both moved on to playing his new single. But that's an example of how it has genuine pan-generational appeal."Ordinary has also become a popular wedding song, and Warren's label has even released a Wedding Version."In that sense it's got much in common with some of the other famous long-running tracks of the past, such as (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Love Is All Around and I Will Always Love You. They are all very deeply felt romantic songs." But despite being such a mammoth hit, changing media and music habits mean Ordinary hasn't become a universal phenomenon of the kind Bryan Adams and Wet Wet Wet had when they were appearing on BBC TV chart show Top of the Pops week after week."The fragmentation of the media means the ability for records to grab the attention of large groups of people has diminished rapidly," Masterton said."In times gone by when a record was number one for as long as 12 weeks, everybody would know who the superstar was." Longest-running number ones of the 2020s:Alex Warren, Ordinary – 12 weeks, 2025Ed Sheeran, Bad Habits – 11 weeks, 2021Harry Styles, As It Was – 10 weeks, 2022Miley Cyrus, Flowers – 10 weeks, 2023Dave & Central Cee, Sprinter – 10 weeks, 2023 Ordinary is also the longest-running number one since chart rules were changed in 2017 to stop the top 40 getting clogged up by songs that have passed their peak of chart formula automatically demotes songs that have had three consecutive weeks of declining streaming figures, when compared with the rest of the market. But Ordinary has held sufficiently steady to avoid that fate so far.
Time Out
15 hours ago
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Daily Mirror
16 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
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