He may have nabbed the silver medal at the Eurovision final on Saturday night, but UK entrant Sam Ryder could potentially be about to come in first in his latest musical battle.
Following Sam’s success in Turin, it was revealed on Sunday that his song Space Man was on course to chart at number eight in this week’s UK singles chart.
This would mark the first top 10 for a UK Eurovision song since Scooch’s Flying The Flag (For You), but it turns out the song is even more popular with British music fans than first thought.
On Monday, the Official Charts Company shared a second update on the impending chart, revealing Sam had been boosted up five positions to the number three slot overnight, making him a real contender for this week’s number one.
Just two artists, Harry Styles and Cat Burns, stand in between Sam and the coveted number one position, with only 340 sales in between the Space Man and Go singers.
Excitingly, at the time of writing, Sam is also sitting at the top of both the UK Spotify and iTunes charts.
Bookmakers Coral has also said its odds of Ryder reaching number one had continued to increase, and are currently at 1/2.
However, the OCC has noted that if the Tik Tok star does want to topple Harry Styles – whose hit As It Was has been at the top of the charts for the past six weeks – he’ll need to “sustain his current momentum”, which has been building since his performance on Saturday night for the rest of the week.
If he does manage to top the UK singles charts, it’ll be the first Eurovision song to do so since Gina G’s Ooh Aah… Just A Little Bit, which competed back in 1998.
At this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, Sam’s Space Man was named as the international juries’ top entrant of the year, though televoting pushed the Ukrainian group Kalush Orchestra to the top of the scoreboard with their song Stefania.
His second-place finish gave the UK our best Eurovision result in over 20 years, and he unsurprisingly received a hero’s welcome after returning from Italy on Sunday.
Watch the Space Man music video below: