It’s the Christmas chart – and once again, Britain sticks to the script.  This will be short; it’s a very quiet week for new releases, though a couple of acts have given it a punt.  The back catalogue Christmas songs already entered a few weeks ago – “Fairytale” is the highest, at 11 – and only one of this year’s online campaigns results in a top 40 entry.  (“Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden just missed out, at 44.) So the bottom half of the top 40 is all reshuffling, and we can jump straight to…

14.  Gorgon City featuring Jennifer Hudson – “Go All Night”

Either these guys can’t read a calendar, or they’re trying to steal a high chart place in a quiet week.  Conventional wisdom is that you do that in the week after Christmas, though.  “Go All Night” has been available as an album track since October, but I imagine there’ll be the usual extra mixes released now.

This is Gorgon City’s fourth hit of the year.  The biggest was “Ready for Your Love”, which made number 4 in February.  Jennifer Hudson is an unusually big name to appear as a guest vocalist on a Gorgon City record – it is indeed the Jennifer Hudson who won an Oscar for Dreamgirls.  Admittedly, her track record on the singles chart is pretty poor – she got to number 11 in 2008 with “Spotlight”, but all her other singles have missed the top 30 until now.

5.  The Wealdstone Raider – “Got No Fans”

That would be this year’s token chart campaign record.  The Wealdstone Raider is a fan of a minor league football team who was filmed at a match back in March 2013 having a drunken argument with a fan of the other side, which has apparently gone viral in football circles.  I can’t honestly say I get the point (as in, I honestly couldn’t venture an opinion with confidence on why it’s even meant to be funny), but then in fairness, football is generally a bit of a mystery to me.  So maybe there’s some context I’m missing here.

Nobody’s pretending this is anything other than a novelty charity release, which is fortunate, because judging it by conventional standards, the nicest thing you can say about it is that it’s over quickly.

And to think, Tinchy Stryder’s collaboration with the Chuckle Brothers didn’t chart.

4.  Olly Murs featuring Demi Lovato – “Up”

The second single from his upcoming album “Never Been Better”.  The last one only came out a month ago, and it’s still on the chart at 12, so this is a pretty quick follow up.  Quite what Demi Lovato is doing on an Olly Murs record, considering that he’s had very little impact in the US so far, and she’s doing fine in Britain on her own, is hard to fathom.  It really ought to be an equal-billing duet, and in fact it also appears on the deluxe version of Lovato’s album.

Somewhat to my surprise – and more thanks to Lovato than Murs – this is alright.  It’s a strong chorus, and the vague gestures in the direction of upbeat folk work well for it.  It’s a lot better most of Murs’ singles.

1.  Ben Haenow – “Something I Need”

It may have been behind Mark Ronson on iTunes for most of the week, but X Factor winner Ben Haenow has the advantage of CD single sales in supermarkets – and as X Factor coronation singles reach a market that doesn’t have the faintest interest in singles normally, that makes a big difference.  Its “sales” of 214K (including streaming) are the second highest of the year, after Band Aid.

For all that, there’s a general consensus that X Factor has passed its peak.  The audience for the final was the lowest since year 1.  The show is now in the tricky position where its imperial days are behind it, but it still draws strong enough audiences that it’s going nowhere any time soon.  Simon Cowell is making noises about yet more format changes for next year, but the simple reality may be that any form of talent show is currently tired and the genre could use a break.

It’s unfair to judge any singer by their X Factor coronation single – not only are they rushed cover versions, but they rarely bear the faintest relationship to what the act ends up releasing.  The format is very well established by this point; the single is not there to be any good, it’s there to complete the story arc of triumph against the odds, and the song is chosen largely because of its superficial ability to fit with that.  (I see that this year they haven’t even bothered filming any original footage for the video.  Normally they at least stick the poor sod in front of some candles and tell him to emote.)

Haenow was not the favourite to win – that was Fleur East, who we can doubtless expect to hear from in 2015 regardless.  “Something I Need” is a OneRepublic song which was a single in some other countries last year (it went triple platinum in Australia), but remained an album track in the UK.  It’s also the theme tune to the film Mr Peabody & Sherman.

On the album chart, things are predictably quiet.

• “X” by Ed Sheeran is at number 1 again.
• “The Pinkprint” by Nicki Minaj limps to a surprisingly poor 22.
• “Livesos” by 5 Seconds of Summer – which is a live album, obviously enough, charts at 31.