Sam Fender said he was “completely lost for words” after Rein Me In reached 19 weeks at UK No 1. The single, with Olivia Dean, has now done what no other UK No 1 has managed since 1953.
Rein Me In and I Believe
19 weeks at the summit pushed Rein Me In past Frankie Laine’s I Believe, which had held the mark for 73 years after reaching No 1 in 1953 and spending a total of 18 weeks on the chart. Fender thanked Dean and the fans for making the song “the juggernaut that it is,” a blunt line that fits the scale of the result better than any sales pitch could.
16 weeks was as close as Bryan Adams came with Everything I Do I Do It For You in 1991. Wet Wet Wet followed with 15 weeks at No 1 in 1994, Drake matched that with One Dance in 2016, and Ed Sheeran reached 14 weeks with Shape of You in 2017. Rein Me In did not just beat them; it moved the record out of reach by one more week.
Olivia Dean’s new verse
June 2025 is the turning point in the timeline. That is when the new version of Rein Me In was released after Fender wrote it for People Watching, the album that arrived in February 2025. The track was re-recorded with a new verse by Olivia Dean, who sings, “You’re so afraid of that heart inside your chest.”
36 weeks after release, the song finally hit No 1 and then kept coming back to the top spot after short spells by Harry Styles, Olivia Rodrigo, Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift. Fender had already put out five other singles from People Watching, and the title track reached No 4 while spending 43 weeks in the Top 100, so Rein Me In was never just a stray hit.
2017 rules and No 2
2017 is the year the chart changed. The song still ran away from the old record even under accelerated decline rules that were meant to stop long stays at No 1, which makes this 19-week run feel less like a normal hit cycle and more like a song that kept resetting the same race.
This week, Rein Me In held off Shakira and Burna Boy, whose official World Cup song Dai Dai stayed at No 2. The question now is less about whether the record falls again than about how a track that kept getting pushed aside still found its way back to the summit each time.
