But on the other hand, this new European musical landscape without the UK acts shows an interesting upcoming urban branch. Out of the 75 acts currently in the chart, 33 could be labelled as ‘urban/rap’. Mostly they are at the lower end of the chart, so they amass together only 14% of the total chart points.
The pop genre is doing much better with 26 acts collecting together 43% of the pie. Not far behind are the acts, which could be described as ‘dance/electronic’, with 40% for only ten acts. Helpful for the huge dance score are top positions for Spanish dance producer HVME at #1 and Irish producer Shane Codd at #3.
With over a year of Covid-19 restrictions, you might have expected that ‘rock/indie’ is having a hard time. There are only six acts in the Top 75, and left for them are only the crumbles of the pie with 3% of the total chart points. But with summer festivals resuming and venues re-opening the worst might be over by now and rock acts might find more fans in other European countries soon.
Three new entries emerge this month, with no rock acts in sight. At #49 Italian-Brazilian dance producers DMNDS enter thanks to the success of their summer anthem Calabria on Dutch dance indie Strange Fruits. The famous saxophone sample of the track was originally used by Danish producer Rune in 2003 – currently, he is more famous under the name Kölsch. Two years later, Italian remixers Nari & Milani made a so-called ‘mash-up’ version with the same sax sample and the vocals of Destination Unknown by Alex Gaudino ft. Crystal Waters and their hit Destination Calabria was born. DMNDS are based in Paris and therefore labelled as French for this chart, but the track can now already be heard in Scandinavia, The UK, Hungary and the G/S/A-countries.
Santos is the urban outfit for pop singer Nico Santos, who had chart success with Rooftop (Universal). Now he teamed up with rappers Sido and Samra for Leere Hände (“Empty Hands”) on Universal, popping up at #71. This German-sung single is also popular in other German-speaking counties Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
And the last new entry comes in at #73. There we find the so-called French ‘drill rapper’ Gazo. His talent was discovered by French R’n’b-singer (Maitre) Gims, who is famous for songs like J’Me Tire. Gazo‘s tracks like Kassav and Haine & Sex (both Sony) from his mixtapes are crossing over to other French-speaking countries, but also to Germany, Slovakia and the UK.
