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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I’m starting to wonder if people have given up on releasing new singles.

1. Adele – “Easy On Me”

Two weeks. Adele’s longest-running number one was “Someone Like You” (five non-consecutive weeks in 2011). So that’s a way off. But it heads up a static top four, with two former number 1s making up the rest of the top 3 – and the rest of the top 10 is just records that have passed their peak shuffling places around. It’s not like the challengers are queuing up.

15. The Swedish House Mafia & The Weeknd – “Moth to a Flame”

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Now this is something different.

1. Adele – “Easy On Me”
25. Adele – “When We Were Young”
34. Adele – “Someone Like You”

Adele hasn’t released anything since 2016, and her last single, “Water Under the Bridge”, reached number 39. Admittedly, it wasn’t exactly heavily promoted. Still – five years is a long time, and you could be forgiven for thinking that fourteen years into her career, Adele might become an elder statesman on the album chart.

Quite the opposite. A new Adele single, it turns out, is huge. The previous weekly streaming record was 16.9 million; “Easy On Me” shatters it, at 24 million. The other two Adele singles in the chart aren’t B-sides or tracks from the album (which isn’t out yet). People have just been inspired to go out and listen to her back catalogue. They aren’t the obvious choices, either – “Someone Like You” was a number 1 in 2011, but “When We Were Young” wasn’t one of her biggest hits; it got to number 9 in 2015.

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At last, deliverance is upon us.

1. Elton John & Dua Lipa – “Cold Heart”

In its 9th week on the top 40, and following three weeks at number 2, “Cold Heart” climbs to the top and spares us all a sixteenth week of Ed Sheeran. Bryan Adams remains unmatched.

I explained all this back when “Cold Heart” first charted, but it’s the latest in a series of tracks by the Australian trio Pnau, constructing new dance tracks from chunks of the Elton John back catalogue. In this case, that’s supplemented by original vocals from Dua Lipa, but still sticking to Elton John elements. The main sources for “Cold Heart”, and the most immediately recognisable, are “Rocket Man” and “Sacrifice”, but it also draws on two more obscure tracks, “Kiss the Bride” and (in the fade out) the album track “Where’s the Shoorah?”

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After a few fairly quiet weeks on the singles chart, here’s an absolutely dead one!

1. Ed Sheeran – “Shivers”

Four weeks at number one, and it was preceded by eleven weeks for Sheeran’s “Bad Habits” (currently at number 6). So Ed Sheeran has now been at number one for 15 weeks, which matches Drake’s run in 2016. Of course, Drake did it with just one song – “One Dance” – but it’s still an uncommon level of dominance. For the next target, you’re going back to 1991, when Bryan Adams spent 16 weeks at number 1 with “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.

Number 2 is still “Cold Heart” by Elton John and Dua Lipa, which has been stuck there for three weeks now.

32. Billie Eilish – “No Time To Die”

So here’s an artefact of the pandemic. This is the theme tune to the new Bond film… and it was originally released last February, when the promotion was just starting to ramp up. It spent a week at number 1 on release, and managed ten weeks in the top 40. It now re-enters a year-and-a-half later. Her current single, “Happier Than Ever”, also climbs back into the top 10, sitting at 9.

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