Issue of the day
Who will grab the festive No1 spot?
IN any year the top chart spot is quite a prize, but this year it’s more special than ever – and there’s a fair old battle brewing to join Queen, The Beatles and Bob The Builder for the honour of having had a Christmas No1.
Did you say Bob The Builder?
Yes. Released on December 4, 2000, Can We Fix It? beat Westlife’s What Makes A Man to the coveted Christmas No1 spot, a lovely present for writer Paul K Joyce. He went on to prove that Bob was no one-hit-wonder by grabbing the top spot a year later, in September 2001, with Mambo No 5.
Who do the bookies fancy? Ladbaby, aka graphic designer Mark Hoyle, has occupied the Christmas No1 spot for the last two years with novelty songs We Built This City and I Love Sausage Rolls, and he’s going for a hat-trick with another sausage rollthemed song, this time to the tune of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ .
Another novelty offering is The Dancing Binmen’s Boogie Round The Bins At Christmas. If you fancy more traditional fair then Jess Glynne has covered Donny Hathaway’s This Christmas and even former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher is getting in on the act.
In typically humble and self-deprecating fashion he has described his Christmas song, titled All You’re Dreaming Of, as “an instant classic that is perfect for this time of year. Considering the year that we’ve all had, I hope this brings back some much-needed love and hope. Bing Crosby would have been proud”.
Taylor Swift could make a late entrance as well with three singles from her new album set to enter the charts on Friday.
Talking of Bing, what about the old favourites?
Interestingly this year’s Christmas charts could be awash them. A slew of classics old and new have already been re-released and are bobbing around the top 10, among them Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You (currently at No1), Wizzard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day, Band Aid’s Do They Know
It’s Christmas? (number eight), Shakin’ Stevens’s Merry Christmas Everyone (number six) and, of course, A Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues.
The Pogues classic made the news recently when the BBC decided to censor the lyrics on some stations, causing Nick Cave (among others) to take issue. Cave accused the Beeb of “mutilating” the song. It’s currently at No4 in the charts.
Isn’t Christmas the time for charity singles?
Ah, just in time – or, rather, Justin Bieber. Many of the singles mentioned above have charitable aims, including the sausage roll-themed Ladbaby offerings, but the one which is garnering all the headlines is, appropriately, by an NHS choir which has teamed up with the Canadian pop star.
The Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir went head-to-head with Bieber for the Christmas top spot in 2015. Now they’ve remixed his song Holy, with proceeds to be split between various NHS charities.