Taylor Swift Takes Britain in Seven Days While Ella Langley Reaches 24, and the Archive Moves Into the MTV Years
The week of September 28 – October 4, 2026 had two chart stories that never touched. In America, Ella Langley‘s Choosin’ Texas added a 24th week at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Britain, Taylor Swift arrived with a new single and took the top of the chart in its first week. This site spent the same seven days somewhere else: five of its eight new stories come from the years 1982 to 1987.
Last week Sienna Spiro had held Britain for a third week, and storms had cost AC/DC their New York show. Spiro is now No.2. The AC/DC date is back on the calendar at MetLife Stadium, and Foo Fighters have confirmed they will open it.
The charts
United States. The record keeps growing, and almost nothing around it moved. Choosin’ Texas led the Hot 100 dated October 3 for a 24th week, two more than Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You ever managed and its 13th in a row, and Billboard credited it with a record 19th week atop Digital Song Sales. Stella Lefty’s Boston held at No.2, Morgan Wallen‘s Been by Now at No.3 and Ariana Grande at No.4, while Langley‘s Be Her stayed at No.10. The one new entry was Wallen’s Last Thing You Need, in at No.9 as his 21st Top 10 hit. The albums chart supplied the surprise. Miley‘s Bass Persuades opened at No.1 on the Billboard 200 with about 61,000 units, her first chart-topping album since Bangerz in 2013. Langley’s Dandelion sat at No.2, Riley Green and beabadoobee each reached the Top 10 for the first time, and Noah Kahan’s Stick Season held No.10 in its 200th week. Swift’s new songs came out after this tracking week closed; they reach the Hot 100 on the chart dated October 10.
Global. The world’s chart belongs to two acts American radio barely plays. Karol G‘s BbY WOW, with Judeline and rusowsky, held No.1 on the Billboard Global 200 for a fourth week on about 51.5 million streams, and rose to No.6 on the Hot 100, its best showing there. Choosin’ Texas was No.2 worldwide. The newer story is Adela, the Slovak singer who now has two songs in the global Top 5: Nicole Kidman jumped 11-3 as its streams rose 41 percent to 32.5 million, and Ain’t in LA held at No.5. Both of those songs slipped in Britain the same week, pushed down by Swift’s arrival.
Global. The same four songs arrived everywhere on the same day. When The Encore came out on September 25, its four new tracks took the top four places on Spotify’s global chart, and Patient Zero drew 13.7 million streams, the biggest opening day for a song by a woman in 2026. America’s longest-running No.1 was built over eleven months of radio. The song that displaced Britain’s needed a weekend.
This week in music
Foo Fighters confirmed a one-night opening slot for AC/DC at the rescheduled MetLife Stadium show *** TAEMIN called off his entire North American tour over visa delays *** Keo’s debut album entered the British chart at No.2, the first debut by a British male band to pass 20,000 first-week sales in more than ten years *** Tinashe reached the British Top 40 albums for the first time with POPSTAR, at No.35 *** Soft Cell’s final studio album, finished by Marc Almond and Dave Ball shortly before Ball’s death in October 2025, reached the British chart *** Drew and Ellie Holcomb announced the Rain or Shine Tour on September 28 *** Rob Thomas announced a U.S. tour on September 29 *** Dropkick Murphys announced their next St. Patrick’s Day Tour the same day *** Black Stone Cherry announced the acoustic Bonfire Nights tour on September 30 *** The Piano Guys announced U.S. dates on October 1.
The people
Janis Joplin, born January 19, 1943, died in Los Angeles on October 4, 1970, and the anniversary closed this week. She had four years at the front of American music, and the only No.1 single of her life, Me and Bobby McGee, arrived the following March. Tom Petty, born October 20, 1950, died on October 2, 2017; I Won’t Back Down still sounds like a man explaining himself plainly.
Jerry Lee Lewis was born on September 29, 1935, and Marc Bolan of T. Rex on September 30, 1947. October 3 belongs to two guitarists who died young: Eddie Cochran, born that day in 1938, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, born in Dallas in 1954, whose Tin Pan Alley shows how quietly he could play when he chose to. Among the living: Johnny Mathis turned 91 on September 30, Sting 75 on October 2, and on October 3 Chubby Checker turned 85, Lindsey Buckingham 77 and Gwen Stefani 57.
New at Music Videos Club
Eight stories this week, and the first two are about music that survived in the wrong place. Traffic – Evening Blue was the song Rolling Stone liked best on the band’s 1973 album, and the live record from that spring’s tour left it off; a television studio in Bremen filmed it instead. Emerson, Lake & Palmer – Karn Evil 9: 1st Impression, Pt. 2 is the most famous four minutes the trio recorded, and it exists as a separate piece only because one side of a vinyl record ran out.
Three are about songs that belonged to somebody else first. Two London DJs put Ofra Haza’s voice on a hip-hop remix without telling her, and a year later Im Nin’alu, a 17th-century Hebrew poem, was No.1 across Europe. Survivor wrote Eye of the Tiger to fill the space where a Queen record had been, and the version in Rocky III is their demo. David Lee Roth – California Girls stopped at No.3, the exact position the Beach Boys reached twenty years earlier, with a Beach Boy singing on it.
Two more were made by their videos. Genesis wrote the one protest song of their career and handed Land of Confusion to the satirists who had been mocking them. Guns N’ Roses – Paradise City began as a singalong in a rented van and was filmed in a football stadium, where the opening act played it twice. Then there is Little Big Town – Pontoon, a first No.1 after fourteen years, from a title that started as somebody mishearing a different song. That is the story behind the song, which is the only thing this site does.
