Iz様 🌟

Does Boy George know where he is?

… lyricism: fire, fire, like a vampire you come out at night

Montenegro’s a great effort for them very nice and gothic - hope that makes it in

Finland’s the winner, or at least it would be if the contest were fair - goosebumps at that performance and the main thing I was watching for tonight

Greece utter cack beggars belief that’s not a favourite to non qualify rather than win the whole thing Sweden and Croatia very well performed

Always a pernicious one to combat so excuse me: The 16.5k is only about 1% of UK millionaires , enough that regular immigration churn can and probably does offset it, and it's a little hard to truly ascertain when high net-worth individuals change their tax residence. The UK kinda does need higher taxes to keep itself somewhat solvent - though high net-worth individuals aren't really where we should be looking either (corporations as well as an international effort to tackle tax avoidance and constrain the financial power of multinational super-companies).

Well this is the problem, while remaining within the normative framework of what governments are 'allowed' to do, there's very little any government can do right now, and as such they aren't going to fix anything that will make voters happy. Starmer keeps talking about making the pace of change be felt quicker, but the precise reason he cannot do this is that within what Labour neoliberalism, same as the Tories, somewhat even the same as what Reform would do, allows him to do, they pretty much allow as much movement as allowed and no further. In order to keep financial-backed forces happy, they have to keep the population unhappy. Though as ever, I will add on that Labour have managed to set a lot of infrastructure related policies going in energy, rail etc and they are working to make the country better in a way the more right-wing forms of neoliberalism would scrap the first chance they get. It's all just too incremental. I'd question that Labour won on a ticket where they wouldn't do anything too extreme, their campaign tagline was 'Change'. The population perceive that things have not changed and they want things to change. I do think it's a bit bullshit that media and them are going apoplectic this soon into the term after the Conservatives were given chance after chance, but Labour and Starmer had a chance to break the system up a bit, the only way that any 'change' would come, just of course they wouldn't do that under Starmer. I don't think any replacement for Starmer would be worth trying, even if closer to my ideological position like Rayner. The media manufacture consent extremely hard even against anything even slightly left-of-centre, they'd be hated just as much in short order, Labour doesn't have the juice in this incarnation to do the proper left-wing reorganisation needed in society.

27. Ne-Yo – Beautiful Monster 1 week at #1 (entered 8th August): 01-05-05-09-13-23-31-28-33-41-52-56-56-89 Kept off #1: none EOY #69 You’re quickly going to see a change in tone in my commentaries to be quite a bit more positive, as I really do think the remaining 27 #1s are very enjoyable pieces of popular music in their own ways, perhaps in part because of my strong nostalgic feelings for this period. In order to eliminate them now I am starting to consider which, of those left, are just a little bit more inessential. Right now, possibly the most inessential #1 of the year, no connection to any wider narratives of careers beyond Ne-Yo, nothing really to excite me, just a guy doing his own thing very competently, and with a bit of a different twist to it that distinguishes it from his other #1s. Midst of summer, huge party tunes all over the place, and Ne-Yo drops a cover art straight out of Silent Hill and proclaims his love to be a monster. ‘Beautiful Monster’ is an absolutely fine song. If there was a big gap between ‘Love You More’ and the songs below it, there’s just as big a one between this and ‘OMG’, with ‘Beautiful Monster’ reaching solid 7 out of 10 territory. A Stargate production, they had been working with Ne-Yo since his debut, ‘Beautiful Monster’ has a pretty unique soundscape to it, it’s somewhat spooky and quite unusually dark in sound for a UK chart hit, and Ne-Yo really puts in an energetic performance in for this one, something really quite unusual as he’s normally far more at home smoothly doing something at a bit lower tempo. Which is a style of music that is definitely not for me, and I’d have eliminated certainly ‘So Sick’ early on in 2006 and even ‘Closer’ wouldn’t have made it very far in 2008. ‘Beautiful Monster’ is perhaps his #1 that’s the most up my street, using all of its atmosphere and the pathos that Ne-Yo approaches the material with, appropriately. And I, being ungrateful, still eliminate it relatively early. Lyrically it’s a little lacking, though that’s not overly important here, the main reason I chose to get it out at this point is I don’t often feel the urge to load it up and most especially listen the whole way through. The initial launch into the chorus, that's great, a little bit Michael Jackson 'Thriller'. As a song, it can get just a little annoying quickly, once you reach the repeated 'I don't mind's I am starting to mind a bit, and the addition of EDM blends into Ne-Yo’s more normal RnB sound isn’t the most satisfying, like how wine blends can be great, but sometimes end up feeling a tad bland. I truly appreciate what Ne-Yo was trying to do here as something a little more out of the box with the spooky vibes, I was just never going to be his biggest fan. This and the follow-up ‘One In A Million’ definitely made its way onto my iTunes at the time, only to be later deleted as I moved away from this type of RnB long term. He's good in short bursts for me but I'd rarely seek him out.

