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Thanks to the 35 people who participated in the final week of 2023's polls

Official results from (2023) week 52:

[ 13 ] Donny Hathaway - This Christmas (#63)
[ 10 ] Cher and Stevie Wonder - What Christmas Means To Me (#95)
[ 7 ] Central Cee - Entrapreneur (#71)
[ 6 ] Dean Martin - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer (#74)
[ 5 ] Songer - Toxic (Freestyle) (#100)

BuzzJack's favourite top 100 hit for 2023 week 52 and auto-qualifying for the December monthly round is Donny Hathaway - This Christmas.



On this slightly weird week pitting ancient Christmas songs against a couple of mid tier relevance UK rap hits which managed to break through amongst an 80% festive top 100, it's a low scoring but relatively comfortable win for the late American soul singer Donny Hathaway, he had a couple of minor hits during his lifetime and one big posthumous hit not long after his death in 1979 with all being duets with Roberta Flack but his return to the charts comes as his 1970 festive solo offering 'This Christmas' suddenly found itself winning the playlist lottery enough to make its first chart appearance (and then at an oddly high point of #63 which makes you wonder how it always missed out before). The song did become a top 3 hit in another form courtesy of Jess Glynne's version being pimped by Alexa but even then it took another 3 years for the original to surface. In any case, while I don't think many here consider this one to be quite in the upper echelons of Christmas staples, it got the support of a bit over 1/3 of voters and wins by a 3 vote margin over the only other song to hit double figures, Cher's second festive hit of the season which updates Stevie Wonder's 'What Christmas Means To Me' with some help from the man himself.

Everything managed to reach the 5 vote threshold but only barely so for Songer's belatedly released viral freestyle over the beat of Britney Spears' 'Toxic'. Songer actually got off to a slightly better start than Central Cee but enough voters eventually came through for Cench to deny an all-Christmas top 3.

Weekly winners for 2023: (in the rest of the 2024 threads I will just include a link back to this one rather than keeping these all listed out in every OP)
01 // 12/01/23 // Sub Focus and Dimension - Ready To Fly
02 // 19/01/23 // Skrillex, Fred again.. and Flowdan - Rumble
03 // 26/01/23 // Miley Cyrus - Flowers
04 // 02/02/23 // Fall Out Boy - Love From The Other Side
05 // 09/02/23 // P!nk - TRUSTFALL
06 // 16/02/23 // RAYE - Ice Cream Man.
07 // 23/02/23 // Linkin Park - Lost
08 // 02/03/23 // Lana Del Rey - A&W
09 // 09/03/23 // Gorillaz - Silent Running (feat. Adeleye Omotayo)
10 // 16/03/23 // Zara Larsson - Can't Tame Her
11 // 23/03/23 // Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding - Miracle
12 // 30/03/23 // Nothing But Thieves - Welcome To The DCC
13 // 06/04/23 // Lana Del Rey - Paris, Texas (feat. SYML)
14 // 13/04/23 // Tyler, The Creator - DOGTOOTH
15 // 20/04/23 // David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray - Baby Don't Hurt Me
16 // 27/04/23 // Post Malone - Chemical / Taylor Swift - Karma
17 // 04/05/23 // The Weeknd - Double Fantasy (feat. Future) / Florence + The Machine - Mermaids
18 // 11/05/23 // The National - The Alcott (feat. Taylor Swift)
19 // 18/05/23 // Ed Sheeran - Curtains
20 // 25/05/23 // Loreen - Tattoo
21 // 01/06/23 // Kylie Minogue - Padam Padam
22 // 08/06/23 // Dua Lipa - Dance The Night
23 // 15/06/23 // Dave and Central Cee - Sprinter
24 // 22/06/23 // Nathan Dawe, Joel Corry and Ella Henderson - 0800 HEAVEN
25 // 29/06/23 // Peggy Gou - (It Goes Like) Nanana
26 // 06/07/23 // Jain - Makeba
27 // 13/07/23 // Olivia Rodrigo - vampire
28 // 20/07/23 // Taylor Swift - Enchanted (Taylor's Version)
29 // 27/07/23 // Troye Sivan - Rush
30 // 03/08/23 // Ryan Gosling - I'm Just Ken / Ava Max - Choose Your Fighter
31 // 10/08/23 // Calvin Harris and Sam Smith - Desire
32 // 17/08/23 // Doja Cat - Paint The Town Red
33 // 24/08/23 // Olivia Rodrigo - bad idea right?
34 // 31/08/23 // Billy Gillies - DNA (Loving You) (feat. Hannah Boleyn)
35 // 07/09/23 // Selena Gomez - Single Soon
36 // 14/09/23 // Kylie Minogue - Tension
37 // 21/09/23 // Olivia Rodrigo - get him back!
38 // 28/09/23 // Tate McRae - greedy / Chase And Status and Hedex - Liquor & Cigarettes (feat. ArrDee)
39 // 05/10/23 // Kylie Minogue - Hold On To Now
40 // 12/10/23 // Noah Kahan - Stick Season / PinkPantheress - Mosquito
41 // 19/10/23 // JENNIE - You & Me
42 // 26/10/23 // Troye Sivan - One Of Your Girls
43 // 02/11/23 // Charli XCX and Sam Smith - In The City
44 // 09/11/23 // The Beatles - Now And Then
45 // 16/11/23 // Olivia Rodrigo - Can't Catch Me Now
46 // 23/11/23 // Dua Lipa - Houdini
47 // 30/11/23 // Tate McRae - exes
48 // 07/12/23 // Ryder and Skepta - #skeptacore pt.3
49 // 14/12/23 // Taylor Swift - You're Losing Me
50 // 21/12/23 // Cher - DJ Play A Christmas Song
51 // 28/12/23 // Juice WRLD, Eminem and benny blanco - Lace It
52 // 04/01/24 // Donny Hathaway - This Christmas

