Blighty Beat
U.K. MIDWEEKS: BAY WATCH
7/11/22

James Bay is on track to narrowly secure his second #1 album in the U.K. while the summer’s biggest dance cuts experience a midweek surge on the Official Singles Chart.

Bay’s Leap (EMI) sits just 300 chart units ahead of Harry StylesHarry’s House (Columbia), so the race for the top slot remains anyone’s game. Bay previously reached #1 with his debut Chaos and the Calm in 2015.

At #5, Burna Boy’s sixth album, Love, Damini (Atlantic), may become his first U.K. Top 10 record, bolstered by his streaming hit “Last Last.” Brent Faiyaz is also looking at his first Top 10 appearance as well as Wasteland (Lost Kids/Venice/Stem) is one slot behind at #6. Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s Toast (Reprise), recorded and scrapped in 2001, sits at #7; it would be Young’s 10th UK Top 10 album.

Cave World (Year0001) from Swedish post-punk outfit Viagra Boys is #20 and Journey’s first album in 11 years, Freedom (Frontiers), is on track to debut at #26.

At singles, LF System’s “Afraid To Feel” (Warner) is eyeing a second week at #1 as David Guetta, Becky Hill and Ella Henderson’s “Crazy What Love Can Do” (Parlophone) and the Henderson/Nathan Dawe collaboration “21 Reasons” (Warner) eye new chart peaks.

Burna Boy’s “Last Last” looks set to crack the Top 10 for the first time and Metallica’s 1986 “Master Of Puppets” (Blackened/Rhino) is headed for a Top 25 position thanks to Netflix’s Stranger Things.

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