Two records spent this week rewriting chart history on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and neither one has much idea the other exists. August 17–23, 2026 was a week of entrenchment at the top and one very large debut underneath it — while at Music Videos Club we spent it in 1955, 1965, 1971, 1981 and points between.
The charts
United States. Ella Langley’s Choosin’ Texas took an eighteenth week at No.1 on the Hot 100 dated August 22, in its forty-third week on the chart — a country record that has now held the American summit longer than anything else released this decade. Taylor Swift’s I Knew It, I Knew You climbed three places back to No.2, and Morgan Wallen’s Been By Now held at No.3. The bigger movement was on the album side, where Stray Kids debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200 with This & That on 369,000 equivalent units. That is the group’s ninth American chart-topper and the second-largest sales week of 2026, behind only BTS. It also displaced Ariana Grande, whose Petal had opened at No.1 the week before.
Europe. The Official Singles Chart published August 21 gave Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In a twenty-second non-consecutive week at No.1. There is no longer any British record left for it to break. It passed Frankie Laine’s I Believe — eighteen weeks across three separate runs in 1953 — earlier this month, ending the longest-standing record in UK chart history at seventy-three years, and it now holds the longest unbroken Top 40 run and the longest continuous Top 10 run of any non-Christmas single. Shakira and Burna Boy’s World Cup single Dai Dai has spent much of that reign at No.2, unable to get past it.
Global. The strangest fact of the week is how little these two stories overlap. The biggest British single in the history of the UK chart peaked at No.64 in America. The American No.1 has spent eighteen weeks at the top of a chart that most of Europe barely registers. Streaming was supposed to flatten the world into one market, and the evidence this week runs the other way — a Korean group can sell 369,000 copies in a single American week, a Colombian-Nigerian World Cup collaboration can dominate European radio, and a North Shields songwriter can break a seventy-three-year record without troubling the American Top 60.
This week in music
Simon Cowell to undergo further back surgery, six years after his accident. *** Alex Warren cancels concert at short notice, citing illness. *** Bret Michaels off the road for several months after a single comeback show. *** The Hollies split after sixty-three years. *** Taylor Swift lands a sixteenth No.1 on Adult Pop Airplay, a chart record. *** Madonna led the 2026 MTV Video Music Awards nominations with 11 nods, including Video of the Year. *** Bonnaroo announced it will take 2027 off after recent weather-related challenges at its Tennessee festival site. *** Rush continued their first tour in 11 years and their first without late drummer Neil Peart. *** Fontaines D.C. announced their fifth album, Dopamine Chamber, and released the new single and video “Marianne.” *** Turnstile announced Never Enough: Versions, featuring reinterpretations with guests including Elton John, Hayley Williams, Blood Orange and others. *** The Jonas Brothers announced a new 45-city North American tour beginning in September. *** Buckcherry’s tour bus was involved in a fatal multi-vehicle accident in South Carolina, though the band and crew were reported safe. *** Bush, Ratt and the Pretty in Pink soundtrack were among the notable anniversary and expanded-edition reissue announcements of the week.
The people
Latimore
Died August 22, 2026
Born Benjamin William Lattimore in Charleston, Tennessee on September 7, 1939, he made his name in Florida on a piano touch and a conversational baritone that never raised itself when it didn’t have to. Let’s Straighten It Out went to No.1 on the R&B chart in 1974 and has quietly outlasted a great deal of louder music. He was 86.
Shelley Fabares
Died August 22, 2026
She was playing Mary Stone on The Donna Reed Show when the producers put her in front of a microphone, and Johnny Angel went to No.1 on the Hot 100 in April 1962 — one of the first times American television manufactured a pop star, and a better record than that description suggests. Born in Santa Monica on January 19, 1944, she was 82.
Barry Mitchell
Died August 2026
He played bass in Queen for a handful of months in 1971, in the lineup before John Deacon arrived and the band became the one everybody knows. In the room at the beginning, out of it before the world was watching.
New at Music Videos Club
The week opened in the deep American songbook. Bill Withers’ Lean on Me and Ray Charles’ What’d I Say went up together on August 18 — two records that between them explain most of what happened to American popular music after 1959. Roy Orbison’s Go! Go! Go! followed, from the Sun Records years before the operatic ballads made him famous.
Then the seventies, and the sound of the American highway. America’s Ventura Highway is the acoustic-guitar figure everyone can hum and almost nobody can play. Mouth & MacNeal’s How Do You Do went the other direction entirely — a Dutch duet assembled by a producer that went to No.1 in five countries and lost to cover versions of itself in two more.
Two contemporary releases: Sheryl Crow’s Freedom Bus with Jesse Welles, and Phoebe Bridgers’ I Can’t Wait.
And the weekend went to four records that need no introduction and got one anyway. The Happenings’ See You in September, which is the correct song for the last week of August. The Who’s My Generation. Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain, at eight minutes and fifty-seven seconds the longest song ever to crack the Billboard Top 10 — a record that stood for almost thirty years. And Richard Marx’s Right Here Waiting, which Barbra Streisand turned down because, she said, she wasn’t going to be right here waiting for anybody.
Eleven songs, seven decades. The charts this week were about how long a record can stay at the top. The archive is about what happens to a song after it leaves.
