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.  

And if you’re thinking “Haven’t we mentioned this one before?” – well, yes, because it entered the chart in late November and made a weird 11-7-11-6-1 climb to the top.  So, incredible as it may seem, it’s apparently growing on people.  Actually, to be fair, I’m finding it slightly less irritating than I did when I first heard it.  But then, when I first heard it, I had to suppress the urge to demolish my iPhone with a hammer.

This is the Black Eyed Peas’ fifth number one, the others being “Meet Me Halfway”, “I Gotta Feeling” and “Boom Boom Pow” from 2009-10, and “Where is the Love?” back in 2003.  That was their second top 40 hit, the first being the largely-forgotten “Request Line” (number 31 in 2001).  Yes, hard as it may be to believe today, there was a time when the Black Eyed Peas were actually vaguely acceptable.

“The Time (Dirty Bit)” is, for the benefit of any extremely young readers, based on “I’ve Had The Time Of My Life” by Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes, from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack – a number 6 hit in 1987, which also made the top 10 again in early 1991.  I’ve never seen the movie, and do you know, somehow I think I’ve endured.

Obviously “The Time” won’t be number one next week – in fact, the midweeks have it dropping to 4, so this seems to be of a surge of sales.  Which is unfortunate for this week’s highest new entry at number 2 – “Whip My Hair” by Willow, the ten-year-old daughter of Will Smith.  If you haven’t heard it, the single is actually a hell of a lot better than you’re probably expecting. Though the midweeks have it plunging to number 9, so it’s a bit of a first-week wonder.  Non-embeddable YouTube video here.

Had she made it to the top, Willow would just have missed out on being the youngest act ever to reach number 1; that record stands at nine years old (thanks to Little Jimmy Osmond’s 1972 atrocity “Long Haired Lover From Liverpool”) and is unlikely to be broken any time soon.  But she would have shattered the record for the youngest woman to reach number 1, set in 1961 by Helen Shapiro.  She was 14 when she had her first number 1 hit, “Walking Back To Happiness”.

Willow has four years in hand if she wants to break that record, and I wouldn’t bet against her. (Obscure chart trivia: the record for the youngest person ever to make the top 75 is held by future Hollyoaks actress Natalie Casey, who was three in 1984 when she somehow made it to number 72 with a stumbling rendition of “Chick Chick Chicken.”  That’s actually younger than Jordy, the kid who reached number 1 in France with “Dur Dur d’Etre Bebe”, who despite the title was actually four and a half.)

The only other new entries on this week’s chart are:-

• “Hold My Hand” by Michael Jackson featuring Akon at number 11 – perhaps not the result they were hoping for, though it’s likely to edge into the top 10 on Sunday.  Not counting reissues and remixes, I think this is Jackson’s 50th top 40 hit (but since that’s a lot to count, don’t quote me on it).  No doubt his estate would like to see him go the way of Tupac and keep racking up the hits despite the minor handicap of supervening death.  This actually sounds more like an Akon track, and it’s his seventeenth hit.
• “The Silence” by Alexandra Burke at number 16 – the 2008 X Factor winner’s sixth hit and unless it goes further (which doesn’t seem likely) the first to miss the top 10.  Could be worse – 2009 winner Joe McElderry’s new single, which has more or less been buried, didn’t even make the top 40.
• “Better Than Today” by Kylie Minogue at number 32 – a re-entry for a song which already scraped the chart a couple of weeks ago.

Next week – basically a load of X Factor and counter-X Factor records.