Welcome to the strangest chart of the year.

As I’ve explained before, the British take the Christmas Number One inexplicably seriously.  This made a degree of sense when people bought singles as stocking fillers, and the Christmas week was one of the biggest sales of the year.  But the idea doesn’t go away.  A generation grew up being told that the race for the Christmas Number One was a really, really big deal, and it’s stuck with them.

For years, however, the Christmas Number One has been dominated by the X Factor winners’ singles, which were always timed to enter at the top of the Christmas chart.  This annoyed a lot of people, which is why 2009 saw a Facebook campaign launch “Killing In the Name” by Rage Against The Machine to the top of the charts.  (Normal service was resumed in 2010.)

But this year is different.  This year, the X Factor single came out a week earlier than usual, timed to reach number one in the week before Christmas.  And that leaves the way for other people to have a go.

In fact, as it turns out, the X Factor schedule change was something of a red herring.  Viewing figures are down this year; Little Mix were one of the lower selling winners.  Even if it had come out in Christmas week, it would have been squashed flat by this year’s Christmas number one.

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And lo, there was an entirely predictable number one single.  The 2011 series of X Factor is over, and the triumphant winners are Little Mix, who receive the dubious reward of recording a cover version of “Cannonball”.

As I write this, they haven’t released the official video – though it’s a fairly safe bet that it will be a mixture of audition footage, the band standing in a studio in front of a back-projected screen of moving landscapes, and a pause just before the rousing key change to insert their victory announcement.

In the meantime, here they are on the final.

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We have something of a surprise at number 1, as  “Wishing On A Star” by the X Factor Finalists fails to spend a second week at the top, despite having no major competition.  That leaves the way clear for 2009’s X Factor alumni Olly Murs’ “Dance With Me Tonight”, which has already spent a fortnight locked at number 2, and now gives him a third number 1 to join “Please Don’t Let Me Go” and “Heart Skips A Beat”.  It’s not very good, but here it is anyway.

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It took them long enough.  But after all those weeks stuck behind Rihanna, The X Factor finally gets a number one single again.  Yes, they’ve brought out the big guns – it’s the annual charity single by the finalists.  When Remembrance Sunday came and went without a charity single, I wondered whether they were giving it a miss this year.  Turns out, they’ve just moved on from soldiers.  It’s children this year.  You like children, don’t you?  And to make extra specially sure that it definitely goes to Number 1, the single also features X Factor alumni JLS and One Direction.

The song this year is “Wishing On A Star”.  The video is the same as every year, except with children this time.  In a year’s time, when this shows up on the “every number one of the 2010s” marathons on the music channels, we’ll be able to play “who was that again?”

It goes without saying that it’s not very good – charity singles rarely are – but by the standards of X Factor charity releases, I guess it’s one of the better ones.  Frankly, though, charity singles don’t exist to be bought on merit.  They’re intended as social events.  You buy them as a token of support.  Judging them by conventional standards misses the point.

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So far this year, we haven’t had a chart that was dominated by records associated with the X Factor.  Not so coincidentally, ratings are down this year – albeit from stratospheric to merely very good indeed.  But if you’ve been waiting for a chart dominated by the Spawn of Cowell, this would be it.  Kind of.

First, however… Rihanna continues to defy gravity, as “We Found Love” remains at number 1, for a combined total of six weeks at number 1.  Last week I claimed that five weeks was the biggest total of the year.  That was wrong, because I forgot that “Someone Like You” by Adele also reached five weeks with an interruption.  Thoughtfully, by hanging on for another week, Rihanna has rendered me retroactively correct.  The last record to make seven weeks was “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis, at the tail end of 2007 – I don’t rate her chances of matching that, though, as her iTunes sales finally seem to be fading.

Two tracks from her new album also make the charts.  Number 25 is the title track “Talk That Talk”, which has also got Jay-Z on it.  No video, obviously, but her record company have put about half the album on YouTube as audio files.  And number 39 is “You Da One”, which is in the other half, so I’ll leave you to search it out yourselves.  Together with her guest appearance on “Take Care” by Drake (number 9), Rihanna once again accounts for 10% of the chart.

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If I’m not writing reviews, let’s see if I can get this up insanely early instead.  (Ah, midweek chart update, you make this so much easier…)  Settle down, because there’s a lot of videos in this one.

After last week’s snoozefest, this week’s new releases are a decidedly more interesting crop.  There are also tons of them.  But there’s one thing in common with last week’s chart – once again, a boy band who were number 1 in the midweeks have fallen short in the second half of the week and missed the number 1 slot by quite some way.  We’ll come back to that.

Remarkably, “We Found Love” by Rihanna is still number 1.  That’s now five weeks in total, which in the current market is sheer dominance.  The last record to spend five weeks at number 1 (admittedly in a single run) was “I Kissed A Girl” by Katy Perry in 2008.

That leaves the highest new entry to come in at number two – tying in nicely with my wrestling post, since it’s also being used as the theme for this year’s survivor series – is “Good Feeling” by Flo Rida.  Unexpectedly, this isn’t bad.  Naturally, there is an explanation for that, and I’ll come to that, because it’s quite an entertaining diversion in its own right.

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Rarely has a week with so many new releases been so utterly dull.  There are seven new entries (plus one big climber), but with one exception, they’ve all dropped sharply on the midweeks.

In a display of unusual staying power, “We Found Love” by Rihanna returns to number 1 in its sixth week on release, having moved 1-1-1-3-2-1.

(The song starts at 0:50.)

This is a little unexpected, because the midweek charts had “Take A Chance on Me” by JLS in the lead.  And the X Factor’s only successful band has a good track record for making number 1.  But the second single from their new album is just a generically forgettable mid-tempo pop dirge.  It’s inoffensive.  It’s slightly above average.  But the initial sales from the fanbase clearly didn’t hold up, since it winds up at number 2, and the midweeks show it dropping to 7.

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Unexpectedly, the recent outbreak of chart stability seems to be continuing.  The midweeks showed a new number one, but as it turns out “Read All About It” by Professor Green holds on for a second week.  Judging from iTunes, it won’t manage a third – sales were actually down sharply this week, but that’s starting from one of the highest first-week sales of the year.

Even more surprisingly, Rihanna’s “We Found Love” is back up to 2, and it’s currently at the top of the iTunes chart – so it’s entirely possible it could yet return to number 1 for a fourth week.

All of which must be very disappointing to the record which was number 1 in the midweeks – “With Ur Love” by Cher Lloyd ft Mike Posner.

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After the hectic turnover of number one singles during the summer, Rihanna’s three-week run brought a degree of sanity back to the proceedings.  But now, with that momentary breather behind us, we can get back to the rapid turnover.

The new number one is “Read All About It” by Professor Green featuring Emeli Sande.  This is the lead single from Green’s second album, and it’s his first number one.  It’s also something of a change of tack for him.

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After all those weeks of rapid turnover, we finally have a proper number one single, as “We Found Love” by Rihanna ft Calvin Harris holdings on for a third week.  It was at number two on the midweeks but pulled back ahead on Thursday.  Will it manage a fourth?  Probably not – but it does now have a proper video, so the added airplay on the music channels could make a difference.

The unfortunate record which was ahead in the midweeks but turned out to have frontloaded its sales was “Lightning” by the Wanted, just missing out on their third number one.  As usual with the Wanted, it’s unashamedly targetted at 13-year-old girls, but there’s nothing wrong with that.  Not sure I’d have rhymed “frightening” and “lightning” quite so prominently, but that aside, it’s a decent enough record.

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