'Sing' is pretty forgettable but I didn't mind it too much. Certainly 'Wherever You Are' is by far superior.

'Turn Up The Music' is pretty crap and think would be my last placer here. Admittedly do like some CB songs from 2008 and 'Beautiful People' from 2011 but never liked him anyway so him making the news for awful stuff doesn't surprise me at all.

Chris Brown. Dont remember this track much, it's not awful, but it doesn't have much of a hook or song, the production is pretty good though. always appreciate a nice construction with beats, and it would sound fine on a dancefloor. The great thing about personal charts is you can see what you thought at the time - and I thought number 56 was about right, so easily the lowest of the 3 so far. I can add that Brown only made my top 10 on 3 occasions, one with Benny Benassi on board, one with Justin Bieber and one number one with Fine China, very much an outlier in his career. And nothing since 2014 has charted.

I agree it's sad that Chris Brown has such a devoted fanbase and career when he's shown time and time again he's a terrible person, I can usually separate art and artist but fortunately here, there's no need to as most of his music is atrocious anyway! Turn Up The Music is so generic and unoriginal, feels like it was one that only got there by chance and I'd be surprised if even his fans hold it up as a classic these days.

Enjoyable to read everyone's comments, assumed these two would be more popular being placed towards the bottom. I can see why Turn Up The Music would've been a guess as a non #1, but I was more thinking of an act as well as the song for that! Also intrigued as to what @Iz様 🌟 thinks might be low that needs defending!

33. James Arthur - Impossible
1 week at #1 (in 2012) (entered 16^th December) 01-02-01-{01-03-07-09-11-14-19-29-34-39-43-50-42-48-75-58R(30)} (19 weeks)
Kept off #1: will.i.am feat. Britney Spears – Scream & Shout
Sales: 489,560
EOY: #5 (897,000)

The X-Factor winners single has become common in the bottom few positions of these rank countdowns, and 2012 is no different. This time, it was the turn of James Arthur, who beat Jamene Douglas and Christopher Maloney in the final. I’d never cared too much for X-Factor or its predecessor talent shows, as I found them all quite forced and I was rarely bothered about the type of music and singer that were pushed on the shows. I paid slightly more attention in the 2007-11 uni years but not to the point where I actively followed it. By 2012, I was back living with my parents who also couldn’t have cared less about this type of show, so it was never on and I was full on ignoring it by this point.

I can’t say I recall the names of either of the other finalists, and a quick Polyhex search would suggest neither amounted to anything, a significantly weaker than usual final. But maybe it was just luck of the TV voting audience vs single buying public, as Union J, Ella Henderson and Lucy Spraggan all had some form of post-show success and career and I recognise who they were. Rylan too of course, but nothing to do with his singing abilities.

The single itself is a cover (obviously) of Shontelle’s #9 hit Impossible from just a couple of years previous. The original was fine, passable R&B I’m happy to hear but would never actively listen to. Arthur’s version is comfortably weaker, sounds exceptionally TV talent show by numbers, the kind of thing that brings to mind some youth in tight jeans and a half-unbuttoned shirt oversinging with his acoustic guitar. Not the worst X-Factor winner single, but I'd definitely have it towards the bottom of the 9 there had been by this point.

My biggest blind spot in following the charts and popular music is from mid-2015 to COVID. I'd noticed in the year prior to that there was a real lack of anything I was interested in being successful (from mid '14 to mid '15 I'd have Uptown Funk as the second best #1 and I don't even like it). I moved into my own flat in May 2015, was much busier in life and ended up spending hardly any time on this site anymore which continued for a while, and when I did it wasn't in the UK chart forum, so the charts and what was popular became easy to ignore. There are loads of big hits and number one singles that I wouldn’t be able to recognise or know happened – wtf is a Rachel Platten, a Lukas Graham, or a Lil Dicky – so I’m quite surprised to learn that James Arthur didn’t disappear without a trace but was (and maybe is?) really popular, a run of hits almost perfectly coinciding with this time period. Impossible has over a billion streams on Spotify which is about a billion more than I’d expect, and he has multiple others that hit that mark. Listening to his other number one now for the first time, 2016s Say You Won’t Let Go, it feels like a complete non-entity of a song and shows why I began to pay no attention to what was happening.

Impossible held will.i.am and Britney Spears off the top with Scream & Shout, although it would go on to replace it in 2013. Post-2009 Black Eyed Peas success, it felt like will.i.am was continuously releasing some over-autotuned dirge, and whilst I don’t consider this particularly different it is at least better than almost everything else he was involved in as a solo artist, and Britney’s contribution definitely made it better.

The final chorus is pretty epic and so at the time this was my favourite of the X Factor winner singles.

Scream and Shout by will.i.am and Britney is dire.

Blimey I despise James Arthur! Urgh.

I don’t remember Turn Up The Music at all, not inclined to change that.

Sing is absolutely diabolical. One of the worst songs to top the charts so pretty confident that would hold last spot for me this year.

Impossible is kinda okay. Not heard it for a very long time but I don’t think I hated it as much as I normally dislike the winners songs

Weirdly this was a rare X Factor winner's single that broke out and was a big success globally. No.1 in a few other European countries, No.2 in Australia. It was possibly so big because the Shontelle original was a hit in far fewer countries, and a much smaller hit where it charted.