I got this from this article: https://www.complex.com/music/a/cmplxjoshua-espinoza/t-pain-addresses-recent-interview-comments-about-usher-autotune-criticism It seems to be getting its info from the This Is Pop documentary, something I haven't actually watched, I just found this while reading up about Usher and autotune and worked it into my commentary as it felt appropriate.

28. Usher – OMG (feat. Will.i.am) 1 week at #1 (entered 28th March, #1 on week beginning 18th April): 13-08-02-01-02-02-02-03-06-12-11-6-11-15-17-20-23-22-27-31-35-41-50-48-60-60-66-70-63-35-47-54-67-76 Kept off #1: None EOY #5 “I’m gonna tell you something, man. You kinda fucked up music. Yeah man, you really fucked up music for real singers.” Usher to T-Pain, 2013 AutoTune. While not a new technology, the charts of the late 00s and early 10s were very much in love with this musical trick, one T-Pain had built an entire career from it and even though we’re not far into this countdown, we’ve already come across a couple of autotuned songs. One of which contained the talents of will.i.am, and so, here’s another. Someone who really hadn’t built a career from AutoTune was Usher, one of the most successful artists of the 2000s. Yet the siren call of success and chasing trends is ever there for artists with a lot of commercial viability, and will.i.am, one of said commercial artists was very into AutoTune at this time, as we have established. So he wrote a song with AutoTune, and put it over to another of said commercial artists, Usher’s team recording Usher’s new personal album about his relationships, Raymond v Raymond. Because this song fits in with that theming exceedingly well. Will.i.am also ensured to include in this song a sample of crowd chants, which I’m certain were a major factor in its success. The crowd chants came from a French crowd that had just heard The Black Eyed Peas perform ‘I Gotta Feeling’. Which makes sense, because despite Usher being the main artist on this song, ‘OMG’ feels more at home with The E.N.D/The Beginning era Black Eyed Peas with how much it’s about AutoTuned big club party moments. Which will.i.am does decently, if this were a follow-up to ‘I Gotta Feeling’, and added in contributions from the other BEP members, it’d have some potential. It’s better as a song than what they did end up producing, though not by much. I wouldn’t say I’ve ever been a huge Usher defender, but he was undeniably better without AutoTune, which lasted with him for precisely as long as it was popular. ‘OMG’ is one of his weakest songs, far too reliant on will.i.am’s production chops, while it's mildly rousing and not totally awful, Usher doesn’t really give a good vocal performance, he even sounds bored at some points – certainly not emulating the song’s title. Then he starts singing about boobies in such a way that Simpsons fans listening closely to those lines noticed something suspicious. I don’t really feel anything from this song and while this might be a divergence from some here, I knew it was ending up low for me here. Not below the lot already done, but low, especially considering how well this sold. On the charts, as the third proper single for Raymond vs Raymond, ‘OMG’ was released ahead of the album’s release, and then because of the huge commercial and radio potential, became a radio staple in a large number of countries and a big hit in the chart over the spring and early summer - five weeks in the top 2 in a year with such huge #1s turnover is insane, even if it only managed to sneak the top spot in one of those weeks. I do not remember this at all from the time, perhaps because there’s so little to this song that it made no impact on me when I wasn’t paying attention and bored me when I did hear it and when I looked back at #1s, it was a clear loser. What I do remember is the far more engaging and fun follow-up with much less AutoTune, ‘DJ Got Us Falling In Love’ with Pitbull, which only got as far as #7. One might note that that song has nearly three times as many Spotify plays as ‘OMG’ these days, only just behind his defining hit ‘Yeah!’. T-Pain later said that those comments of Usher’s helped contribute to his depression, though he was quick to clarify that there was no bad blood meant. Maybe Usher was a hypocrite with zero tact, but maybe deep down, he knew what a poor effort this song was.

