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

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.

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

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

On hearing the news, Fender said he was “completely lost for words. Thank you so much to Olivia Dean and the fans for making this song the juggernaut that it is.”

Fender wrote Rein Me In for his album People Watching, 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.

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’s 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, “working myself up to a nice warm bliss”, after self-destructively ending a relationship.

“I’m talking about substance abuse and drinking too much to get the reason back, the reason for going through your day,” Fender has said. “It’s 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, ‘cause all good stories deserve embellishment. The ‘rein me in’ part kind of [means] your friends are gonna rein you in from drinking too much and going off the rails because you’re heartbroken and you’re dealing with it in a bad way.”

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. Her verse voices the woman who Fender’s protagonist walked away from, singing to him: “You’re so afraid of that heart inside your chest.”

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.

Rein Me In has also managed to buck a rule introduced in 2017 called “accelerated decline”, which was created to make more songs flow through the UK charts, 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 – generally causing a precipitous drop down the charts, even if it remains popular in real terms.

Rein Me In’s 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.

Jo Twist, chief executive of the UK music industry’s leading trade association, the British Phonographic Institute (BPI), said: “In an evolving world where we all consume music globally, it’s 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.”

The duet version of Rein Me In also won song of the year at the 2026 Brit awards.

Adams’s (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’s The Fly.

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, reached the top just five months after her previous one, her soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s film adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

The Guardian’s rock and pop critic Alexis Petridis on Rein Me In

When Sam Fender and Olivia Dean launched their re-recorded version of Rein Me In last summer – Dean appearing on stage to perform the song during Fender’s run of British stadium shows – 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.

Rein Me In certainly doesn’t 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’s I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). It’s got a singalong chorus, but even by the standards of Fender’s more anthemic Springsteen-inspired material – Seventeen Going Under or Hypersonic Missiles – it’s understated; a sweet tune with a vaguely country-ish lilt. The guitar part sounds like a banjo and the piano has a metallic “tack” sound, familiar from saloon-bar players in old westerns.

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

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 – a huge global hit, bolstered by a string of massively successful singles, the billion-streaming Man I Need among them – Dean’s 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.