No mainstream radio play, but still topped the UK Albums Chart — that's what The Reytons frontman Jonny Yerrell is saying, and it might sound like a boast, but this band from Rotherham has genuinely pulled off two chart-topping albums going this route.
The band's self-released fourth studio album "A Love Letter To A Broken Town" debuted at No. 1 on the Official UK Albums Chart on August 14, while also topping the Official Vinyl Albums Chart. This marks their second time hitting No. 1, following 2023's "What's Rock And Roll?", cementing Rotherham's name as synonymous with chart-topping once again.
Yerrell put it plainly in a statement: "This has to be the first album in history to top the official chart without a single mainstream radio play." He added something that sounded more like a manifesto: "I'm not changing anything, none of this is fake, it's just us, Rotherham, and The Reytons." On Instagram, the band dedicated the No. 1 album to "the graft, the dreamers, and the ordinary people who taught us everything."
The battle for the top spot wasn't exactly easy. FLO released their second album "Therapy At The Club" the same week, landing at No. 5; other new entries this week included Role Model (No. 6), Overmono (No. 12), and Man/Woman/Chainsaw (No. 33). The Reytons managed to beat out this lineup not through radio exposure, but on the strength of the fanbase they'd already built up.
Rewind to 2021, when their debut album "Kids Off The Estate" barely scraped into the top 10. After 2023's "What's Rock And Roll?" gave them their first No. 1, their third album "Ballad Of A Bystander" only managed No. 2 — though the band publicly stated at the time that their actual sales had outpaced James Arthur's, who took the top spot that week. "A Love Letter To A Broken Town" effectively settles that score.
Yerrell talked about this self-taught approach in a 2023 NME interview, saying it really started because they had no other options. "We're proud that we've been able to do this ourselves, and it's a reminder to everyone that you can too," he said. "Because we've been turned down so many times over the years, we had to figure out our own way around it and make things happen on our own terms. We had no financial backing, we started with basically no money, and we built up to where we are now step by step." He boiled down the entire Reytons model to one idea: it's a community, and he wants everyone to feel like they're part of it, and to believe they can do it too.
Ahead of the album's release, the band dropped singles "Jukebox" and "Busker's Paradise" as a warm-up. Their first-ever world tour kicks off again in October across the UK and Ireland, with a stop at London's Alexandra Palace, before heading to Asia and Australia next year.
