It’s the Christmas chart!  No, really, it is – because the UK defines the Christmas number one as whatever record is number 1 on Christmas Day.  This year Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, and so the Christmas number one is determined by the charts announced on the preceding Sunday – covering sales from 12-18 December.  All rather artificial – next week’s chart will be a better guide to what people actually bought in Christmas week – but the rules are the rules.

Last year, a surge of anti-X Factor sentiment and general sense of mischief (combined with chart rules that weren’t really designed to deal with multiple purchases that couldn’t plausibly be blamed on record company chart-hyping) led to the unlikely spectacle of Rage Against The Machine achieving a Christmas number 1 with “Killing In The Name”.  Strangely enough, capitalism has not fallen in the intervening year, and Simon Cowell continues to do quite nicely, thank you.  Once again, no major act is prepared to go head to head with the X Factor winners’ single, and the result is a strange chart, in which virtually every new entry is either connected with X Factor or a reaction against X Factor, and music as we know it is more or less suspended.  There’s one unrelated Christmas single further down the chart – and one lone new entry for an actual regular single.  It’s a strange time.

Anyway, the 2010 Christmas number one is (inevitably) the X Factor winner’s single, “When We Collide” by Matt Cardle.  Matt was the token “vaguely credible” entrant this year – i.e. he owns a Coldplay album and possibly something by U2 – and to be fair, he does have a good voice for that sort of thing.  Now that the voting figures have been released, we know that he won every vote except for week one (when he came second).  He’s also been suffering from flu or something over the last few weeks, so this record doesn’t exactly catch him at his best.  But regardless, your Christmas Number One:

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Well, this should be easy.  We’re now into the dead space for new releases – as a rule, the record industry doesn’t bother releasing records in the immediate run-up to Christmas, and doesn’t bother starting a fresh round of promotion until the new year.  There are exceptions, the main ones being Christmas singles (which in this day and age basically means Simon Cowell and records that exist solely to vex Simon Cowell), plus the occasional act that tries to take advantage of the promotional lull.  But for the most part it all goes very quiet around Christmas.

The British get very worked up about the Christmas Number One, even though it’s rarely much of a race any more thanks to the scheduling of X Factor singles (last year’s bizarre mass-purchasing of “Killing in the Name” by Rage Against the Machine being an anomaly that won’t be repeated this year).  This year’s Christmas chart is more than usually detached from Christmas itself; since Christmas Day is a Saturday, the Christmas Number One will be whatever tops the chart announced on Sunday 19 December, i.e. the record that sold most copies between 13-19 December.  So this is the last “proper” chart of the year.

And depressingly, the last “proper” number one of the year is “The Time (Dirty Bit)” by the Black Eyed Peas.   (more…)

Simon Cowell’s annual karmic balancing exercise  – “Heroes” by the X-Factor Finalists 2010 – remains at number one for a second week.  This actually comes as something of a surprise, since it was dropping off pretty quickly on iTunes.  But then, high profile charity singles are special.  They sell to people who don’t normally buy singles, and to some extent they sell to impulse buyers in supermarkets.  So the iTunes figures can turn out to be unrepresentative.

But only up to a point.  The midweeks show the track dropping to number 5 on Sunday.

The best-selling “regular” single of the week is Ellie Goulding’s cover of “Your Song” at number 2, and that leaves the highest new entry to take the number 3 slot – “Poison” by Nicole Scherzinger.

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The chart domination of X Factor hasn’t been quite so comprehensive this year as last, perhaps because the decision to sell performances as (chart ineligible) downloads has diverted some of the sales that might otherwise have gone to originals from the back catalogue.  But it’s still a significant force.  Between present contestants, past contestants, judges, and back catalogue material performed in the finals, it accounts for seven of the top 40 singles, with several more tracks having been promoted on the results show.

But this week, it’s that special time of the year when Simon Cowell strives for karmic balance.  Yes, it’s the annual X Factor finalists’ charity single at number 1, and this year they’re once again raising money for the troops with a cover version of “Heroes”.  Never subtle, that Simon Cowell.

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Rihanna lasted two weeks at the top, but we now return to our regularly scheduled X Factor dominance.  The current number one – and it’ll be a one-week affair because the annual X Factor charity single will displace it on Sunday – is “Love You More” by JLS.

JLS were the runners-up in the 2008 series of X Factor.  In an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment, Simon Cowell didn’t take up his option to sign them, only for Epic to sweep in and launch them as a proper R&B-ish boy band.  They’ve been genuinely successful – this is their fifth single and their fourth number one – so despite being technically outside the X Factor fold, they’ve been written back into the show’s success story.  Simon Cowell would certainly much rather people were talking about this bunch than Joe McElderry, I suspect.

