Courteeners make Official Chart history as St. Jude reaches Number 1 nearly 15 years after its original release

The Manchester-formed rock group's debut was originally released in 2008
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Courteeners secure their first-ever Official Number 1 album this week, breaking Official Chart records in the process.

The group’s 2008 debut St. Jude becomes the album with the longest time between release and charting at Number 1 in UK chart history, a staggering 14 years, 9 months and 14 days after its release. This is thanks to a 15th Anniversary Edition of the LP featuring remastered tracks, rarities and previously-unreleased material. The record reaches the summit with over 97% physical sales, and tops the Official Vinyl Albums Chart.

The Manchester-formed rock trio – comprising Liam Fray, Michael Campbell and Daniel ‘Conan’ Moores – also become only the third band in Official Chart history to chart a re-issued album at Number 1. They join The Rolling Stones (Goats Head Soup, Exile On Main St.) and The Beatles (Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) as the only groups to have achieved the feat.

St. Jude includes three Official Top 40 singles (Not Nineteen Forever, No You Didn’t, No You Don’t and What Took You So Long?), and previously peaked at Number 4 upon its initial 2008 release. Explore Courteeners’ Official Charts history in full here.

MORE: The Official Top 40 biggest albums of 2022 revealed

Speaking exclusively to OfficialCharts.com, Courteeners’ Liam Fray says:
“Good Things come to thems that wait. God bless the fans.”

Elsewhere, London rapper Clavish scores a Top 5 debut with his mixtape Rap Game Awful, new at Number 4. The 28-track record includes collaborations with the likes of D-Block Europe, Fredo and MoStack.

Former Supergrass guitarist Gaz Coombes secures his first solo Top 10 with fourth studio album Turn The Car Around (6). The album tops the Official Record Store Chart, and lands at Number 2 on the Official Vinyl Albums Chart. Previously, Gaz enjoyed Top 40 success with 2015 release Matador (18) and 2018’s World’s Strongest Man (12).

Liverpool-formed indie rockers Circa Waves claim their fifth Top 40 LP with Never Going Under, debuting at Number 15. The group – comprising Kieran Shudall, Sam Rouke, Colin Jones and Joe Falconer – previously charted with 2015 debut Young Chasers (10), 2017’s Different Creatures (11), 2019 release What’s It Like Over There? (10) and 2020 record Sad Happy (4). Never Going Under also lands inside the Official Vinyl Albums Chart Top 10 (6).

Catch up on this week’s The Record Club with Bowers & Wilkins featuring Circa Waves' Joe below:

Scottish singer-songwriter Joesef celebrates his first-ever Top 40 appearance with debut LP Permanent Damage (18), also scoring a Top 5 placing on the Official Vinyl Albums Chart (5). Meanwhile, fellow Scottish indie group Belle & Sebastian secure their 12th Top 40 album with Late Developers (30). Explore Belle & Sebastian’s complete Official Charts history here.

And finally, Dua Lipa’s former Number 1 album Future Nostalgia lifts eight spots back into the Top 40 as she bags a Best Pop/R&B nomination at the 2023 BRITs (38).

See the full Official Albums Chart Top 100 here from 5.45pm.

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Velvet Android

4

Extraordinary – not least because a different reissue package for the same album (which made no.4 on its original 2008 chart run) was also a no.5 hit just five years ago, i.e. on the 10th anniversary of its initial release.

Quite why a middlingly-successful debut from a barely middlingly-significant band of that era who never really rose to greater heights should inspire such continuing loyalty and repurchasing is beyond me, but it's genuinely quite remarkable. Especially when you consider this feat of a landing a chart-topping reissue ranks them alongside only the Beatles and the Stones – and those rereleases were of albums with huge significance in the rock music canon and came at generation-spanning distances, whereas this is one that's merely 15 years old and that appeared to have no cultural cachet whatsoever, yet has nevertheless now had three separate Top 5 appearances and has set an all-time chart record.

And counting this repackage as a new chart entry (which OCC really ought to, like the 2018 version) rather than listing it as a continuation of the original run, it also very neatly means that the Courteeners' last six album releases have between them peaked at numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6! I wonder if anyone else has ever managed that particular feat?

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mildredfarts

1

i am always fascinated by chart stats like that. i don't pay so much attention to the singles chart anymore as that's been skewered by all the rule changes over the past decade or so,but i wonder if you saw my question about Lewis Capaldi? had anyone,prior to him,debuted inside the top 20 then dropped out of the to 40 before ascending to #1? (in one chart run,not a re-issue and not a return to the top spot like Adele's 'easy on me'). regardless,i'm interested in whatever other observations and insights you write about : )

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Velvet Android

1

Sorry MF, only just seen your comment!

I'm with you totally about the singles chart, given the way the rule changes have skewed everything so arbitrarily in recent years. But yes, I'd noticed too how that Lewis Capaldi chart run is truly bizarre even by modern standards: 20–43–40–60–15–1–12. So within the span of an unbroken seven-week chart run it dropped out of the Top 40 not once but twice (the now-traditional festive period weirdness to thank for at least one of those of course), the first time directly from the top 20, and all the way to 60 at one point... but then a fortnight later was at Number One. I mean, I can well believe that what you've noted represents a chart first.

And more than that, the very next week it's plummeted straight back to no.12. I'm fairly sure (even without having been paying so much attention over the last decade or so) that my immediate reaction to that was correct: I don't believe any other 'regular' Number One in chart history has ever spent just one week in the top 10...?!
By which I mean apart from the genuinely screwed-up chart 'runs' in the last few years for various charity things like L**baby's string of Christmas releases, the Michael Ball/Captain Tom hit, and so on, which debuted instantly at the top then basically vanished again. We can ignore Three Lions in 2018 because obviously it has spent loads of weeks in the top 10 at other times, and even Ellie Goulding's almost-as-peculiar run with River the other Christmas at least popped in and out of the upper reaches twice.

This in contrast is a perfectly 'normal' song without any such circumstances attached to it, which has climbed from outside the Top Ten straight to the very summit for a solitary week, and then dropped right back outside again. I think that has to be unique.