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Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Where have all the great pop hits gone?
The romantic ballad Ordinary by Californian singer-songwriter Alex Warren is – at the time of writing – enjoying its 10th week at number one in the UK singles chart. Released in February, the song is proving so popular that a special 'wedding version', stripped of its drums and thus tailor-made for that smoochy first dance, has had over 30 million plays on Spotify, twice as many as Ed Sheeran's most recent single Old Phone. But Ordinary is notable for another reason. Of the six songs that have topped the chart so far in 2025, it's the only one to have actually been released this calendar year. Compared to Ordinary, the rest of this year's chart-toppers are positively vintage. Beckenham-born Lola Young's Messy and US rapper Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us both came out in May 2024 while Chappell Roan's Pink Pony Club, which was number one for two weeks in March, was, astonishingly, released in the second week of lockdown in 2020. Only Gracie Adams' That's So True, number one in January, can vaguely be described as current, having been released last October. A year ago the picture was so different as to be unrecognisable. By mid-May 2024, pop fans had been treated to fresh new hits galore. Sabrina Carpenter 's Espresso, Beyoncé's Texas Hold 'Em, Taylor Swift and Post Malone's Fortnight, Benson Boone's Beautiful Things, Tommy Richman's Million Dollar Baby and Roan's Good Luck, Babe! – to name just six of 2024's chart smashes – had all been released since the turn of the year. In the Official Charts Company's (OCC) list of the 20 biggest songs of 2024, 12 were released between January and mid-May last year. Yet in the OCC's interim list of 2025's 20 biggest songs so far, released in April, only one track is from 2025 – the ubiquitous, and increasingly extra ordinary, Ordinary. Mega-hits always come out in the early months, goes record industry thinking. The biggest songs of 2022 and 2023 – Harry Styles' As It Was and Miley Cyrus's Flowers, both of which bagged Brits and Grammys – were released in the April and January of those years respectively. All of which begs a pressing question: with the summer solstice just five weeks away, where are 2025's pop hits? 'Kids don't listen to the radio so something has to pop up on TikTok or YouTube in order to be a hit, and nothing really has,' is the glum take of one veteran record label boss. Even Private Eye, a magazine more used to dealing with corrupt MPs than corrupt MP3s, declares in its current issue that 'British pop has dried up'. There is, charitably, one mitigating factor behind this year's hits slump: 2024 was a blockbuster year. Superstars Billie Eilish, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Charli XCX and Carpenter all released new music last year and are now, bar Swift, on the 'touring' part of their album-tour-rest cycle (coming to the UK soon). But a gangbusters 2024 doesn't explain the fact that numerous much-vaunted 2025 comebacks have failed to light the cultural touchpaper as expected. New albums by Lady Gaga and The Weeknd have so far failed to capture the cultural zeitgeist, while Lorde's comeback single failed to reach the top 10. Ed Sheeran's commercial comeback Azizam, described by this newspaper as 'featherweight musical Esperanto', peaked at number three – relatively low for the Suffolk hit-machine – while his aforementioned Old Phone recently entered the charts at a lowly number 17. People are simply listening to less new music, a fact that has starkly come to the fore this year. Figures from music data company Chartmetric, crunched for the Telegraph, compared the number of Spotify streams received by two of last year's biggest hits with streams received by two of this year's biggest hits some 61 days after their respective releases. Espresso and Texas Hold 'Em, massive smashes in 2024, had been listened to 548 million and 305 million times at the 61-day mark. For Ordinary and Messy, chart-toppers this year, those figures were 198 million and 5.7 million. Chaz Jenkins, chief commercial officer at Chartmetric, offers one theory. He says the music industry has been 'gradually focusing on Q2' – the months of April, May and June – 'for releasing 'hero' tracks in recent years', meaning that hits might be just around the corner. We'll see. The bigger truth is that young people's listening habits have permanently changed. Generation Z – those born between 1997 and 2012 – simply don't consume music in the same way that they used to, and this should be of grave concern to the music industry. James Masterton runs the Chart Watch UK website and has been writing about the charts for over three decades. His take is sobering. 