As expected, I hope more comes out about it. Meanwhile the BBC have written this simpering 'neutral' article that treats everyone rightly up in arms about Israel's actions recently as from the 'critics' side: BBC NewsWhy Eurovision's fallout over Israel may change the compe...With Eurovision facing its biggest boycott in 70 years, questions are growing over the competition's future. ~ I have heard all the songs and have some good ones from it (not very many, honestly) but I have engaged with it the least I ever have in 15 years. I will be watching just because my curiosity outweighs my opinion on the effectiveness of boycotts, plus social plans, but there will be no voting and I don't really care who wins because I am very much expecting a mockery of the voting system and Israel storming it.

Actually yeah, before we really leave X-Factor behind (thank god), some of the rest of the list were performed on it/are by acts from it, but nothing that's as tied to the show in part because we've already gotten rid of every song in the last five/six weeks of the year(!), I should say that my favourite act that year was actually (Platinum) Paije! Idk, he seemed like a nice guy with a soulful voice and I always liked that sort of underdog at the time. With kudos to Wagner for... what he did. Matt was a decent winner but I was full on getting into the underdog narrative as a teenager and it was very obvious after about halfway through that he'd win I seem to remember. anyway talent show brainrot hate it how was I ever this into it

Oh aye, I think Matt in his career after this did perfectly fine, I enjoyed his first album and what scattered songs I heard after that well enough, once he got some original material there's nothing too much wrong with it - 'Run For Your Life' in particular is a very good song in that mould. 'Surfin' Bird' - hah, of course I didn't mention that as it only got to #3 but that was a real random campaign attempt.