“Love You More” is an inoffensive mid-paced ballad.  It’s also the official charity single for the BBC’s annual “Children in Need” telethon, but chances are it would have made number 1 without the help.

It successfully fends off the challenge of Ellie Goulding’s “Your Song” cover from the John Lewis ads, which nonetheless climbed 36 places to land at number 3, and looks like it’ll be around for a while.  I’m still not sure about it, to be honest… it feels a little bit calculated to me, but hey, it’s obviously connecting with an audience.

If you believe the newspapers, of course, the big story of last week was supposed to be the debut on iTunes of the Beatles’ back catalogue.  An idea had taken hold with the more gullible sort of journalist that when the Beatles’ songs were finally made available online, there would be a massive chart invasion.  This was never especially likely.  Anyone who really cares about owning Beatles songs has had forty years to make their purchase; it’s not like they’re hard to get.   Nor are the albums sensibly priced on iTunes.  For example, they’re charging £17.99 for the double albums.  But Amazon are selling them for less than half that, so if you’re buying them on iTunes, well, bad choice.

What could potentially make a difference is the ability to download individual songs.  The Beatles have always been very careful about protecting the way their music is presented.  But yes, you can now buy individual tracks from iTunes.  As it turns out, though, there wasn’t much demand for that either.  You have to query whether the Beatles’ audience is particularly interested in iTunes, and whether the typical iTunes consumer is actually all that bothered about the Beatles.  After all the hype, only one Beatles track made the chart – “Hey Jude”, scraping on at number 40.

Ironically, there might actually be more Beatles songs in the chart this week.  Why?  Because they did a Beatles theme week on X Factor.  The midweeks have “Hey Jude” climbing to 35 and “Let It Be” at number 30 – a slightly bigger impact, but hardly earth-shattering.

Also entering the most recent chart:

• “Like a G6” by the Far East Movement featuring the Cataracs and Dev at number 6.  This is the breakthrough hit for an Asian-American hip-hop group who’ve been around for years without previously attracting much notice, only for this to be a hit in America and around Europe.  It’s minimal, to put it mildly, but it’s a good hook.  A G6, if you’re wondering, is a Gulfstream G650 – it’s a private jet.  The Cataracs are a California alt-rap duo who’ve similarly never attracted any previous notice in Britain, and Dev is a rapper who appears to get a credit because they sampled the “like a G6” bit from the bridge of her single “Booty Bounce” (video features some strobe-effect rapid edits, btw, but bonus points for making a video that features absolutely no bouncing of any description).
• “Safe” by Westlife at number 10.  Self-reviewing single from the turn of the century blandly balladeering boy band who seem to never go away.  The days when they consistently got number 1 hits are behind them and to be honest I’m not quite sure who’s still buying their records.  (Since the single is likely to drop out of the top twenty in its second week, the answer may well be “fans who never broke the habit and nobody else”.)  Nonetheless, their 25th hit, every single one of which made the top 10.
• “What’s My Name” by Rihanna featuring Drake at number 18.  This is going to be the second official single from her new album, and while the record company would probably prefer to keep the focus on “Only Girl In The World” for the moment – still at number 2, by the way – this is getting some spill-over sales as an album track download, presumably because they’re already pushing it in other territories so there’s a video available.  (Another track from the album, “S&M”, is also picking up downloads, and charts at number 55.)  Her 21st UK hit, and the third and biggest for Canadian rapper Drake.
• “Game Over” by Tinchy Stryder featuring Chipmunk at number 22.  Well, that’s how the charts are listing the artist credit.  Stryder’s YouTube channel gives it as “Tinchy Stryder featuring Giggs, Professor Green, Tinie Tempah, Devlin, Example and Chipmunk.”  Stryder gets the leap credit because it’s on his album, as near as I can make out, but it’s basically an all-star jam single.  Not especially commercial – it’s a bit of a dirge, to be honest, and the first verse is almost intolerably dull.  Perhaps a case of crossover grime/pop acts trying to reconnect with their original audience.  Stryder’s seventh hit, Chipmunk’s eighth, and the rest apparently technically don’t count.  Still, a break from the normal single release for virtually everyone involved.
• “Shame” by Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow, re-entering at 31 presumably as a side-effect of the Take That album coming out.  (It sold over half a million in its first week.)  The track made number 2 on its original release in October but dropped out of the charts rather more quickly than it deserved to.
• “Just Drive” by Alistair Griffin at number 38.  This is an oddity.  Alistair Griffin was a contestant in the second series of the BBC’s underperforming talent show Fame Academy back in 2003, when he came second to Alex Parks.  He had two hits in 2004 (including the forgettable double A-side “Bring It On”/”My Lover’s Prayer” which got to number 5) but pretty much hasn’t been heard from since.  This is an official single, but it doesn’t have a video or any real promotion behind it – it was, however, used by the BBC to soundtrack a video package at the end of their coverage of the Formula 1 season and seems to have charted solely on the strength of that, giving Griffin a much-delayed third hit.

