Sam Fender and Olivia Dean's "Rein Me In" Joins the 10 Week Club
- Michael Trimboli
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
In the past I've tried to use this blog to write weekly recaps on the action on the current top 40 and ultimately I found it hard to do at all, let alone consistently. Plus it can be hard to keep writing new things about a song for 20-30 weeks in a row. But this week it feels like I need to call out a very rare occurrence on the chart.
"Rein Me In", the duet between ascendant English artists Sam Fender and Olivia Dean, is at #1 this week for the tenth non-consecutive week. It's only the sixth song to reach that plateau of ten weeks at the top. The other songs? "Hanging by a Moment" by Lifehouse, "Hey Ya!" by Outkast, "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers, "Best of You" by Foo Fighters, and "It Might Be Time" by Tame Impala. Of those songs, only "Hanging by a Moment" managed to get an eleventh week; it ultimately topped out at 14 weeks.
Fender and Dean have become two of my favorite artists in recent years. "Rein Me In" is Fender's third #1 on my chart, and it's Dean's second. Olivia Dean's other #1, "Man I Need" spent 5 weeks at the top in January and February of this year. That means Dean has had the #1 song on my chart for 15 out of 32 weeks so far this year. Her song "A Couple Minutes" also becomes her fourth top 40 hit from her wonderful album The Art of Loving, debuting at #33 this week.
"Rein Me In" was initially a solo track for Fender, appearing on his 2025 album People Watching. At his concert at London Stadium on June 6 of that year, Fender brought Dean out to perform the song, and the two performed it again on June 15 at Fender's hometown show at St. James' Park in Newcastle. A few days after that Newcastle performance, a rerecorded version of the song with Dean was released as a single. In December, the Dean version was included on the Deluxe Edition of People Watching along with a bunch of other unreleased songs.
Even though the title track from People Watching was also a #1 hit on my chart, I never really thought to check out the album, so I wasn't familiar with the Fender's original version of "Rein Me In". And I hadn't even listened to this version until I started seeing a couple SiriusXM stations regularly playing it. Fender and Dean have incredible chemistry on the track. While the original version is fine, Dean's verses and interactions with Fender add whole new dimensions to the song, and tells a story that's much more compelling than the original. It's resonating with me right now in ways not many songs are able to.
New versions of songs with guest vocalists are nothing new in pop music of course. Jennifer Lopez recorded "remixes" of the singles "I'm Real" and "Ain't It Funny" with Ja Rule that were essentially whole new songs and were remixes in name only. Those new versions worked because they both reached #1 while the original tracks might as well have not existed. (At one point in February 2002, the original version and Murder Remix of "Ain't It Funny" simultaneously occupied the lower reaches of my top 40.)
More recently, Tame Impala's Kevin Parker got the biggest hit of his career by taking "Dracula", a decent-sized hit in its own right, and adapting some of its verses for a remix with Blackpink member JENNIE. Both of those "Dracula" versions also reached my top 40; the original peaked at #9 late last year, while the JENNIE Remix just fell off my chart after peaking at #18. And I can't forget the other duet remix that reached the top this year: PinkPantheress and Zara Larsson's version of "Stateside" (or "Stateside + Zara Larsson" as most places refer to it), which got to #1 for 3 weeks in May and is currently at #25 this week.
My chart isn't the only place where "Rein Me In" has been dominating. It's currently in its 20th week at #1 in the United Kingdom, smashing the record for most weeks at #1 there. The previous record holder was "I Believe" by Frankie Laine, which held the #1 spot for 18 weeks in 1953. Since Official Charts began compiling the British pop charts in 1969, the record was 16 weeks, held by "Everything I Do (I Do It for You)" by Bryan Adams in 1991. Remarkably, the song also took 36 weeks before reaching the top. After the single was released, it lingered in the top 20 for pretty much its whole run before finally getting to #1. Since then, it's fallen back only for #1 debuts by other big deal artists that quickly got brushed aside: Harry Styles, Ariana Grande, Olivia Rodrigo, and Taylor Swift.
Whether "Rein Me In" gets an 11th week at the top likely depends on how I feel about the songs just below it right now. Moving up to a new peak of #2 is "Lost Boys" by Phoebe Bridgers. It's the first single from her new album Lost Weekend, which is out this Friday, so I'll probably be hearing the track a lot this week. Below that are the two other songs Fender and Dean have denied from the top: "See Out Loud" by Interpol and "Midnight Sun" by Zara Larsson. Death Cab for Cutie's "Riptides" at #5 did manage to sneak in a week at #1 back in June, but it also spent six total weeks at #2 behind "Rein Me In". I Built You a Tower is one of my favorite albums of 2026, and "Riptides" is certainly going to be in the mix for top song of 2026 come December.
Aside from "A Couple Minutes", the other debuting songs this week are "Self Aware" by Temper City, "One Thing at a Time" by Courtney Barnett, and "Get Away from Me (I Think I'll Love You Soon)" by Julia Jacklin. The Beaches' "Edge of the Earth" is technically the longest running song on the chart at 31 weeks. I say technically because 25 of those weeks came in 2024 when it was first promoted as a single, one of which was spent at #1. But just like Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" in 2022 after it was used in Stranger Things, it's gotten a surge of interest after being featured in a TV show, in this case Amazon's Off Campus (aka the straight Heated Rivalry). If we're not counting that one, then the longest running song on the chart is Cannons' "Starlight" in its 27th week on the chart.
You can see this week's chart and listen to a Spotify or Apple Music playlist with the songs here. And you can view the archived August 8, 2026 chart over on Crownnote.
Comments