29. Matt Cardle – When We Collide 3 weeks at #1 (entered 19th December): 01-01-01-02-05-20-25-37-44-57-61-68-95 Kept off #1: none EOY #2 Scottish rock band Biffy Clyro, a band that I always enjoy hearing from, were having their most successful commercial era around 2008-2010. The Only Revolutions album produced six singles that got great radio play and reached the top 40, including my favourite song of theirs: ‘The Captain’. Unfortunately their songs would never have the wide appeal to get to a singles #1, and as such this is essentially the only opportunity to talk about the brilliant Biff in a number one singles thread. Particularly this concerns the fourth: ‘Many Of Horror’, which following steadily diminishing returns after three previous singles, reached a peak of #20 in early 2010. This era saw Biffy Clyro trend into making their sound more radio-friendly for rock radio stations at least, and as such ‘Many Of Horror’ is a rousing rock ballad with uplifting lines such as ‘It’s you and me ‘til the end of time’, and ‘when we collide we come together’. All of that unfortunately made it perfect prey for the praying mantis of UK popular music, and I really hope this is the last time I’ll have to prominently mention his name in this thread, Simon Cowell, just as he was eying up how to potentially market a new type of singer for a X-Factor success. Winners of the previous X-Factors had all been firmly in the pop mould, and of the artists that looked likely to win the 2010 series, one of them, Matt Cardle, presented something a bit different. He was a slightly scruffy but still attractive (?) soft-rock guitar strummer that offered potential untapped financial success for the casual music market who enjoyed such things. Alas, poor Matt might have just been a tad too early, too attached to the Cowell brand, and not ginger enough. To have a long career at least. You can also just win lawsuits later if that’s your thing. Actually an interesting thing that Cowell did this year was ensure the last four contestants left in the X-Factor would have recorded different winner's singles, in a change to previous series, to ensure they got a song that suited them (perhaps because of how ill-suited Olly Murs was to 'The Climb'). Cher Lloyd would have taken Shontelle's 'Impossible', One Direction Alphaville's 'Forever Young', Rebecca Ferguson Duffy's 'Distant Dreamer', and Cardle 'Many Of Horror'. Ferguson and Cardle performed their versions in the final, and Cardle won. A quick title change to not confuse the, ahem, easily distracted X-Factor audience, from the beautiful 'many of horror' in the song's middle 8 to the far more obvious 'when we collide' in the chorus, and it was away to the charts. So let’s dispense with the final one from the far too long ‘winners single/charity single’ list in 2010, I wondered if I was holding onto this one too long but this is how much I enjoy them and while my enjoyment of ‘When We Collide’ is mostly down to my enjoyment of the original song it’s covering, and it is strictly an inferior version of that song, it’s still good enough to listen to ahead of the previous lot. Cardle's vocal handling of the song is nowhere near as interesting, his falsetto is annoying enough that I immediately know it's not the better version I'm listening to and it lacks a lot of the energy and emotion that Simon Neil puts into it (understandably, as it's about Neil's family). It's a good effort for X-Factor to at least try to touch on some different genres, but it also betrays how cynical this was, because Matt doesn't have any connection to this song, and while covers are a valid musical choice, the best put something of themselves in it. Outside of seeing him on TV up to now, we didn't have any sense of who Matt was, and this didn't do anything to change that. 'When We Collide' was hugely commercially successful, reversing the relative chart underperformance of 'The Climb', getting the Christmas #1 and 2 weeks after that into the beginning of 2011. It sold so fast that it almost denied 'Love The Way You Lie' that record-breaking End Of Year #1 and its Christmas #1 sales week was only just below that of Helping Haiti's first week. While not the biggest number in X-Factor's history, and actually even slightly below 'The Climb' on first-week sales, I think that's more a sign of the declining singles record market than diminishing interest in X-Factor. After a year off from the Christmas #1, Simon Cowell came back with a vengeance. Outraged by a talent show taking and diminishing one of their band's songs for the masses, Biffy Clyro fans and by extension a large number of rock fans launched a campaign to get the original 'Many Of Horror' to #1 and stop the X-Factor for a second year in a row. This unfortunately was nowhere near as successful as Rage Against The Machine's effort the year before, but it did have the happy consequence of getting 'Many Of Horror' to a new peak of #8, something far more in keeping with its quality, and allowed at least those listening to the Christmas chart in 2010 to know the origins of the song now at #1. Please allow me to never have to type X-Factor again.