To the surprise of a lot of people, this week’s number one is “The Only Girl In The World” by Rihanna, which hangs on for a second week.  So far as the record industry are concerned, this wasn’t really in the script.  The general assumption was that Take That would top the charts with ease.  But it turns out that the British really, really like that Rihanna record.

And so it’s a number 2 placing for “The Flood” by Take That.

For the benefit of the Americans out there, it’s worth recapping the story.  Take That were a five-piece boy band who were hugely popular in Britain, and pretty successful in the rest of Europe, in the first half of the 1990s.  With a core fanbase of teenage girls and a secondary fanbase of gay men (that’s not facetiousness, they started off playing the gay nightclub circuit), they updated the boy band format for a new generation and did it very, very well.  And while the group had been manufactured, they served largely as a vehicle for songs written by one of their members, Gary Barlow.

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(In case you’ve forgotten, or you just didn’t listen all the way to the end of last week’s podcast, House to Astonish episode 50 will be out next Sunday.  In the meantime, regulars features…)

As expected from the midweeks, the top two singles trade places this week, with Cheryl Cole dropping to 2, and “The Only Girl in the World” by Rihanna climbing to number 1.  With the charts having slipped back into the old ways of much-hyped singles entering at the top upon release – perhaps because that makes it possible to concentrate sales into a few days in a way that can’t be done when you’re promoting the third single from an album and it’s already available for download – it’s the first record to climb to the top since “Club Can’t Handle Me” by Flo Rida in August.  (Yes, Bruno Mars went back to number 1 a couple of weeks ago, but he also entered at number 1 in the first place.)

It’s more of a European electropop record than an R&B track, which is hardly surprising, since it’s a Stargate production.  And it’s a great single – stomping production, big chorus, and for once they’ve not gone overboard with the Autotune.  One of the best number one singles of the year, actually.

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Autumn – that very special time of the year when the leaves fall, the nights draw in, and anyone vaguely associated with The X Factor makes sure they have a new album out.  This week, it’s judge Cheryl Cole, and the first single from her second solo album is “Promise This”.

Cole started off in 2002 as a member of Girls Aloud, the girl group formed on reality TV show Popstars: The Rivals, and who turned out to surpass all predictions for their durability.  Wisely recognising that winning a talent show would only take them so far, their management more or less assigned them to become the front group for production studio Xenomania, leading to a string of generally well-received singles.  Theoretically they’ve never split up; they went on hiatus in 2009 for the members for pursue solo projects – or, in other words, for Cheryl Cole to make solo albums, Sarah Harding to have a go at acting, and the other three to kill time.  (Nadine Coyle’s first solo single will be on Sunday’s chart, and the midweeks have it at 26.)  There’s no obvious sign of the group reforming.

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I’m running behind on these again, so this is the chart from the week before last – plenty of new entries, few of them particularly noteworthy.

There’s a change at the top, but unusually, it’s the return of a previous number 1 – “Just The Way You Are (Amazing)” by Bruno Mars.

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This week’s number 1 is still Cee Lo Green, for the second week.  I covered that single in the previous post, if you haven’t read it yet.  It’s an odd race for the top, with the number 2 slot going to Bruno Mars’ “Just the Way You Are” – another former number one, and according to the midweeks, currently likely to return to the top on Sunday.

This is also the first chart to come with something of an asterisk attached.  We are now into the X Factor live finals, and this year, the performances are available for download on iTunes.  But the record company has opted to exclude from the chart.  (More accurately, you need to register a single with the Official Chart Company to opt in.  But same difference.)  From Simon Cowell’s point of view, there are good reasons for this.  If it becomes clear that somebody’s a runaway leader, there’s no tension going into the final.

But we know that songs can re-enter the charts on the strength of X Factor performances; and we know that even Sky One’s Must Be The Music was able to propel three singles into the top ten, with a much lower audience.  The chances are good, then, that if the X Factor downloads were eligible for the charts, several of them would have made it in – even with the first week giving audiences sixteen tracks to choose from.  (They’re doing double eliminations in the first few weeks to get the numbers down to a more sensible level.)

Would any of these tracks have made number 1?  My guess is, probably not.  X Factor winners inevitably get to number 1 (Joe McElderry made it on his second week of release), but their singles are part of a grand narrative.  These ones aren’t.  The audience is split between sixteen acts.  They’re released on Saturday nights, so the sales will be split between two chart weeks.  And as we’ll see shortly, there’s a limit to the promotional power of a single performance on the show.

Meanwhile, this week’s highest new entry…

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