I always found its success baffling. I don't like his voice or his treatment of this song at all. I know it's regarded as one of the more successful and likeable X Factor winner's singles but it's not for me.

Might not be a particularly popular opinion but I quite liked his version of 'Impossible'. I get why his voice irks people though and his releases did gradually get worse and worse. Think only 'Recovery' was the only other of his I didn't mind. Shontelle's version is good too.

Impossible is okay. One of the better winner’s songs I suppose, but the bar is admittedly very low

10 hours ago, gooddelta said:

Weirdly this was a rare X Factor winner's single that broke out and was a big success globally. No.1 in a few other European countries, No.2 in Australia. It was possibly so big because the Shontelle original was a hit in far fewer countries, and a much smaller hit where it charted.

I always found its success baffling. I don't like his voice or his treatment of this song at all. I know it's regarded as one of the more successful and likeable X Factor winner's singles but it's not for me.

Completely agree, an awful version of 'Impossible', I think this one annoys me more than some others just because of his voice.

I also was completely baffled by his occasional success over the following years, sadly I can still recall how 'Say You Won't Let Go' goes despite being on my way of tuning out of the charts at that point.

Candy still remains the biggest loss for me.

I’d never heard the Gary Barlow song before but it’s in the bottom few for me.

I absolutely detest Chris Brown, so I’d probably put that last. Horrible human, horrible song.

I much prefer the Shontelle version of Impossible but James’s version is passable.

32. Maroon 5 feat. Wiz Khalifa - Payphone

2 weeks at #1 (entered 24th June) 01-02-01-02-02-02-04-06-12-14-18-20-25-29-25-28-34-40-43-44-54-66-44R(6){-61} (24 weeks)

Kept off #1: Chris Brown – Don’t Wake Me Up

Sales: 141,410 & 73,998

EOY: #9 (725,000)

It felt like Maroon 5 had been and gone after their initial 2004 flourish with the Songs About Jane album and follow-ups that didn’t hit the same commercial or quality highs, but then they had the surprise smash hit of 2011 with Moves Like Jagger alongside Christina Aguilera, who I’d also have said was past that level of smash hit. It was completely unavoidable and ended the year as the UK’s second highest selling single. They were fully back in the public eye around the globe, and a brand new single was always likely to have huge exposure and a great chance of being massively successful, and so came to pass with Payphone, its sales tally as it entered at the top was only bettered four times over the year. You could tell it was a likely entry at the top, as in the previous week’s chart Precision Tunes were at #9 with their version of it, going back to the days when fake cover versions would chart from time to time whilst official releases were held back for so long.

I thought Maroon 5 were alright in their early days. Harder To Breathe was a decent hit, This Love was a good song which showed their poppier side, She Will Be Loved is absolutely fine for the soppy MoR ballad that it is, I’d completely tired of Moves Like Jagger due to how much I’d heard it, but I did enjoy it a lot for a time and it was hard to disagree with it being the success that it was, however there’s always been a lingering problem with Maroon 5, and it’s that Adam Levine has a voice that can be really whiny and grating.

And it doesn’t come more whiny and grating than on Payphone, kicking off with the worst intro since Nickelback’s Rockstar, immediately launching into “I’m at a payyyyyyyphone….” before you’ve had any chance to reach for the skip, volume or off buttons. There’s an element of Maroon 5 evolving over the years and Payphone is a song which was very in keeping with the pop sound of the early 2010s, it’s very radio friendly but ultimately quite boring and just plods along, but while feeling like it’s annoyingly sung. If this song was simply “Maroon 5 – Payphone” it’d be slightly less objectionable, but it isn’t…

To prove the point that Payphone was in keeping with the sound of the early 2010s, the featured ‘rent-a-rapper’ verse on a pop song had become a popular thing over the previous few years, and few, if any, are as poor and pointless as Wiz Khalifa’s addition to this record. As the final verse it comes far too late in the song to make any impact, feels like it took minimal effort to write and record, a useless and terrible addition to make a poor song worse, I just don’t get why a super radio friendly band with a super radio friendly hit needed this inclusion other than it was the ‘in’ thing.

I’ll end this on something positive to say about this song; as it returned to #1 for a second week at the top, it stopped Chris Brown from having a second number one single in 2012.

Edited yesterday at 17:261 day by RabbitFurCoat

Such good shouts so far - I have never liked Payphone. A textbook halo hit following Moves Like Jagger.

Agree with that one, very annoying and whiny!

I'm here for the precision tunes version 😁

Oh “Payphone” is horrid - might even be my last place come to think of it.

I actually think James Arthur is quite talented but “Inpossible” is at best unnecessary.

oh Payphone wasn’t quite what I was thinking of to defend and I won’t really but against all better judgement I kinda like it.

Of course on an intellectual music critic level it’s utterly awful and Maroon 5 never made a good song after Songs About Jane.

It sounds kinda good during a music session though - more than Moves Like Jagger anyway

I’m not really a fan of Maroon 5 anyway but Payphone is particularly bad, obviously successful off the back of their biggest hit. Very forgettable