The first post-Christmas chart is always… weird. Last week the chart was dominated by Christmas records, based on streams over Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. This week… all gone. The number one, Ed Sheeran and Elton John’s Christmas record, drops straight out of the top 100, and a veritable horde of songs flood in from the lower reaches to fill the space. Most of them are tracks that had been around before Christmas. But there are some genuine new entries here too – some new releases, some tracks that couldn’t make any headway until the holidays were over.

1. Adele – “Easy on Me”

After a four week gap, “Easy On Me” returns to number one for its eighth week. To give you an idea of how insane this week’s chart is, it’s climbing from number 38. Anyway, time for our first new entry of 2022! Normal service is resumed!

4. Carolina Gaitán, Mauro Castillo, Adassa, Rhenzy Feliz, Diane Guerrero & Stephanie Beatriz – “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”

Ah.

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The final chart of 2021 covers the chart week 24-30 December – which means it includes both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Although the streams of Christmas songs generally fall off a cliff after Christmas itself, they do so well on the big day that this is another Christmas-dominated top 40. Next week, almost all of these Christmas records will vanish, and we’ll have a massive influx of new singles.

1. Ed Sheeran & Elton John – “Merry Christmas”

Well, of course people weren’t going to keep buying the LadBaby version. That track exists to be bought as part of a charity campaign or just as part of a narrative – it doesn’t exist to be listened to, and so it places this week at number 29. To be fair to him, that’s better than he managed in the previous two years, when he dropped from number 1 straight out of the top 40.

The proper version of the song returns to number 1 for a third week, but given the festive angle (and the fact it’s been out a month already) I doubt it’ll manage a fourth.

28. Fireboy DML & Ed Sheeran – “Peru”

This is an actual, regular new entry – it’s a new mix of a track that topped the specialist Afrobeat charts in November, but which hadn’t previously made the top 40.

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If you liked the years of the X Factor winner’s single, you’ll love LadBaby!

1. LadBaby featuring Ed Sheeran & Elton John – “Sausage Rolls for Everyone”

Mark Hoyle has had the Christmas number one for the last three years, with essentially the same joke: do a cover version of a well known song but change the lyrics to be about sausage rolls. By having a fourth Christmas number one, Hoyle has matched the record set by the Beatles, although of course they did it organically, in the days before the Christmas Number One was a big part of British popular culture (for reasons now lost in the mists of time to younger generations). Hoyle is doing it as a campaign record.

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Just one more chart week to go before Christmas… which means this is a dead week. Not the Christmas chart yet, so too early for the records that want a shot at number one. But swamped with Christmas back catalogue, so nobody else is releasing new music against it.

1. Ed Sheeran & Elton John – “Merry Christmas”

Two weeks. This is starting to grow on me slightly, but I’ll be interested to see if it can really keep charting in future years. It heads up a completely static top 7.

25. D-Block Europe featuring AJ Tracey – “Make You Smile”

This is… an anomaly. It’s not even a single, but a track from the Home Alone 2 mixtape, climbing from last week’s 42. It’s obviously positioned well to capitalise after the Christmas tracks vanish in two weeks time. “Overseas” is at still at number 12.

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Well, this is… unsurprising.

1. Ed Sheeran & Elton John  – “Merry Christmas”

You don’t often get major artists making an unabashed bid for a Christmas number one, but this is a Christmas single of the old school. It’s okay, I guess?  The hook’s not quite there. I can’t honestly see it becoming an annual return visitor – or at least, it’ll probably do as well as that Coldplay single – but time will tell.

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It’s the most predictable time of the year!

1. Adele – “Easy On Me”

That’s seven weeks at number one. As we’ll see, the march of the Christmas singles is upon us – there are no new entries this week without a Christmas element. She’s almost certain to get shouldered aside next week, since Ed Sheeran has a Christmas single out. The other two Adele tracks, “I Drink Wine” and “Oh My God”, are at 5 and 6.

16. The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl – “Fairytale of New York”

Well, here we go again. This reached number 2 on release in 1987, and it’s charted every Christmas since 2005. Last year it spent five weeks in the top 10, peaking at number 4.

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I mean, it’s not exactly a shock, is it?

1. Adele – “Easy on Me”
2. Adele – “Oh My God”
4. Adele – “I Drink Wine”

Adele’s fourth album, “30”, duly enters as her fourth number one, and would be dominating the singles charts if it weren’t for the three song limit. “Easy on Me” spends its sixth week at number one, while the two tracks that lead the pack are “Oh My God” and “I Drink Wine”.

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Once again, the singles chart has to thank the album market for providing it with some activity.

1. Adele – “Easy On Me”

That’s five weeks, her joint biggest hit. “Someone Like You” also managed five weeks total, with a week’s interruption. The record that knocked it off for a week was “Don’t Hold Your Breath” by Nicole Scherzinger, which I haven’t thought about for over ten years until I looked it up just now.

Adele’s album is out today, so we can assume she’ll have two more singles on next week’s chart.

3. Taylor Swift – “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)”
18. Taylor Swift – “State of Grace (Taylor’s Version)”
22. Taylor Swift – “Red (Taylor’s Version)”

Here we are again with Taylor Swift’s project of re-recording her back catalogue. At the start of the year, she released a re-issue of “Fearless”, her 2009 album; “Love Story” got to 12, “Mr Perfectly Fine” to 30. “Wildest Dreams”, released out of sequence as a single, got to 25. But now we’ve reached the second album release, “Red”, which was her first number 1 album in 2012, and the start of an uninterrupted run of number one albums that continues this week with… er, “Red (Taylor’s Version)”.

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At last, a busy week.

1. Adele – “Easy on Me”

Not right at the top, admittedly. The top three is all non-movers, with Ed Sheeran at both 2 and 3 (and he’s at 6 too). “Easy on Me” gets a fourth week at number 1; it still needs a fifth to match 2011’s “Someone Like You”.

5. Arrdee – “Flowers (Say My Name)”

This is Arrdee’s third top ten hit and the biggest – marginally, following two number 6s. It is what it is. The chorus draws on both “Flowers” by Sweet Female Attitude (number 2 in 2000) and “Say My Name” by Destiny’s Child (number 3 the same year). “Flowers” is a heavily referenced track – Nathan Dawe’s cover reached number 12 in 2019, and Pinkpantheress used it on “Pain” earlier this year, which got to 35.

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Ed Sheeran has an album out, but fortunately we’ve heard most of the hits already.

1. Adele – “Easy On Me”

Three weeks. That matches the run of “Hello”.

4. Ed Sheeran – “Overpass Graffiti”

This is the release-week single from his album “=”, which naturally becomes his fifth number one. All of his albums since 2011 have reached number 1 – that’s “+”, “÷”, “x” and “No 6 Collaborations Project”. The two previous singles, “Shivers” and “Bad Habits”, rebound to 2 and 3 respectively, so no doubt if we didn’t have the three-song rule, he’d be swamping the charts. I’m slightly surprised that the final single didn’t get a number one, but I guess it’s diluted somewhat by the release of a whole album of material.

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