30. The Black Eyed Peas – The Time (Dirty Bit)1 week at #1 (entered 14th November, #1 on week beginning 12th December): 11-07-11-06-01-04-03-03-03-08-15-20-27-29-41-50-53-54-63-66-62-58-66-73-74-83-99 Kept off #1: Willow - Whip My Hair EOY #26 & EOY #110 in 2011 Like I said, wouldn’t get long before songs I started enjoying. Here’s one where I do mildly enjoy it and wouldn’t rush to skip it but god, there are so many things wrong with it also. The Time (Dirty Bit) is the first song in the countdown not associated with Simon Cowell, in that it was neither released on the label Syco, nor, in the case of the JLS songs, the act came from one of his shows despite being signed to Epic due to not winning (yes, Shout was on Syco’s label). Though the Black Eyed Peas still performed this on X-Factor as it rose up the charts, helping its cause in getting to #1. Fuck. Speaking of, it’s also the first song here with an interesting chart run that isn’t just hitting #1, or a commercial peak, right at the start of its time on the charts and then dropping out as soon as the first week sales are done with. Might be connected to it not being Syco. But yes, it debuted well, and then as the BEP did more promotion for the song here in the UK, it became more and more popular until it was riding out the slow Christmas period in a long set of high positions. Right enough time for everyone to get sick of it, though that's still an impressive commercial performance and hold on rate, it did its job at being a solid choice for clubs around this time. In its one week at #1 it did mercifully stop the utterly horrible 'Whip My Hair' from getting to #1, I'm only not going to lambast that song more because I understand it was performed by a literal 10-year old child - if you've wondered what Willow Smith is doing for music these days, after having a few more efforts show up in the charts sporadically (most notably as half of The Anxiety with 'Meet Me At Our Spot') she's making fairly decent jazz pop, more the sort of thing I'd actually make if I were an aspiring musician with superstar parents as opposed to... teeny bopper things. Coming off their most commercially era so far with The E.N.D, the Black Eyed Peas were keen to follow up that success with a sequel album, entitled The Beginning. I like the theming, I wouldn’t say it was a good choice to open up that comeback with a controversial sample from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack. You know those parodies or jokes about how EDM music just takes a beloved song or sound, records a shaky cover of it and then shoehorns in electronic bleeps, bloops and sub-bass heavy thumps? ‘The Time (Dirty Bit)’ is that played straight. Fergie soars into a passable cover of ‘(I’ve Had) (The Time Of My Life)’ on the chorus, made more upbeat for the dancefloor purposes, but then the chorus drops into some of the most basic dance beats you’ve ever heard. Cue outrage from everyone who liked Dirty Dancing, the song or the movie. I don’t have huge feelings for that either way but I can still tell this desecrates it. It doesn’t even really fit the rest of the song, and the transitions are more jarring than you’d expect from a group who’d scored 3 #1s and dancefloor and radio dominance the year before. Add in some raps where apl.de.ap in particular feels like he’s introducing himself in a rap battle: (‘I’m the party application’ really?) rather than being one of the members of the biggest band on the planet, and it feels ridiculous. All of the raps are just a bit lyrically lacking honestly and carry the same feeling of generic 'let's give every member a verse (not Taboo though)', just apl attempts to make some plays on his name which make them stand out slightly more. In comparison to ‘I Gotta Feeling’, which has memorable lines everywhere, as did ‘Boom Boom Pow’, can you really remember any of the other non-Dirty Dancing lyrics from this? I don’t think it’s awful, but it’s transient and not clever with its samples or rapping lyrics. For all the things you could have criticised The Black Eyed Peas with their music before this, I wouldn’t have leveled either claim at any of their big hits from previous albums. This was a successful #1, but it was so far into generic, unoriginal EDM that it killed their career fast, and after a couple more hits from this album, they split and never majorly troubled the UK charts again – sure they reformed later without Fergie but can you honestly say you knew or cared?

submitted my song it feels spacey and futuristic

With the counts all in, is this a disappointment or overperformance for all parties? This was an average of all major commentator predictions, in terms of change of numbers of councillors: REF +1688 GRE +565 LD +172 CON -644 LAB -1569 Using those full figures, I've got the BBC which is slightly different to the figures posted above, we have: REF +1453 GRE +441 LD +155 CON -563 LAB -1496 So just about 5-10% less extreme of a change than the predictions were saying. Good expectation management from Labour/Conservatives, Reform and Greens coming in slightly below their best predictions - a couple of predictions had the Greens at nearly +900 and Reform at over +2000 which obviously didn't pan out, still plenty of places elected Labour and Cons even with the comparative wipeout. Labour especially had a really high base this cycle, so much further to fall. Lib Dems quietly making expected slow gains, you go when you feel like it Ed. 5 councils now under Green control, 14 under Reform control. Biggest thing is many councils moved into no overall control and so a minority administration or coalition will have to form. Spare a thought for Barnet council, which is now 31 Conservatives, 31 Labour and 1 singular Green as kingmaker.

West is a soft-left about in the middle of the party, with some prominence during Corbyn's tenure as a Remainer but even then I have never heard of her before now, but then you don't tend to know much about stalking horses. Gordon Brown is good to see back but I don't know if it'll save Starmer. Starmer's going really hard sending the message that he was elected to see out a 5-year term - whether the Labour Party will agree...

Should say it was the second week for 'The Flood' on 'Love You More''s first week, and 'The Flood' was #2 the week before, there were 2 number ones that kept it off #1. Though Take That did sell a lot more in their second week, again probably because of performing on X Factor and CiN as it happens, though the sales gap was similar in both weeks. I'm using the definition of 'in the week(s) this song was at #1, there was a song at #2 that never reached #1'. I agree actually on Joe, I wondered if I was just going to do a very quick commentary about it as you'd already done it and I knew it was very uninteresting as a #1 and then I started writing more than it deserves. Forgot/didn't see that when researching for 'Love You More' being on Children In Need, that is another good explainer. It's not like it was a top-seller but it did get 118k in its first week which is better than a lot of #1s over the year.

