Col1967

That is incorrect. St Winifred's School Choir was Christmas no.1 in 1980, not John Lennon.

Were it not for the death of John Lennon Stop the Cavalry would have made no.1, but not in Christmas week. Not that this song was ever intended to be a Christmas song anyway. It's an anti-war song describing wars down the ages that had been no.1 in France the previous summer. There s only one line in the song that is festive - 'Wish I was I was at home for Christmas'.

Don't know what the OCC will be able to do about it. I think it's going to be Christmas no.1 every year for the forseable future and whilst that is bad for the Christmas charts I don't really see what you can do about it as that is what people are streaming, that's what's popular, that's what people are listening to. What's the alternative, ban Christmas songs? Even that is fraught with difficulties as you would have to define what is and isn't a Christmas song and there is argument even over that. So I think we are stuck with this.

And Abba never had a Christmas no.1, Christmas themed or otherwise. The closest they came was in 1979 when they reached no.2 with 'I have a dream' but were thwarted by Pink Floyd's 'Another Brick in the Wall'.

And for the next 55 years.....

Well England will still be in the final all day today so perhaps it's not so difficult to estimate :) Imagine if the game was tonight. If England lost then all those eurphoric post-match streams would simply not exist. Imagine trying to predict that for chart purposes, when you didn't even know the result?

That's it exactly. Streaming and sales are such fundamentally different concepts that it is pretty much impossible to compare them though for chart purposes where the two co-exist some kind of relationship between them has to be made by necessity. When I first started buying singles in the mid-80s I would have considered it utterly absurd for me to have told Gallup how many times I had listened to Dead or Alive's 'You Spin me Round like a Record' and this to have counted towards the chart but that is essentially what streaming is. I think you could also argue that streamimg is a better way of assessing 'popularity' than sales as you could listen to it just once or every day for a month, surely the latter makes it more 'popular'?

Just realised it was Band Aid 30 that was being referred to, I was thinking of the original.

On which day of the week was 'Do they Know it's Christmas' launched though? If it was a weekday then sales comparisons aren't really valid as potential buyers would be at school/work and much less able to purchase the single.

And none of the March ones should.

Or if there isn't it could be pretty easily done. This is essentially introducing an airplay factor by the back door.

You have hit the nail on the head there. Allowing Spotify playlists to be counted towards the chart is analogous to admitting a radio airplay element. Yes, we choose the radio stations we listen to based upon in general what they play but nobody is ever going to like every track they hear. Much like airplay the playlists are based upon what somebody thinks is popular, rather than what might actually be popular. Not a good idea to include this in the chart, the whole point of which is to measure popularity!

Yes, I thought Rick Parfitt would surely be the last of this wretched year but the way we are going now it seems like there is still time to fit another one in before January 1st. I would happily celebrate New Year tonight if it would end this slaughter!

I still think there will be a last desperate media 'push' to get one or other of them going so one of them might not end quite as far down as at the moment. Presumably it would be the Hospice Choir now rather than Jo Cox. Perhaps this has been the problem for the charity singles, we don't normally get two well fancied ones in the Christmas no.1 contest and the media may have found it difficult to know which one to focus on. But whatever happens I think it will be far too little, too late.

I think this will be something of a roller-coaster ride, especially for those who have bets on! The same thing happened last year, those who bet on Bieber at good odds thought they were quids in but we all know what happened.

From what I recall it was only in the last couple of days that the NHS choir looked like snatching it. Massive media hype and poor Justin Bieber being compelled to ask people to buy that rather than his own single. I am hoping that as time goes on and streaming becomes ever more prevalent that nonsense charity singles like that become a thing of the past.

There should have been an option for Tuesday!

I am a little bit as well. Despite it being his only no.1 single it always struck me as being relatively forgotten. Still, I would have expected it to have penetrated the top 1500 by now....

Don't forget 1999.

Is it though? When I heard the name of the Grand National winner the first thing that popped into my head was the Take That song. And if that happened to me it would have happened to others and perhaps just a few of them would have been moved to download the track. And we are talking well down the iTunes chart here, it wouldn't have taken much.

The clocks going forward won't make the weather any warmer! What time we happen to call it is a purely man-made construct.

Mike Posner has been gradually gaining for a while now but today he does seem to have had something of an iTunes boost. I suspect Lukas Graham's final lead over him on Friday will be rather slimmer than many people were expecting.

Ridiculous. Don't they realise that the song has a very strong anti-drugs message? The video shows somebody being sick in a toilet bowl FFS.

Think it was 'Right Now' by Atomic Kitten but I can't be certain. So that makes it either 1999 or 2000 looking at it's chart run. I was rapidly losing interest in chart music by that time and when I had a degree of interest again it was 2007 when downloads became fully incorporated into the chart. By this point it was downloads all the way for me and it never occurred to me to buy a CD single.

I know, I wasn't exactly expecting him to appear although I imagine The Floral Dance will get a handful of downloads. I looked him up on Polyhex too and I knew about The Floral Dance of course but didn't realise that he'd had a 2nd top 30 hit, albeit in collaboration with others. He did manage to get a TOTP appearance out of it though. ElnCI1fkfFM Not that the appearance did him much good, it was at no.21 but fell to no.36 a week later!