The One Dance phenomenon: why Drake could be No 1 for eternity

The Canadian rapper’s challenge to chart-topping record-breakers Wet Wet Wet and Bryan Adams is a reflection of the way we consume music in the digital age

When this week’s charts are revealed, Drake’s One Dance could be one week away from Wet Wet Wet’s Love Is All Around as the second-longest consecutive stint held by a single at No 1. Add one more week, and it’ll be joint top alongside Bryan Adams’s (Everything I Do) I Do It For You.

Wet Wet Wet might have stayed there longer had they not intervened – worried that it become an albatross over their career – and deleted their single, meaning that when copies ran out, there would be no new CDs to restock. For artists fearing a similar fate, that’s impossible in the digital age: theoretically, One Dance could be No 1 for all eternity. It’s top of the US charts for a ninth week, and is getting about 460,000 streams on Spotify a day in the UK alone – 100,000 more than the song in second place (which is Too Good, also by Drake). Last week, One Dance had been streamed 79m times in the UK across all platforms.