'Theoretically we should be in the middle of a golden age of pop music based on the available demographics. The really odd thing is that this hasn't emerged, which suggests that something deep-rooted has actually changed,' he says. Masterton's theory is this. Pop music goes in cycles and always reaches a peak in popularity some 13 or 14 years after the end of an economic slump. This is because birth-rates historically surge just as economic conditions improve, thereby yielding a large cohort of pop-crazy teenagers 13 or 14 years later. So people born in the good times of the mid-1960s became teenagers in the late 1970s, when – guess what? – sales of singles reached an all-time high. And children born in the Thatcher boom of the mid-to-late 1980s became teenagers in the late-1990s, when – again – sales of CD singles went through the roof. In theory, then, we should be seeing the same thing now. It was 14 years ago that we came out of the credit crunch and 13 years since the 2012 Olympics baby boom. Birth-rates rocketed, according to the ONS. The music industry in 2025 should therefore be making hay from music-mad teens. 'But where are they? Where is the pop music they're all engaging with?' says Masterton. Teenagers' circumstances have changed, he says. Yes, they're online lots (nearly four hours a day for 13-14 year-olds). But their time is split between YouTube, gaming, social media, TV and music. The music industry used to be driven by new releases, forcing teenagers to go to record shops (remember them?) to buy the latest tunes. Teens no longer have to do this due to streaming's 'all you can eat for a monthly fee' model, so they're less bothered by new releases. An old song by Queen, for example, is just as likely to pique a teen's interest as a new Lady Gaga single. 'Everything that has gone on in the past has now got this mass appeal and so music consumption today is not so confined to up-to-date new music made by new artists. It's actually the long legacy of popular music that accounts for the vast majority of consumption,' says Masterton. Great if you're Kate Bush, less so if you're just starting out. Add to this Gen Z's reputation as the 'abstention generation', some of whom embrace digital minimalism along with a rejection of rabid consumption, and you can see why the music industry has a problem. Familiarity has replaced newness in an industry that relies on newness to bring the money in. It's why songs can take years to reach number one (Pink Pony Club) rather than days, as in the past. It also explains the relatively slow burn of Messy and Ordinary. Chartmetric's Jenkins says the singles chart is no longer the summit of one mountain. Rather, it is 'the highest peak among a range of slightly smaller mountains'. Only once artists have climbed these smaller mountains – by, say, being number one in a specific subgenre or really getting into people's heads – do they 'qualify' to climb the central peak. 'If they perform well climbing that central peak, they can stay at or near the summit for a very long time. If not, they move back onto their original mountain pretty quickly,' Jenkins says. It's therefore entirely possible, if not likely, that Gaga or Sheeran's recent releases will rise back up the charts in future months once they've become part of people's sonic furniture. The corollary of all this is that record labels can no longer predict with any certainty what will be a hit, or when. Still, many labels chiefs remain chipper. Simon Robson, EMEA president for recorded music at Warner Music Group, foresees a 'great summer of music'. Last year the label increased its A&R (artist development) spend and the results are showing: Warners artists currently account for half of the UK top 10 and half of the top ten tracks in the Spotify Global Top 200 chart (Warner's Atlantic label is behind Warren's Ordinary). Robson concedes, though, that 'in today's diverse and dynamic music industry, hits can come from almost anywhere and travel everywhere'. Record companies like his, he says, 'can help artists navigate this new landscape'. Masterton, however, believes there's simply too much music out there. 'If people suddenly stopped making music tomorrow, we wouldn't necessarily feel the impact. It wouldn't be an emergency because you could go the rest of your life listening to music that has already been recorded and not run out of things to discover and enjoy,' he says. But music won't stop tomorrow. And 2025 still desperately needs hits. As Lola Young says, it's messy.
