5 random chart facts of the week that will make you go "whoa"

Quirky tidbits and fun highlights from this week on the Charts.
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Why just know some stuff when you can know LOADS? We've put together some random facts from this week's Official Chart that you can use to kill an awkward silence or two over the weekend.

The highest climber in the Top 40 this week is Little Mix, who zoom 34 places with No More Sad Songs to land at Number 17. If we are talking biggest club within the Top 40, well, lookee here, it's Little Mix again – Touch goes back up eight slots to 30.

Unlucky for some, maybe, but Ed Sheeran has notched up 13 weeks at Number 1 this week. Only five songs have spent longer at the top, and only three of those were consecutive. See the list of long stints at Number 1.The big one to beat is Bryan Adams' rather stressful 16-week consecutive run in 1991, although Frankie Laine managed 18 over three separate stints.

Two brand new entries this week come from Kendrick Lamar, with Humble, at 21, and Calvin Harris and Young Thug, Pharrell and  Ariana Grande, with Heatstroke. Two pretty unusual titles. Only one other song with "humble" in the title has made the Top 40 – Mac Davis's It's Hard To Be Humble hit Number 27 in 1980. As for "heatstroke", there have been two songs called exactly that to hit the Top 100, but only Calvin's makes the Top 40.

We're the kind of DJ who doesn't mind taking requests – we like to play the hits. We like this one from Hayley:

Well, it's funny you should ask, Hayley. The biggest selling single by an artist known primarily as an actor is You're The One That I Want, from John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John who, as you probably know, are both actors. It's sold over two million copies. However, John and Olivia were starring in a musical so we're not sure their feat actually counts – we'll leave that up to you to decide. When it comes to actual actors who then released a single, it was Robson & Jerome, who starred together in Soldier Soldier – their version of Unchained Melody/White Cliffs of Dover has sold 1.8 million copies. They did doing Unchained Melody on TV, but a different version was released, and quite a bit later.

However. How. Ever.

If we are talking an actor-turned-singer who's enjoyed a sustained successful chart career, well, that honour belongs to Kylie Minogue. Since her first hit in 1988 – while she was still playing Charlene in Neighbours, which is most certainly not a musical role – she has landed 49 Top 40 hits, of which 34 have gone Top 10 and seven all the way to Number 1. She has two million-selling singles (Can't Get You Out of my Head and Especially For You) and five Number 1 albums. 🙌

MORE: See Kylie Minogue's Official UK Chart history

Speaking of million sellers, our Twitter buddy Lewis Kelly wanted to check up on the general wellbeing of a classic from 20 years ago – Aqua's Barbie Girl. Well, since it hit Number 1 in 1997, the track has sold an incredible 1.84 million copies. But how many of you were into it this week? 76 of you downloaded Barbie Girl in the last seven days – legends, all – and it's been played 56,240 times. Come on Barbie, let's go party!

Got a chart fact you've been dying to know and wouldn't mind seeing us unravel right here? Tweet us using #ChartFact (funnily enough) and we might just pick yours!

Take a look at this week's full Official Singles Chart Top 100

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Patrick Nobbs

1

here's fact to make you go Whoa---now these numb nuts have included non sales streams--this is no longer a sales chart and resulted in one artist having 80% of the Top 20 to himself--and will spend most of the year at N01. Wake up OCC or hand the job over to at analysts with brain cells