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Chart Beat

Patrick Watson’s ‘Uh Oh’ Cracks the Top 20 on Billboard Canadian Albums Chart

The Montreal singer’s collaborative album hits No. 13 on the chart. Plus, country star Cameron Whitcomb notches a new entry with The Hard Way.

Patrick Watson

Patrick Watson

Courtesy Photo

Patrick Watson is continuing his impressive run of chart feats and streaming records with his new album.

The Montreal singer-songwriter’s recently released new record, Uh Oh (out now on Montreal indie label Secret City Records) debuts on Billboard Canadian Albums at No. 13, dated October 11.


Watson’s album meditates on the idea of life being a series of “uh ohs,” a phrase often uttered in response to moments of panic. According to the Polaris Music Prize-winner, the project came to mind when faced with the biggest “uh oh” a singer could endure: losing his voice. Unsure if or when he would be able to sing again, his new album took shape.

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Uh Oh is a collection of collaborations with artists that Watson wanted to hear sing. The majority of the tracklist includes Watson and his bandmates joined by a guest, ranging from veteran singer Martha Wainwright and close friend Charlotte Cardin to local Quebec artist Klô Pelgag and Portuguese singer MARO.

“Every singer has these different magical powers on this record, and each song kind of represents that,” he says.

He reflects on the situation of making music after losing his voice, saying: “I was like, ‘Oh, it’d be cool to write songs for all these different singers that I really want to hear sing – I’ll find my way out of this situation that way.’ Because my voice wasn’t supposed to come back. And when it did, I just thought having all these other singers featured was still a cooler idea for a record than me singing alone.”

Recently, Watson's “Je te laisserai des mots” became the first French-language song to cross one billion streams on Spotify, and experienced a surge after the season finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty. Though he's been making music for two and a half decades, Watson is one of Quebec's biggest recent success stories.

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Rising singer-songwriter Cameron Whitcomb is also hitting the Canadian Albums chart this week. His debut album, The Hard Way, arrives at No. 28.

The B.C.-native is having a major year. The singer, who first broke out as a contestant on American Idol in 2022, landed four straight singles on the Canadian Hot 100 – all before his debut full-length, which is now also charting.

After landing on Spotify and Amazon Music’s Artist to Watch lists, Whitcomb has received various accolades, including two 2025 CCMA awards and the CMA’s Jeff Walker Global Country Artist Award.

This month, he’s embarking on multiple sold-out shows across North America, where he is set to perform some of the album’s biggest singles, including “Quitter,” a charting success across the Billboard Canada Airplay charts, and “Options,” which climbed from No. 91 to No. 71 on this week's Canadian Hot 100.

At the top, The KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack sits at No. 1 for a second week, while British singer Olivia Dean’s The Art of Living earns this week's biggest debut, hitting No. 5 and Doja Cat's Vie arrives at No. 8, the only other new top 10 entry.

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Additional reporting by Stefano Rebuli

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Mariah Carey kicks off the 2025 holiday season.
Courtesy Photo

Mariah Carey kicks off the 2025 holiday season.

Pop

In This Season of Giving, Mariah Carey Shares Throwback Clip From 1994 Manifesting a Potential Christmas Classic One Day: ‘So Grateful’

MC only had to wait 25 years for her all-time holiday classic "All I Want For Christmas Is You" to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Mariah Carey is the undisputed Queen of Christmas. The pop singer has lorded over the holiday charts for the past six years with her ubiquitous wintertime classic “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” It seems hard to believe it now if you’ve been anywhere near a store since Halloween, but the yuletide favorite that was released in 1994 did not chart until 2000 and did not hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 until 2019, fully 25 years after it first hit our ears.

Now, as the holidays really ramp up, the best-selling Christmas song of all time in the U.S. seems like a no-brainer to top the charts every year. But on Tuesday (Dec. 9), MC gave thanks for how it all started in a throwback video she re-posted from a fan feed of an interview she did in 1994 in which she was asked if she hopes one of the songs from her first holiday album, that year’s Merry Christmas, might some day be as ubiquitous as such standards as “White Christmas” or “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.”

This article was first published by Billboard U.S.
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