A slightly odd week as we ease back into the regular chart schedule.  There are a couple of full scale new releases at the top, but mostly it’s album tracks that are soon to be promoted to single status, starting their climb into the top 40.

37.  Little Mix – “Change Your Life”

A vague and non-specific self-affirmation song about believing in yourself and such forth, with added references to sticking together and ignoring the critics?  Why, it must be randomly assembled X Factor girl band Little Mix, doing what such bands do!  (And – “Become what you’ve always known”?  Really?)

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After a long, long run of weird Christmassy charts and dead weeks, we’re finally back to something approaching normal.  Except with a singing actress, a lot of underachievers at the lower end, and an upset at number one.

38.  Dizzee Rascal – “Bassline Junkie”

This is actually the lead track from a mixtape EP from Dizzee’s personal record label, and it’s been out since January 1st, but for some reason the public didn’t seem to notice until the middle of this week, when it suddenly started climbing the iTunes chart.  It’s a bit of a return to his underground roots, even though it’s still emphatically a dancefloor track.  But it’s got the best video we’ve had in ages.  That first minute is fantastic.  (The other guy is a comedian called Eric Lampaert, if you’re wondering.)  I expect this to go further, now that people have finally noticed it’s out.

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We’ll get to the rest of last week’s comics in due course; for now, let’s get up to speed on the chart.  The music industry’s festive season shutdown is finally over, and normal service is resumed!  Well, kind of.

And the first new entry of 2013 is, appropriately enough…

39.  Matrix & Futurebound (featuring Baby Blue) – “Magnetic Eyes”

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Listen, what’s that sound?  Why, it’s the sound of tumbleweed, as virtually nothing happens on the top 40 for the second week running!  The result is a chart with no new entries whatsoever, and four re-entries.

40.  Rudimental featuring John Newman & Alex Clare – “Not Giving In”
36.  Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen”
35.  Florence + The Machine – “Spectrum”

These are all just records that were still floating around outside the top 40, and thus move up to fill the space left by the Christmas singles.  Nothing more to be said.

15.  Calvin Harris featuring Tinie Tempah – “Drinking From The Bottle”

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Welcome to 2013!  This is the dead week of the charts, when nothing came out and virtually nothing happened.  There’s one re-entry at the bottom end, but that’s just existing material filling the space left by the sales of Christmas songs coming to their habitually abrupt halt.  And with the big push for the Christmas number one out of the way, the Justice Collective single also drops to 5, leaving James Arthur to return to number one with “Impossible”, thus also making himself the first number one artist of 2013.

So, since I can hardly fill a whole post with that, let’s take this opportunity to look back over the number one singles of 2012, some of which you have quite probably already forgotten about, due in no small part to a resurgence of the phenomenon of well-timed new releases with weeks of advance promotion taking turns to have a single week at number one.  Most of these records, it should be said, proceeded to hang around the chart for a good long while afterwards.  But records with a dominant run at the top have been rare, and the year has seen a total of 36 number one singles.  Here they all are.

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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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