Smint

Wow thought both Gary and Lewis would be way higher - not that I voted for them. Liked both 'Attention' and 'How Long' from Charlie Puth.

It's very state of Christmas nowadays. Rather than 12 days of Christmas, even on the 25th itself, we think about Easter. I'm looking up Easter eggs as we speak!

Celine Dion as well

Thanks so much for this. I initially wrote off the Jorja take as a dirge after hearing it once or twice on the chart show but after reading this, decided to give it a few more plays and watch the animated video. It's actually pretty haunting and brave for a Christmas cover - VERY Tori Amos (favourite female singer). Might fit my mood at various points over the Christmas season this year.

Twitter is an absolute cesspit - I would say that it would be great if people just moved to Threads but Meta has it's own problems (like shadowbanning pro Palestinian content). Just hope offline people are a bit more sympathetic.

Hope they at least skip all the old songs and if they have to skip the current songs at all they do.it based on EOY chart position.

Bless Andrew - he's not been interviewed for a while.

Thanks Joseph for running this and all charts this year so well! :heart:

Awww Sam Ryder bringing tears to my eyes!

I think the interview with him now indicates its no.2

On what grounds? It will be over 3 years old and they never reset them at Christmas time.

No hoping. It's a given!

I'd think Jack Harlow more likely to reclaim the no.1 first week of year with new year parties.

I'm slightly surprised they play the lyrics about whips and chains knowing how prudish R1 can be! :whip:

I remember how hated it was! They'd be mad to try again. They should be happy the original still does very well (if not spectacularly) nowadays.

What's this 5 contenders? There's no hope for Ed/Elton surely. Are the top 5 that close or is it just bollocks.

Chris Rea's other music is generally really good. Including the far superior driving song 'The Road to Hell'. This is easy listening syrup

Why was Laufey snubbed? New artist getting a new entry should be played. R1 happy to play Amazon exclusive covers.

R1 in the last few years played the actual top 40 which was rather wearying although it was nice that Sia got new peaks (first for Santa's Coming For Us then Snowman) Great idea to change that. Would prefer New Year's Day though as get every day of 2023 counted (and will be around then!)

Didn't realise that 'Mad World' had quite so slim a margin over the Darkness- just over 2%! :o Although Rage Against the Machine beating Joe McElderry was the most exciting race on recent times IMO

Love 'Marea (We've Lost Dancing)' and 'Delilah (Pull Me Out of This)' best from Fred Again. Bangers but very emotive too. Mark Owen's 'Child' is a fantastic, rather unusual song. Must admit not been driven to listen to more from him.

Wasn't 'River' no. 1 on Amazon that week and although.Mariah/Wham.were obviously big streamers, back then Christmas playlist wasn't so gargantuan? I think Sam could easily have a no.1 mind, if Alexa move it up their pecking order. Maybe they will next week?

Plus Sam has physical singles out too and he's on a heavy promo schedule - a bit on the level of Lewis Capaldi's no.1s this year. No wonder he's no.2 in the charts so far this week.

I only really discovered Howard Jones this summer, he was huge in the mid 80s but a lot of music had passed me buy - his songs maybe simple but are very uplifting, character building and quite a few earworms too. Beautiful person in every measure too!

But to be honest, who knows what last minute number of CDs and ahem, completely accurate, Amazon streams are reported at the last minute... ^_^