{"id":722128,"date":"2026-08-01T03:48:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T03:48:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/722128\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T03:48:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T03:48:19","slug":"sam-fender-and-olivia-deans-rein-me-in-breaks-73-year-record-to-become-longest-running-uk-no-1-single-uk-charts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/722128\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Fender and Olivia Dean\u2019s Rein Me In breaks 73-year record to become longest-running UK No 1 single | UK charts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean have scored the longest running UK No 1 single in history with Rein Me In<\/a>, beating a record that has stood since 1953.<\/p>\n

Back then, the UK singles chart had been running for less than a year and contained just 12 songs when I Believe, a bombastic ballad by US crooner Frankie Laine, hit No 1 and spent a total of 18 weeks on the chart.<\/p>\n

There have been other songs that have come close to beating him since, such as Bryan Adams\u2019s (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, which spent 16 weeks at the top in 1991, and Wet Wet Wet\u2019s Love is All Around, which had 15 weeks in 1994. Both were gooey power ballads launched off the back of major movie placements \u2013 and both prompted just as much exasperation as celebration with every passing week at No 1. More recently, Drake\u2019s One Dance had a 15 week stint at No 1 in 2016, and Ed Sheeran\u2019s Shape of You scored 14 weeks in 2017.<\/p>\n

But Fender and Dean have clung on to clock up an amazing 19 weeks at the summit \u2013 made all the more impressive by chart rules introduced in recent years to prevent this length of run from ever happening.<\/p>\n

On hearing the news, Fender said he was \u201ccompletely lost for words. Thank you so much to Olivia Dean<\/a> and the fans for making this song the juggernaut that it is.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Fender wrote Rein Me In for his album People Watching<\/a>, which was released in February 2025. He released five other singles from the album prior to Rein Me In, including the title track, which seemed like it would be the biggest hit, reaching No 4 and hanging around the Top 100 for 43 weeks.<\/p>\n

That title song is an obvious anthem: high tempo with strident guitars, euphoric synths and a Springsteen-esque sense of grandeur. Rein Me In, on the other hand, is a gentler and less obviously commercial proposition, rooted in Fender\u2019s love of British folk and given a slower, rollicking rhythm. The beautiful music belies a bleak, heart-rending story of someone who spins into alcohol and drugs, \u201cworking myself up to a nice warm bliss\u201d, after self-destructively ending a relationship.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m talking about substance abuse and drinking too much to get the reason back, the reason for going through your day,\u201d Fender has said. \u201cIt\u2019s loosely based on my own life, this song, but also, I always kind of take parts of my own life and put it into characters and embellish it, \u2018cause all good stories deserve embellishment. The \u2018rein me in\u2019 part kind of [means] your friends are gonna rein you in from drinking too much and going off the rails because you\u2019re heartbroken and you\u2019re dealing with it in a bad way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The song went from album track to hit single after being re-recorded with a new verse by Dean, who has had her own huge solo success in tandem with Rein Me In, thanks to her hit second album, The Art of Loving<\/a>. Her verse voices the woman who Fender\u2019s protagonist walked away from, singing to him: \u201cYou\u2019re so afraid of that heart inside your chest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Released in June 2025, the new version of Rein Me In took 36 weeks to reach No 1, and has been on and off the top spot since February, interrupted by short spells from Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift before wresting the No 1 place back each time. This week, the song held off competition from Shakira and Burna Boy, who remain at No 2 with their official World Cup song, Dai Dai.<\/p>\n

Fender and Dean at the 2026 Brit awards. Photograph: JMEnternational\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Rein Me In has also managed to buck a rule introduced in 2017 called \u201caccelerated decline\u201d, which was created to make more songs flow through the UK charts<\/a>, sweeping away older ones that had been sticking around. Once a song has been on the charts for 10 weeks, if its streaming numbers drop three weeks in a row, the value of its streams are then halved \u2013 generally causing a precipitous drop down the charts, even if it remains popular in real terms.<\/p>\n

Rein Me In\u2019s relatively up-and-down, slow burn path to the top has helped it avoid that fate, along with its sheer songwriting quality and emotional impact, which has given it appeal right across the tastes of British pop fans.<\/p>\n

Jo Twist, chief executive of the UK music industry\u2019s leading trade association, the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), said: \u201cIn an evolving world where we all consume music globally, it\u2019s a truly remarkable feat for Rein Me In to resonate with fans in such a profound way. The British public have taken the song to their hearts, and we should all be proud and celebrate this special moment in our music heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The duet version of Rein Me In also won song of the year at the 2026 Brit awards.<\/p>\n

Adams\u2019s (Everything I Do) I Do It For You still has the longest consecutive run at No 1: its 16 weeks were unbroken, before being dethroned by U2\u2019s The Fly.<\/p>\n

There was another British record broken this week on the albums chart, as Charli xcx becomes the first British female artist to have two No 1 albums in the same year. Her new album, Music, Fashion, Film<\/a>, reached the top just five months after her previous one, her soundtrack<\/a> to Emerald Fennell\u2019s film adaptation of Wuthering Heights<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Guardian\u2019s rock and pop critic Alexis Petridis on Rein Me InAlexis Petridis. Photograph: Alicia Canter\/the Guardian<\/p>\n

When Sam Fender<\/a> and Olivia Dean launched their re-recorded version of Rein Me In last summer \u2013 Dean appearing on stage to perform the song during Fender\u2019s run of British stadium shows \u2013 it seems highly unlikely either of them thought they were sitting on a record-breaking single that would still be lodged at No 1 a year later.<\/p>\n

Rein Me In certainly doesn\u2019t have the obvious blockbusting qualities of previous long-term chart toppers such as Everything I Do (I Do It for You), Bohemian Rhapsody, or Meat Loaf\u2019s I\u2019d Do Anything For Love (But I Won\u2019t Do That). It\u2019s got a singalong chorus, but even by the standards of Fender\u2019s more anthemic Springsteen-inspired material \u2013 Seventeen Going Under or Hypersonic Missiles \u2013 it\u2019s understated; a sweet tune with a vaguely country-ish lilt. The guitar part sounds like a banjo and the piano has a metallic \u201ctack\u201d sound, familiar from saloon-bar players in old westerns.<\/p>\n

Even so, it\u2019s the kind of track that works well in a climate dominated by streaming. It\u2019s pretty, mellifluous, well-written, and sounds amiable in a way that is at odds with its subject matter. It sits somewhere between genres \u2013 a bit folky, a bit rocky, a bit country, plus a hint of soul thanks to Dean\u2019s vocal \u2013 and it bears repeated listening because it\u2019s not so striking that anyone would tire of it quickly.<\/p>\n

Perhaps its shelf life was extended by the fact that the balance between the two artists who made it has gradually shifted over the last year. In summer 2025, Fender was giving a mid-ranking British singer some stadium-level exposure, but with the release of The Art of Loving \u2013 a huge global hit, bolstered by a string of massively successful singles, the billion-streaming Man I Need among them \u2013 Dean\u2019s career rocketed. A song that began life very much as Sam Fender featuring Olivia Dean has, over the course of its success, gradually become something else: a collaboration between two huge stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sam Fender and Olivia Dean have scored the longest running UK No 1 single in history with Rein…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722129,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[96,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-722128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722128\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}