Qualified for the 2023 yearly round:
January // Bizarrap and Shakira - Bzrp Music Sessions, Vol. 53 / Miley Cyrus - Flowers / Sub Focus and Dimension - Ready To Fly
February // Freya Ridings - Weekends / Lana Del Rey - A&W / P!nk - TRUSTFALL
March // Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding - Miracle / Nothing But Thieves - Welcome To The DCC / Zara Larsson - Can't Tame Her
April // Florence + The Machine - Mermaids / Post Malone - Chemical / Taylor Swift - Karma
May // Käärijä - Cha Cha Cha / Kylie Minogue - Padam Padam / Loreen - Tattoo
June // Dua Lipa - Dance The Night / Nathan Dawe, Joel Corry and Ella Henderson - 0800 HEAVEN / Peggy Gou - (It Goes Like) Nanana
July // Billie Eilish - What Was I Made For? / Olivia Rodrigo - vampire / Taylor Swift - Enchanted (Taylor's Version)
August // Chase And Status and Bou - Baddadan (feat. IRAH, Flowdan, Trigga and Takura) / Fred again.. and Obongjayar - adore u / Olivia Rodrigo - bad idea right?
September // Kenya Grace - Strangers / Olivia Rodrigo - get him back! / Tate McRae - greedy
October // Drake - Rich Baby Daddy (feat. Sexyy Red and SZA) / Noah Kahan - Stick Season / Troye Sivan - One Of Your Girls
November // revealed in next post

Qualified for the playoff for the 2023 yearly round:
January // Fall Out Boy - Love From The Other Side
February // Linkin Park - Lost
March // Miley Cyrus - River
April // Jonas Brothers - Waffle House
May // Alessandra - Queen Of Kings
June // The Weeknd, Playboi Carti and Madonna - Popular
July // Taylor Swift - I Can See You
August // Doja Cat - Paint The Town Red
September // Chase And Status and Hedex - Liquor & Cigarettes (feat. ArrDee)
October // JENNIE - You & Me
November // revealed in next post

~

There's still work to be done to complete my grand vision for the 2023 polls (i.e. the December monthly round, the playoff round and then the grand finale vote to rank the top 40 songs of the year as chosen by this slightly arbitrary process) but in the mean time as the polls have maintained a pretty good consistent base of engagement all year - even weathering my failure in the latter half of the year to keep to a reasonable schedule oops! - I feel confident in going ahead and renewing them for a season 2 for 2024

It's a boring start to the year in that there are only 3 new entries but actually all 3 of these are moderately interesting entries in some way. Travis' is the least interesting chart wise but still worth noting it is the 3rd song from his album to eventually get a chart position after missing out due to being starred out by the 3 track rule in its first week. The Flo Milli song has another version featuring Lil Yachty which has a not insignificant stream total on Spotify (11.7 million to the original's 18.9 million) which no doubt helped it break through so highly although I think the original is still the one earning the bulk of its UK streams especially as it's now showing in the Spotify top 200 so I've only included that version on the playlist. And then we have the Wonka song which on inspection I'm pretty sure is only here because they included 2 versions of it on the soundtrack album - there's a vignette version barely over a minute which has the additional subtitle '(Hoverchocs)' and is billed solely to Timothée Chalamet, and then a more substantial version nearly 4 minutes long which is nebulously tagged as 'Timothée Chalamet and The Cast Of Wonka' (Pussycat Dolls feat. Nicole Scherzinger teas). The shorter version actually has slightly more streams on Spotify although they are very close (only a 50k difference out of 2.1-2.2 million). Nonetheless, I'm just putting the full version on the playlist as I feel like that will cover the gist of the shorter version as well. I also wasn't sure how to tag this one in the poll, I always try to avoid double crediting and crediting non-artist entities regardless of 'official' tags but this is a bit of a weird edge case. I've ultimately settled on Timothée erasure because he is after all part of the cast x Without any additional versions being included, the playlist this week clocks in at just 10 minutes and 6 seconds.



Vote for as many or as few songs as you want and would be ideal if you can make sure you've heard all the songs before voting if possible!

I will get the December monthly round up tomorrow, I've stayed up a little too late tonight already considering I have an early start oops Shall aim for a Sunday night deadline for this week's poll as usual.