Drake Challenges Foals For U.K. No. 1 Album – Billboard

Drake sprung a surprise last Friday (June 17) with the release of Honestly, Nevermind (OVO/Republic Records). Now, Foals can spring a surprise of their own by beating Drake to the U.K. chart title.

Foals’ seventh studio album Life is Yours (Warner Records) reigns over the midweek chart, leading Drake’s latest by 6,000 chart units, the OCC reports.

If Foals keeps its momentum when the weekly chart is published this Friday (June 24), it’ll mark the Oxford-originated guitar band’s second leader, following 2019’s Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost – Part 2.

Should Drizzy turn on the afterburners in the second half of the chart cycle, Honestly, Nevermind would give the Canadian rapper a fifth U.K. leader.

Meanwhile, the Smile, a British “supergroup” featuring Radiohead’s members Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood and Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, could enter the Top 5 for the first time with A Light For Attracting Attention (XL Recordings).

The LP debuted at No. 19 earlier in the year, and lifts to a new peak of No. 3 on the Official Chart Update, thanks to its release on physical formats.

Further down the chart blast, a 50th anniversary re-issue of David Bowie’s The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (Parlophone) rockets to No. 7, just two places below its peak position.

Also eyeing a Top 10 spot is For All Our Days that Tear the Heart (EMI), the collaborative album by Oscar-nominated Irish actress and singer Jessie Buckley plus former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler. It’s new at No. 9.

Finally,  Kate Bush is still running up the charts. Thanks to a lift provided by season four of Stranger Things, which synced her classic 1985 song “Running Up That Hill” (via Fish People), the English singer’s hits collection The Whole Story (Rhino) could improve 24-18, for its highest position of the year to date.

The Whole Story contains, of course, “Running Up That Hill,” which climbed to No. 1 on the Official U.K. Singles Chart last Friday, setting a string of records in the process. Based on midweek data, “Running” is on track for a second week atop the Official U.K. Singles Chart.