31. JLS – Love You More 1 week at #1 (entered 21st November): 01-03-10-14-23-19-23-34-45-57-72-92-71-89-96 Kept off #1: Take That – The Flood EOY #66 As this countdown struggles to emerge from the noted number of charity/talent blights upon the music industry that made it to the top spot in 2010, some poor moments at the top end do fall by the wayside, and I’m sorry to say to any Jack the Lad Swing fans, the next one is their other #1 this year. This actually was the song I originally forgot, which says something about its memorability. Or more that while scanning the list and adding in all the #1s to my Excel sheet, I missed one low impact #1 near the end that I had forgotten was ever a #1 until writing for the commentary for ‘The Club Is Alive’ and thinking ‘wait, didn’t they have 2 number ones from that album? or was that second one in 2011’? Still, after adding it in, I scanned the songs soon to come and decided that while it was much better than The Club Is Alive or charity singles, it didn’t deserve to fit ahead of any of the upcoming ones, so in here it goes. I really don’t dislike JLS as much as their position this low suggests - indeed I vaguely enjoyed most of their first album, if very little on there that I ever listened to beyond 2013. If it were the other single from Outta This World, ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, that we were talking about, that's decent and had that made it to #1 it’d be perhaps 5-10 places higher. But they chose to release that one third post-album for some reason, and as the strategy goes, that only made it to #8 in the opening weeks of 2011. As an upbeat song, it would have been a better X-Factor performance also, and there’s the problem that keeps Cowell hanging over... every song so far. A big part of the reason ’Love You More’ got to #1 was a carefully choreographed scheduling of guest live performances, one week before the X-Factor was planning to release ‘Heroes’, both JLS and the song they beat to number one, Take That with their comeback 'The Flood' were guest performers on the live shows. I loved ‘The Flood’ and Take That during the one era Robbie Williams deigned to rejoin the rest of the crew, and that would have made a far better #1, here holding at #2 for the second week in a row. Really insane to consider how much the X-Factor was influencing the charts this year, I was watching it so I specifically remember X-Factor guest performances having a very big impact on the charts but I think just from a quick scan of musical guests and knowledge of hits in other years, I think 2010 was the peak. Nearly every song near the top end of the charts in the final quarter of the year was performed on X-Factor and ‘Love You More’ is just the song where its outperformance in comparison to its otherwise impact beyond the show is most clearly noticeable. In that its success was caused by being on the most watched show in the nation, as opposed to being invited because the song was already popular. On quality, ‘Love You More’ isn't that bad. It's a song that the word average as a perjorative is very good for, a very standard inessential boyband ballad, 4 or 5 out of 10. It’s a big gap between here and the bottom 5, but there's not much to recommend this one either. There’s mercifully no autotune in contrast to ‘The Club Is Alive’, and that’s a good point, what isn’t a good point in its favour is that often boyband ballads aren’t particularly good, this does no work to break those stereotypes, and that it’s the clearly better of their two 2010 #1s doesn’t save it from falling into tired cliches. JLS are better than this, I know they are better than this, they'd never be a favourite act but these two 2010 #1s are the worst of their singles – this gets a heavy ‘meh’ rating and not a song deserving of the top spot: 'The Flood' clears this so hard.

