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The Chart Show: Learn from our Chart stars!

Laura Marling performs a Live Virtual Session from her home in London.
Laura Marling performs a Live Virtual Session from her home in London.The Current

by Mark Wheat

May 21, 2020

Brand new at nineteen, Laura Marling is one of the artists, that include Johnny Marr and Ed O'Brien of Radiohead, that have gone online during the lockdown to teach guitar, in their style.

There's still no official release date for the new Margo Price album. It was supposed to come out May 8th, but is now slated as a summer release, because, as Margo said, she wants to tour around the new songs! She was due to be down in the Dominican Republic this week playing the "All The Best Fest" and she's just released a shiny new video for this track in our basement space.

Last year on the review collation site Metacritic, the top five albums all scored in the mid nineties out of 100. Sometimes a big new re-issue can get a perfect score but I've never seen a brand new album do it until Fiona Apple's Fetch The Bolt Cutters, an extraordinary performance so far, and back at the top of our chart for a second week.

If you were wondering what Nada Surf are up to in the downtime, Matthew tweeted yesterday, "I'm totally in love with the german shepherd in After Life on Netflix" ...is it a dog he's referring to?! They're also staying defiantly optimistic, being one of the last bands to play a big show in Paris on March 11th, they're planning on resuming their tour on July 4th at the Parc Expo in France? They bounce back onto our chart as the highest new entry at #8.

Two inductees to The Chart Hall Of Fame this week, after being on for ten weeks; Car Seat Headrest for the third time and Phoebe Bridgers for the very first. She just released another single this week and news of her unique version of a 'World Tour'!

You would think that Gorillaz, stuck at ten again, would be a perfect virtual gig giving band, being at least partially... animated! So Damon Albarn, sporting a very none-Brit-Pop-God-looking beard did it a different way for Kimmel this week.

Slipping eight places to #11 are Waxahatchee. When I did a virtual session with Katie of the band her partner Kevin Morby joined her for a final song, a cover of a Jason Molina track. He died in 2013 after releasing a mountain of work with Songs:Ohio, Magnolia Electric Company and under his own name. But there was still a lot left over and now some of it is coming out on August 7, on a nine song album that he wrote in 2008 while living in London.

Submit your Chart Show ballot this week for a chance to win Rhino Records' ten classic album digital giveaway. Giveaway includes full album mp3 downloads of: David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name, Fleetwood Mac - Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III, Little Feat - Waiting For Columbus, Joni Mitchell - Court And Spark, The Monkees - Good Times, John Prine - John Prine, The Replacements - Let It Be, Wilco - A.M., and Warren Zevon - Warren Zevon.