BBC News
14-05-2025
- Sport
- BBC News
Surrey and The Blaze tie One-Day Cup thriller
Alice Capsey hit a brilliant 125 off 96 balls as Surrey's One-Day Cup game against The Blaze at Beckenham ended in a dramatic tie. Amy Jones (80) and Georgia Elwiss (82 off 69) led the visitors to 346-9, the second-highest total in the competition so far - and Elwiss then claimed 3-35 as Surrey slumped from 156-2 to Capsey hit five sixes and nine fours before falling to Grace Ballinger and left to score nine off the final over, their last-wicket pair only managed eight of them. Emma Lamb maintained her magnificent form with the bat by scoring 88 off 84 balls as Lancashire beat Warwickshire by 101 runs to move up to second behind Hampshire, while Durham saw off Essex by six wickets at Chelmsford. Capsey stars in high-scoring thriller Despite losing Tammy Beaumont for eight, The Blaze maintained a healthy scoring rate against Surrey, thanks to Jones, Elwiss and Kathryn Bryce who made the innings was also lit up by a full-length diving catch by keeper Kira Chathli to remove Sarah Bryce for 34, from the bowling of Alexa Stonehouse (2-65).The Blaze total looked set to bring them a fifth win despite Danni Wyatt-Hodge's 43 off 40 balls and 37 off 31 by Paige Scholfield, who put on 74 with Capsey for the third though, made the most of being dropped by Elwiss at deep mid-wicket on six and reached her century off 84 balls but had another escape before finally being caught at the start of the 46th over with 40 more hit two sixes in an unbeaten 32 off 18 balls but number 11 Dani Gregory could only manage one of the two runs needed off the final ball as they finished on the exact same score as The Blaze, the second tie in the Edgbaston, on the day when she was selected for England's first one-day squad under new head coach Charlotte Edwards, Lamb followed previous scores of 130 not out, 52, 86, 43, 20 and 74 by hitting a six and 10 fours to take her overall total to 493 put on 116 with Katie Mack (57) and following a breathtaking slip catch by Katie George, who was initially wrongfooted by Seren Smale's edge, Sophie Ecclestone weighed in with 50 off 49 balls in her first game in the competition as Lancashire reached top scored with 35 in Warwickshire's reply, but they were all out for 175 in the 48th over as Fi Morris produced figures of 5-48. In the battle of the bottom two at Chelmsford, Durham were convincing winners over Essex, who suffered their sixth defeat in seven Villiers took 3-28 as the home side were bowled out for 178 and then helped Rogers add 98 after Durham had been reduced to 55-3 in was eventually caught off Esmae McGregor for 46 but Rogers reached 50 off 65 balls in only her second appearance of the competition and finished 66 not out as Bess Heath hit the winning boundary to see them to 182-4 with 11.1 overs to spare. Monday's fixtures Chelmsford: Essex v SurreyArundel: Hampshire v WarwickshireBlackpool: Lancashire v DurhamPlay starts at 10:30 BST
The Sun
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Top comedian spotted working in London bakery leaving customers stunned – would you have spotted him?
CUSTOMERS in a London bakery were left stunned when a top comedian was spotted working there. The star, who is also an actor, was seen mingling with locals as they did their shopping - but would you have spotted him? 6 6 6 6 The star who was seen working in the local shop was comedian Romesh Ranganathan. The funny man - who's best mate is Rob Beckett - was spotted helping out at the bakery. With his baseball cap and hoodie on, he blended in with the crowd in the busy shop. Romesh was seen selling delicious baked goods, as customers looked stunned that they were being served by him. It's not a surprise that the actor was working at the Coughlans Bakery in Beckenham, as he actually co-owns part of the franchise. The 87-year-old family run business owns multiple bakeries across South East London, Surrey, Kent and West Sussex Previously talking about investing in Coughlans Bakery chain, Romesh told his followers: "This is something I've wanted to get involved in for a very long, long time." He also said he was "absolutely buzzing" and it was "the partnership of the century". BECOMING A STAR Over the years Romesh has seen his star soar and go on to become a household name. He has enjoyed sold out tours around the country, as well as landing top TV gigs. Watch hilarious moment Romesh Ranganathan tells his mum off live on Parent's Evening - and in front of Mel B However, prior to finding fame, Romesh originally worked as a maths teacher and was employed at an airline caterers. After going into teaching he realised comedy was his true calling. In 2016, the comedian embarked on his debut solo tour selling over 100,000 tickets, and was presented with the Ents24 Hardest Working Comedian Of The Year award. Since then Romesh has appeared on an array of comedy panel shows in the UK and has even taken his career stateside. 6 In 2018, the star embarked on a career in America with the launch of the series Just Another Immigrant on Showtime. While in the US, Romesh also appeared on the James Corden Late Late Show, as well as The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Following his stint across the pond, the comedian returned to America once more in 2023, with a sold-out show held at the iconic New York Town Hall. In addition to comedy success, Romesh is a familiar face on screen. Romesh is well known for starring in the popular BBC comedy King Gary. He was also the host of the now axed show, A League of Their Own. 6
