Donald Clarke: Sam Fender and Olivia Dean have broken a chart record with Rein Me In. You know the one. Don’t you?

First things first. There is nothing clever about having heard of neither Sam Fender nor Olivia Dean. The news that those two British singers had, with their duet Rein Me In, broken the most durable record in UK chart history triggered the usual outbreak of performative ignorance. People over the age of 30 couldn’t wait to tell us all they wouldn’t recognise the pair if they burst through the French doors on an average Sunday afternoon. ‘Twas ever thus.Just a week ago, it was announced that Rein Me In – a mid-tempo lament for lost love and its sorry aftermath – had surpassed the record 18 weeks at UK number one achieved by Frankie Laine’s I Believe in 1953. Analysts saw it coming. Last month, the song beat the record for a British artist when it snuck past Wet Wet Wet’s 15 weeks with Love is All Around from 1994. Next Bryan Adams’s total of 16 weeks for (Everything I Do) I Do It for You in 1991 bit the dust.What is a Sam Fender? Where would one encounter an Olivia Dean? Aren’t I magnificent for maintaining distance from popular culture? These comments, in decades past, used to gather around new artists who produced cacophonic music that risked scaring the metaphorical horses. Or music suspected of being such. Have a look at footage, recently unearthed following Glen Hansard’s death, of Gay Byrne introducing The Frames on The Late Late Show in 1995. “Put your hands over your ears,” the host warns a wary audience. Later, after announcing a “CD and a T-shirt for everyone in the audience,” Byrne remarks: “There are those of you … who may not appreciate these gifts, but I do assure you your young offspring very certainly will.” It was The Frames. It wasn’t Insane Clown Posse.Anyway, there is nothing particularly threatening about either Fender or Dean. Though the former has a strong line in sociopolitical invective, the music plays like heartland rock filtered through a folkish sensibility. Dean, whose 2025 album The Art of Loving was a genuine smash, deals in a melodic school of pop and R&B. They are enormously popular. They write good songs. You probably should have heard of them. Here endeth the lesson.READ MOREThat said, there is no getting away from the reality that Rein Me In, originally recorded without Dean on Fender’s 2025 album People Watching, is not nearly so conspicuous as were Love is All Around or (Everything I Do) I Do It for You during those far-off summers. You couldn’t get away from either. Come to mention it, though I Believe was released long before my birth, I can still warble my way through every line. “I believe, for every drop of rain that falls a flower grows …” It feels as if it never fully left the ether.[ You think your pop music days are over, but then an artist like Olivia Dean comes alongOpens in new window ]Everything changed and it changed a long time ago. Indeed, by the time of the Wet Wet Wet cover and the Bryan Adams dirge, the golden age of the 45rpm single had passed. Nonetheless, almost everybody went to see the two films that spawned those hits: Everything I Do emerged from Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Love is all Around buoyed up Four Weddings and a Funeral. The monoculture still demonstrated its homogeneity by forking out for physical versions of the tunes long after the flicks had left the biggest screens.That era may as well have involved the sale of Edison’s phonographic cylinders for all it resembles the current arrangement. The chart now derives its results from a combination of downloads, physical media purchases and online streaming. The latter component, which allows in album tracks, has accounted for the biggest shift in chart habits. Recall how, following the appearance of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill in Stranger Things, that song became a number one hit in 2022.[ Think streaming music is more eco-friendly than plastic CDs? Think againOpens in new window ]New rules were brought in shortly after that to stop older album tracks dominating the top spots, but these could do nothing to halt the advance of Rein Me In. It became a constant accompaniment to TikTok videos. It got radio play. Last week it became the longest-running number-one single of all time in the UK. So how is it possible for so many people not to have heard it (or of it)? Blame the death of that monoculture mentioned above. Many of us have our culture curated by algorithms that point us in the direction of entertainment we already know we like. It is a long time since TV shows such as Top of the Pops offered a weekly gathering point for music enthusiasts. We are all now off in our own fenced-off digital areas. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It is just how it is.