Merry Christmas!  Yes, this is the Christmas chart, and you know what that means – everybody in their right mind runs a mile, leaving us with a two horse race between a charity record and a bloke who won X Factor but told everyone they should buy the charity record.  (Despite which, he was still ahead on iTunes for some of the week – so it wasn’t a complete thumping.)

But further down the chart, it’s a bit of a wasteland, truth be told.  Quite simply, releasing a record in the week before Christmas is almost entirely the province of charity records, novelty acts, and lunatics, giving us one of the stranger charts of the year.  All part of the glorious tapestry, though.

36.  Chris Rea – “Driving Home for Christmas” 
35.  Wham! – “Last Christmas” 

Two belated re-entries from the Christmas back catalogue.  “Driving Home for Christmas” was the lead track from an EP that Chris Rea released in 1988, but didn’t make the top 40 until the download era, when it achieved the dizzy heights of 33.  Even so, it keeps coming back (perhaps because a lot of people genuinely don’t own it).  “Last Christmas” spent five frustrating weeks at number 2 in Christmas 1984, stuck behind Band Aid.

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It’s the release week of the X Factor winner’s single!  Will it make number one?  Yes.  Of course it will.  Ooh, the tension.

37.  McFly – “Love is Easy”

This peaked at number 10 a few weeks back before plummetting out of the chart in the band’s traditional fashion, but it rebounds now thanks to an ITV special.

36.  Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen” 

Rebounding after it dropped out of the top 40 last week.

35.  Emeli Sande – “Clown”

This is Emeli Sande’s next single, which technically doesn’t come out until 23 December, but since it’s already available as an album track, it doesn’t matter.  She performed it on the X Factor final, which is why the pre-release promotion has now gone far enough to get her into the top 40 – though it was much higher up in the midweeks, so this is very much a post-TV surge.

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Well, hmm, yes.

There was meant to be a podcast up this weekend, but as Al explains elsewhere, it’s apparently completely inaudible, so we’ll be doing another one… ooh, probably midweek, the way things are looking.  And since I’ve been working this weekend and haven’t received some of last week’s books either, the reviews are going to slip too.

Fortunately, though, the great thing about the midweek chart is that it lets you write a big chunk of these chart posts in advance, so let’s do this instead.  We’re still in the quiet period pre-Christmas, when the regular release schedule is winding down and the seasonal releases aren’t out yet.  That means a dearth of activity at the top end of the chart, some oddities floating around the lower end, and a bit of a disaster for the career of Tulisa Contostavlos.

39.  Burns – “Lies”

Before we get to the oddities, an ordinary record pops its head around the door.

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One Direction get elbowed aside after a single week by perhaps the most boring number one of the year.  But first, rock classics on iTunes.

40.  AC/DC – “Highway To Hell”

You might not have realised this, but AC/DC apparently weren’t available on iTunes until this week.  The charming luddites have finally succumbed, and so a bit of a cherrypicking of their back catalogue is going on this week.  There’s one more coming up.

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I haven’t had a chance to properly read most of this week’s X-books yet, so in the meantime, here’s this week’s chart post to be getting on with.

39.  Little Mix – “Wings” 

The number 1 single from September.  It’s back because of the overspill of hype from their new single, which we’ll come to in a bit.

37.  Example – “Close Enemies”

This is the follow-up to “Say Nothing”, which reached number 2 in September.  Considering that it’s had over a month of promotion, number 37 is hugely weak (and since it was 31 in the midweeks, it’s a fair bet it won’t be going further).

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You may or (more likely) may not be interested to know that this is the week that the Official Charts Company chooses to deem the sixtieth anniversary of the chart.  Strictly speaking, it’s a bit of a fudge.  The current “official” chart, which is official in the sense that it’s recognised by the British record industry, actually dates from 1969.  Before that, there were various unofficial and frequently contradictory charts.  But because of the obvious desirability of having a list of “official” number 1s stretching back to the dawn of rock and roll, the OCC recognises two of the earlier charts as being retroactively official.  So what actually happened sixty years ago was the first appearance of the NME chart – though even that’s a rather grand description of a bloke ringing round some record shops and preparing a top 12 (it was meant to be a top ten, but the sample size was so low that there were several ties).

But hey, from small acorns and so forth.

40.  Pink – “Try”

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The first rule of Robbie Williams Club is: Do not talk about “Rudebox”.  The second rule of Robbie Williams Club is: DO NOT TALK ABOUT “RUDEBOX”.

But first.

40.  Hot Natured & Ali Love – “Benediction”

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Looks like we’re back in a phase of new entries going straight to number one each week.  Rihanna’s “Diamonds” turns out to have been a bit front-loaded, dropping to 4 in its second week out.  It’s a grower, though, so perhaps it’ll have a resurgence.

Before we get to the chart proper – yes, the Rolling Stones did release a new single last week, and no, it’s not on the charts (even though it’s surprisingly decent for a Rolling Stones single made after 1980).  That’s because it’s being offered as an advance download for people pre-ordering their upcoming compilation album, and as such, it’s ineligible for the chart.  Judging from the iTunes chart, if it had been eligible, it would probably have been somewhere in the 30s.

On with the chart.

40.  Skrillex (feat. Sirah) – “Bangarang”

This has been hovering around the lower end of the chart for ages and never seems to entirely go away.

37.  Nicki Minaj – “Starships”

This was covered by Carolynne Poole on the first X Factor live show. Slightly surprising to see it in the chart, considering she came last.  Minaj’s current single “Va Va Voom” is a non-mover at 20.

26.  Disclosure (feat. Sam Smith) – “Latch”

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It’s a podcast week, so don’t forget to check out the podcast thread one post below!  And now…

Psy only managed one week at number 1, largely because he had the misfortune to run smack into a strong week for new releases – his sales actually went up from the previous week.  He winds up at an eminently respectable number 2, and he looks set to hang around the top 10 for a few weeks yet.

Meanwhile…

37.  Adele – “I Can’t Make You Love Me”

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Let’s stick with the countdown format, shall we?  But before we start, a brief diversion.

You may have heard in the news that Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s apology for breaking an election pledge on tuition fees two years ago was “racing up the charts” in an autotuned remix.  This was, of course, complete nonsense.  The record exists – and it does indeed have 1.8m views on YouTube – but at no stage was it actually selling in any significant quantities.  Naturally, this didn’t stop plenty of journalists from talking about it as if it somehow mattered.  Its chart position is number 104.  And to put that into perspective, there’s a knock-off cover version of Lucy Spraggan’s “Last Night” at number 74.

35.  fun. (feat Janelle Monae) – “We Are Young”

A re-entry after two weeks spent at number 42.  Nothing to see here, move along.

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