The week in which we could have had a very, very odd battle for number one…

1.  Little Mix – “Wings”

Coming soon to a Zumba class near you!

This is the first “proper” single from the winners of last year’s X Factor.  It’s their second number one, following the version of “Cannonball” that was banged out as the winners’ single last Christmas, but this is the first real indication of where their career is going to end up.

Little Mix are the first group to win the show, despite the fact that they were assembled from offcuts from the girls’ solo category.  This happens every year, presumably due to the paucity of worthwhile groups entering the show.  Until recently, these acts seemed to be there for the sole purpose of bulking out the earlier rounds.  But after One Direction in 2010, there’s a precedent for them to actually succeed.

Then again, One Direction were at least a boy band.  For whatever reason, the X Factor audience had hitherto shown not just a total lack of interest in girl groups, but outright hostility to them.  They never made it past the opening round.  And judging from their incredulous reaction to the results in the first few weeks, Little Mix were well aware of that, and entered the contest confidently expecting to be on the train home by week three.

They were not expected to win.  But 2011 was not a strong year, and for whatever reason, Little Mix caught on, so here they are.  (The name, incidentally, was a last minute change when the original choice – Rhythmix – turned out to already be owned by a charity.  I think it’s meant to be a play on “Little Miss”, but I’m honestly not sure.)

The new series of X Factor is now up and running, though it’s still in the audition stages.  Normally the plan has been for the reigning champions to launch their career on the live shows, but for whatever reason they’ve decided to go early this time.  It doesn’t seem to have done any harm; they shifted 107,000 copies of this song.

And it’s quite good.  The video may suggest that the record company believes itself to be in possession of four versions of Cher Lloyd, but it’s a genuinely good pop single that plays to their strengths.

Now – here’s where it all nearly went a bit wrong.

As already mentioned, the X Factor audition shows are already airing.  They’ve changed the rules this year.  You can now enter even if you have previous experience in the industry (as long as you’re unknown, basically), and you can perform your own songs.  I rather suspect the theory here was that the show has been around long enough to run out of the gullible and the mentally ill, and needed a few journeymen to pad out the first few shows.

So the auditions this year have included a few actual singer-songwriters performing their own material.  And last week, they aired this:

As you might guess from the heavy-handed editing in of reaction shots and the inclusion at 2:54 of a sodding hashtag, the show was pretty much pushing this as an awesomely successful audition and the unveiling of a major contestant.

Unfortunately, they either overlooked or underestimated one key thing.  “Last Night”, the song she performed at her audition, was actually a track from her self-released album “Top Room At The Zoo”, which had been lying unmourned and unnoticed in the darkest reaches of iTunes since October 2011.  It was on the other online stores too.  And in its entire time on sale, it had sold 162 copies.

Still, it was there.  You could buy it.

The song landed at number 70 on last week’s charts, on the strength solely of a few hours of downloads after the show aired.  But panic really set in when the first sales flashes came in for the current chart week and showed “Last Night” at number 2, with the album set to land in the top 10.

Since Lucy Spraggan is still in the competition, this was a potential disaster on two levels.  First, it defeats the whole premise of the show if one of the contestants has already had a huge hit single before the elimination rounds even start.  And second, this had the obvious potential to spiral into an online campaign that would deny Little Mix their number one single.

Depending on who you ask, Spraggan was either prevailed upon to pull the album from sale, or a last-minute rule change was issued to prevent contestants having music on sale.  Either way, the record was yanked from sale on Tuesday, leaving two and a bit days of sales to count towards the chart.  But even so…

11.  Lucy Spraggan – “Last Night”

Yes, it even has a proper video.

Perhaps even more remarkably, “Top Room At The Zoo” lands on the album chart at number 22.  Both are now unavailable and will be gone next week.  Still, it looks like a fairly safe bet that she’ll be back sooner or later.

Though does anyone really think the X Factor producers will know what to do with her?  (It’s worth noting that she actually did two songs at the audition – the other was a medley of cover versions, presumably to try and convince the judges that she can work in the format.)

17.  Fazer – “Killer”

Fazer is the other one from N-Dubz.  You know, the one who isn’t a girl and doesn’t have a stupid hat.  This is his debut solo single.  It sounds a lot like will.i.am.

23.  Rita Ora (featuring Tinie Tempah) – “R.I.P.”

Because somebody did it as an X Factor audition song.  Also, her album “ORA” is out this week and enters at number 1, so some of these sales come from that direction.  Her current single “How We Do” is still at 3.

29.  Cover Drive (featuring Dappy) – “Explode”

Finally, a rather underwhelming performance for the rather samey fourth Cover Drive single, considering that all their previous singles made the top 10.  The iTunes chart suggests it’s going to vanish quickly.

Since it’s a quiet week for singles, let’s take a quick look at the new entries on the album chart.

• As already mentioned, number 1 is “ORA” by Rita Ora, who has two tracks in the singles chart.
• Number 3 is “My Head Is An Animal” by Of Monsters And Men; the lead single “Little Talks” is now up to 12.
• Elbow‘s B-Sides collection “Dead In The Boot” enters at 4.  There’s no single to promote this (obviously), but it is of course timed to come out just after their music has been played to death in the Olympics, and “One Day Like This” is still on the singles chart at 19.
• 12 is “Havoc & Bright Lights” by Alanis Morissette.  She hasn’t had a hit single since 2004.  The single, “Guardian”, did okay in mainland Europe, but sank without trace in Britain.
• 22 is “Top Room At The Zoo” by Lucy Spraggan, as already mentioned.
• At 30, “Contact” by the Noisettes, best known for their 2009 hit “Don’t Upset The Rhythm”.  There were two singles from this album – “Winner” and “That Girl” – but neither made the top 75.  (The entire album can be streamed for free on their YouTube page, if you want.)
• At 33, “Welcome To: Our House” by Slaughterhouse, which is a rap collaboration project with Eminem in some sort of executive producer role.  There are apparently five singles from this album, none of which had any chart impact at all.
• And at 36, “The Silver Violin” by Nicola Benedetti, which is a classical violinist performing movie themes.