Fans of essentially nothing happening won’t want to miss this week’s magnificently uneventful charts!\u00a0 The thing is, if you’re planning a steady climb to the top in time for Christmas, well, you started a couple of weeks back at the latest.\u00a0 And if you’re hoping for a smash-and-grab Christmas-chart one-off sale, that’s next week.\u00a0 Which means this week’s new releases are, um, few in number.<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0 Ariana Grande – “Thank U, Next”<\/strong><\/p>\n Six weeks – it needs a seventh to be Christmas number one.\u00a0 In the current market, that’s by no means impossible.\u00a0 After all, the 2016 Christmas number one was Clean Bandit’s “Rockabye”, which had been at number 1 since mid-November and remained there into the new year.\u00a0 But the lead over the number two single – Ava Max’s “Sweet But Psycho” – is equivalent to only 9,000 sales, so by sheer coincidence there’s something of a battle on for next week.\u00a0 Oh, and “Santa Tell Me” <\/strong>climbs from 35-30 this week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Since there’s so little going on in terms of new releases, let’s run through the climbers as we go down the chart.\u00a0 “Nothing Breaks Like A Heart” by Mark Ronson featuring Miley Cyrus<\/strong> climbs 10-4; that equals the peak of Ronson’s Silk City single earlier this year.\u00a0 “All I Want For Christmas Is You” by Mariah Carey<\/strong> climbs 6-5; that’s three years running in the top five, and it seems clear that any effect from downweighting the streams of the Christmas oldies has just been cancelled out by adding YouTube streams to the chart.<\/p>\n “Last Christmas” by Wham!<\/strong> climbs 14-7, for a third straight year in the top 10.\u00a0 “Sunflower” by Post Malone featuring Swae Lee<\/strong> rebounds 16-9 on the release of the Spider-Verse film – that’s still below the entry week peak of number 7, but it’s a bit enough jump to be worth mentioning.\u00a0 “Fairytale of New York” by the Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl<\/strong> climbs 18-10, the second year in a row that it’s been in the top ten.\u00a0 Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas”<\/strong> – the original, obviously – climbs 26-15.\u00a0 Michael Bubl\u00e9’s “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas”<\/strong> climbs 30-16, putting it on course to beat its all time peak of number 13 (from, er, last year).<\/p>\n Barely noticeable amidst the festivities, “Close To Me” by Ellie Goulding x Diplo featuring Swae Lee<\/strong> rebounds 21-17, edging above its previous peak of 18 from a couple of weeks back.\u00a0 “Merry Christmas Everybody” by Shakin’ Stevens<\/strong> climbs 36-21, and… oh, here we go.<\/p>\n 22.\u00a0 Elton John – “Step Into Christmas”<\/strong><\/p>\n