- A song will reach the Top 20 which is so bizarre that no-one in their right mind would be able to predict it in this thread

 

Does Oliver Tree "Miss You" count?

- Ed Sheeran continues to be everywhere - The Joker & The Queen going to #1 due to signed CDs, he'll drop another album that'll return to the folk/singer-songwriter sound, and Merry Christmas goes back to #1 in December the Joker & Queen song flopped, the folky album will come next year probably, the last one is still possible

- Harry Styles scores a #1 single early in the year, followed by another big era pretty much

- BTS release another English language single that'll break the record for longest running Billboard #1 way off on that

- Taylor's Version of 1989 will manage even higher opening sales than Red not yet

- Kendrick Lamar and SZA finally drop their next albums to big streaming numbers, and also collab on a single at some point both albums did big numbers, the collab never happened tho

- Lewis Capaldi's comeback single will debut at #1, followed by an album of forgettable sadboy ballads that'll be the year's top selling album in UK first one was a dead cert, the rest will all come true next year

- The Weeknd continues his 80s synthpop run with The Dawn, which'll do decently well but won't spawn any massive singles easy one there, there's no market for great pop music in the charts

- The Kid Laroi has a huge year with his next album scoring multiple hits in quick succession (similar situation to Planet Her basically) he released like one song lmao

- The new Post Malone and Lizzo albums underperform Posty's was definitely a decline from his previous standard, Lizzo's didn't underperform though imo

- Ariana makes a turn back to a poppier sound (with huge success obviously), including a big collab with The Weeknd nothing yet

- Rina Sawayama's new album will be a turn to a more commercial/accessible sound (she's still a niche artist ofc so nothing from it will touch the charts) obviously (but she did have a #3 album + top 40 single so she definitely outperformed my expectations lmao)

- Jess Glynne returns to plague the radio with more bland house pop that the public will eat up carry this one onto next year

- Jesy Nelson continues relying on big features and famous samples to keep her singles going high in the charts, eventually being overshadowed by one of the other LM girls going solo none of them released anything

- Melanie Martinez scores her first UK top 40 hit nope

- Faouzia, Latto and Sueco score breakthrough hits Latto did at least (that song was already gaining traction around this time tbf)

- Cavetown or Chloe Moriondo will randomly break into the charts for a brief moment thanks to Tiktok nope

- Rex Orange County finally comes out of hiding with another album, which debuts Top 5 in the UK/US correct~

- One of the acts from this year's Eurovision goes on to have further chart success Sam Ryder just had a #1 album so tick x

- Little Simz wins the Mercury Prize ka-ching!

- LadBaby go back on their word and get a 5th Xmas #1 featuring a "sausage roll rap" from Stormzy the 5th #1 is indeed happening so tick, minus the sausage roll rap (I guess cos LadBaby wouldn't allow anything potentially humorous to happen in their songs)

 

Some of these are wishful thinking on my part but:

 

-Gayle's ABCDEFU will be the first #1 of the new year

 

Incorrect, since I didn't specify 'new #1' here and the first #1 of the year was technically a resurgent Adele. But technically right, if you go with what I think I was trying to say.

 

- Imagine Dragons will finally get their first ever Top 10 by a whisker

 

Incorrect, they never got higher than #17 this year.

 

- The Motto will blow up in the new year and be a reasonable hit

 

Correct, it was a #12 hit, charted for a decent amount of time and will have made the year end top 100. I was still hoping for better than that though.

 

- That tedious cheesefest by Ed Sheeran will go to #1 when the Taylor Swift duet version drops

 

Incorrect. It charted at #2 for a week and was promptly forgotten by absolutely everybody.

 

- With indie sounds arguably at their strongest in years,Arctic Monkeys will take a strong first week sale with their album (for the current climate) and get their first Top 5 hit since 2007 with the lead single

 

Partially correct. AM took an extraordinary sale with their first week and yet still didn't get to #1 (didn't see that coming) but didn't do particularly well on the singles chart.

 

- Similarly Liam Gallagher will finally get a solo Top 10 hit but only just

 

Incorrect, he only got to #18, although that is still a peak for his post-Oasis solo career.

 

- Rihanna finally blesses us with her long awaited comeback and it is a deserved success taking the highest weekly album total of the year and giving her another #1 single, it will be further in the direction she was going down with ANTI and not very poppy

 

Partially correct, mostly completely wrong. Rihanna did finally bless us with her long awaited comeback... and then it turned out to be a pair of dull soundtrack ballads. We await her proper return in 2023.

 

- Calvin Harris will at least release another single if not a whole album and it will probably do well despite not been as good as anything off 18 Months

 

Correct. He did release more singles and a whole album, the album flopped but he got another top 10 from it and none of it was as good as anything off 18 Months.

 

- A post-album single from Sam Fender will do reasonably well and peak in the Top 30

 

Mostly incorrect. I overestimated the success here but Getting Started did make it to #47 I guess.

 

- Elton John will release an original track from his Lockdown album as a single on the back of his recent success but it won't do much

 

Incorrect. Elton actually released a brand new duet with Britney and it made the top 5.

 

- BUT there will be another veteran act comeback in the Top 10 we didn't see coming- Kylie, Madonna, Cliff etc...

 

Correct. I didn't specify 'new material' here so i'm taking this as a win prediction with Kate Bush getting to #1 lol.

 

- Jade from Little Mix will have put out some solo material by the end of the year, maybe launching with a feature on a dance track first which will be quite successful

 

Incorrect. As far as i'm aware she hasn't released even a murmur about solo material.

 

- Sausage Roll Shite will be peddled for a fifth year running and will inexplicably be another easy #1 but the sales will be lower for a second year running and they will finally stick to their word and pack it in after this one

 

Likely to be mostly correct, although the 'easy #1' bit was a miss given how things have played out.

 

- England will do reasonably well in the World Cup and a couple of the football songs will return to the Top 40 but they won't get far enough for them to have a major impact

 

Correct, England did do well and 3 Lions returned to the top 40 but they didn't get to the semis and there was no threat of football songs in the top 10.

 

- There will be no new Lewis Capaldi album

 

Correct. Only a couple of single releases with the album now penned in for next year.

 

- Afrobeats will be a big sound with several significant hits in that genre

 

Correct. See the success of Peru and Calm Down. Hasn't completely dominated the charts, but I don't think that's what I was getting at.

 

- Generally the amount of different sounds and genres in the upper reaches of the chart will continue to diversify

 

I think there is some truth in this prediction. We've certainly had some huge dance hits that sounded interesting and different to what we have been used to over the past few years. Perhaps hasn't happened on the scale I was hinting at here though.

 

All this replying to yourself from a year ago is a bit weird, having to infer in the unintentional gaps in exactly what you think you were saying. Having a Billie Eilish Vanity Fair moment oop- :kink:

Does Oliver Tree "Miss You" count?

 

I would say 'Under The Influence' is probably the closest fit to that prediction. Maybe not a huge shock that Chris Brown had another big top 20 hit but baffling that it came from a years old bonus track (especially one so completely devoid of any interesting musical merit) rather than new material.