32. Helping Haiti – Everybody Hurts 2 weeks at #1 (entered 14th February): 01-01-09-26-42-77 Kept off #1: Florence/Dizzee Rascal – You Got The Dirtee Love EOY #11 In January 2010, an exceedingly deadly earthquake hit the poor, impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti. The epicentre was in about the worst possible position it could have been throughout the Caribbean, near enough to the densest population centres in Haiti, and the earthquake was massive. To an extent, this earthquake destroyed Haitian society and while the total figure of deaths is not known, hundreds of thousands of people lost their lives, making it the second deadliest earthquake of the century so far after only the 2004 tsunami in South East Asia. This utterly tragic natural disaster did raise a lot of reactions internationally, including one of the most watched telethons in history in the United States, Hope For Haiti Now, that raised $61 million from viewers. Countries across the world pledged to send aid, the UK initially sent $10 million and some rescue personnel, although in the end, much of the money pledged got tied up in processes and a fraction made it to the country. To this day, Haiti has never really recovered from this earthquake. It was already poor, politically unstable and saw thousands of deaths every time a hurricane brushed against it due to poor infrastructure, and the earthquake exacerbated the inability of government and civil society to do anything. The president of Haiti was assassinated in 2021, and as of 2026, the office of president has not been properly filled, as gang violence and food shortages continue to plague the country. Haiti is a failed state, and one can only hope that better days are ahead of it, but given the country’s proximity to natural disasters and the ability of those who wish it to disrupt the proper running of society, I am not hopeful. Anyway, as part of our rescue efforts, Gordon Brown decided to personally phone Simon Cowell, asking him to record a charity single, which he did along with The Sun. And so Mr Cowell’s influence over the bottom end of this countdown continues. The song was a cover of R.E.M’s ‘Everybody Hurts’, with all royalties waived, everything set up to raise as much money as possible. 26 artists, mostly Simon Cowell-associated properties such as Westlife members, Take That members, Leona Lewis, Rod Stewart etc. gathered together in a recording session to talk about how much they wanted to help, so they all got together and recorded a line or two on this hopeful ballad, before going back to flogging cheap disposable pop tat. The first problem I have with the Helping Haiti version of ‘Everybody Hurts’ as a song is that the sheer number of artists doing individual lines makes it a very inconsistent and jarring listening experience, for no discernible reason except to get more names attached to the song and perhaps that it worked for Band Aid (original lineup). ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ was an original song and designed with multiple artists in mind. ‘Everybody Hurts’ was not at all, certainly not designed for singers with different voices on every line. Mika, who might be my favourite performer otherwise in the lineup, takes you right out of it as he distinctively sings ‘it’s time to sing along’, but he’s far from the only offender and there are many parts in this where the singer changes when musically and rhythmically, the singer should not be changing. Also as ever with charity singles, I have to evaluate how appropriate the song they chose is for the cause they’re representing, and this is one where, I get it, I get the choice, R.E.M’s ‘Everybody Hurts’ is meant as a hopeful and simple song to tell people that pain is normal and hope is still here – it’s a simple song and will sell well to make a lot of money. I would never call it a favourite rock ballad even as an original, but I get why they chose it. Just, the implication of rich pop stars singing about how ‘Everybody Hurts’, presumably towards Haiti, the one nation where people are hurting feels a little awkward at best, tone-deaf from the rich to the third world at worst. Again, Do They Know It’s Christmas was a little bit white saviour, but it at least centred the people it was helping in its lyrics, as a charity cover, admittedly one organised on very short notice by the only person in British culture at the time who could get this many names together, this did not. Overall, it’s an inferior experience to listening to the original and that’s how I’m evaluating this for the purposes of this countdown. I wouldn’t often choose to listen to any version of ‘Everybody Hurts’ but if I were choosing so, would never choose to listen to this version, and as ever with big charity singles like this, part of evaluating them critically is how often people would choose to listen to them over and above any songs that inspired them or that they’re covering. You get that with some charity singles, sure, but not really with ones run by Cowell. His strategy, to throw big names at it and sell on star power, with the laudable strategy of making money over and above a usable product, is as ever with him, anti-culture and in important countdowns like this one, will get you losing out. I won’t say that the Haitians would have rathered PM Brown hadn’t bothered, as this was the fastest-selling charity single of the 21st century so far, nearly making it into the top 10 of the year with 621,900 copies sold by year end, and as far as I can tell, it is one of the best performing charity singles ever. It raised £1.3 million, split between a specific charity operation The Sun were running and the more general Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC), a collection of UK charities that work in situations like this, more recently they ran aid in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine. For the Haiti appeal the DEC raised £107 million overall, so this song specifically was about 1% of the UK’s total charity efforts. A nice gesture, and the charts don’t really matter here, but even so one of the most effective charity singles in history ends up as only a small proportion of total donations. The money as far as I can tell did go to use for efforts of shelter and recovery. Two years on however, the BBC published a rather pessimistic article about how effective the funds were being used, Although this money probably did provide some relief throughout Haiti, it never fixed the underlying issues and didn’t give enough priority to infrastructure projects to protect these people from disasters long-term. As previously mentioned, the country has only gotten harder to live in since then. Everybody is still hurting in Haiti, very, very much.

