Every Thursday, we here at Official Charts round up the biggest New Releases coming your way across music and home entertainment.
It's a big week in UK pop for albums this week as RAYE finally unleashes her debut record - My 21st Century Blues. Unshackled from years of label troubles, RAYE's first album as an independent artist is a bold and bruised body of work that paints a picture of the singer rising from the darkness and into the light. Bolstered by the success of Escapism - RAYE's first-ever UK Number 1 single - My 21st Century Blues is set to explode, and bring Rachel Keen on the path to the superstardom she can finally claim as her own, on her own terms.
THE Queen of Country, Shania Twain, returns this week with her sixth album Queen of Me, a heart-bursting collection of country-pop confection that follows on the tail of 2017's NOW, her first album in a career break that spanned more than a decade. It's been produced by some of the cream of the crop of the British UK pop scene, including David Stewart (BTS, Hailee Steinfeld, Claudia Valentina) and Mark Ralph (Years & Years, Cheryl, Clean Bandit).
Other albums dropping this week include Official Charts Artist To Watch for 2023 Rose Gray, who issues her scintillating rave-pop EP Higher Than The Sun, and Ella Mai's deluxe edition re-release of her LP Heart On My Sleeve.
Singles-wise today Ellie Goulding continues her embrace of sophisticated dance-pop in Like A Saviour, the latest juddering cut from her upcoming album, Higher Than Heaven, while Anne-Marie teams up with production whizzes Billen Ted and Evan Blair (responsible for Dove Cameron's breakthrough hit Boyfriend) for the heart-on-her-sleeve anthem, Sad B!tch. Sometimes, you just have to wallow in your feelings!
This week also sees indie-pop darling Caroline Polachek dip her toe further into the auteur pond with the fabulously odd Blood and Butter, Rachel Chinouriri continues her artistic growth with Maybe I'm Lonely and Scissor Sisters frontman Jake Shears starts a new solo era with Too Much Music.