33. Joe McElderry - The Climb1 week at #1 (entered 26th December 2009): 02-01-02-15-25-38-50-68-81 Kept off #1: none EOY – outside top 200 To be consistent with the other countdowns, I am taking on the #1 that straddles the years, and whether you count this #1 as being dated week beginning 27th December or week ending 2nd January, for these purposes, The Climb was #1 in both years, and so gets a slot in both – though here I’ll focus a bit more on Joe McElderry’s 2010 career alongside The Climb. Part of the reason why is that somehow, 2009’s X Factor big cultural moment chart battle passed me by, and I don’t actually recall it happening at the time, so as I got into music and the charts, I approached it as something that had happened, that was in the past – a little regretful as it was surely a fantastic moment. I don't actually remember what I was doing that year, probably having a far nicer time not thinking about X Factor at least. But my experience with The Climb is pretty firmly in 2010. Jim covered very well in the 2009 thread the dichotomy between the X-Factor really needing the talented entertainer Olly Murs to win and the fickle voting public instead voting the boy who cleans up nice and sings well into the winning position, as someone who didn't watch X Factor 2009 I'd be a bad choice for that, though I completely agree, that is the problem with talent shows, the voting public, ban both talent shows and the voting public. Also previously covered, the aforementioned chart battle in which Killing In The Name secured Rage Against The Machine a legendary Christmas #1 – oh yeah and Joe McElderry’s winning single The Climb did actually get itself a #1 the week after as the campaign faded. It was the sitting #1 as 2010 and the new decade rang in, for a couple of days at least. As I was first getting into music and getting confronted with the basic offerings popular music of 2010 had to offer me, I did come across Joe McElderry’s immediate post X-Factor offerings and I quite liked them. ‘Someone Wake Me Up’ had a decent pop sound to it and I got into that, and ‘Ambitions’ was an entirely decent first single, peaked at #6 in October 2010 that I also enjoyed a lot. I even got his first album Wide Awake and played it a lot. I later learned that ‘Ambitions’ was a cover of a song by Norwegian electro-pop band Donkeyboy, that it was far from the only cover on Wide Awake (almost all the best efforts on that album were covers), their version of this song was far better (also a retro Greenfroze entry for those who take part in BJSC), and some of my anti X-Factor feelings started to coalesce. Not just because he’s doing covers, but because they’re all covers of lesser-known songs and it feels like here the singer is being sold as a product somewhat deceptively, without anything really to say but as if these songs are his own - essentially doing the exact problem with all the X Factor winner singles but while he's actually free of the show and starting his new career, at a point when he shouldn't need to. It telegraphs his future career as a crooner, and fair play, but that wasn't what he was at this time. idk it might be just me but singing 'ambitions are already starting to fade' as your first proper single, it's just too easy to make the jokes. What happened to 'There's always going to be another mountain?'. Or does it just mean nothing, because you mean nothing with your words and stand for nothing? Isn't that right Keir Starmer Joe McElderry? This isn’t anything against McElderry himself, he’s a victim of circumstance, a good lad with a nice voice but no musically creative voice of his own, at least with X-Factor’s initial attempts to make him a popstar, and that comes through very apparently when you take ‘The Climb’ as representative of his immediate post X-Factor output. Most X Factor winners at least put out original songs to lead off their career as popstars after they’re free of the show’s insistence on vapid covers, but McElderry didn’t, he stuck with the strategy of 'The Climb', with original songs like ‘Someone Wake Me Up’ passed over in favour of covers like ‘Ambitions’. To return to the #1 that this post is allegedly about, it's not all that interesting and I couldn't have gotten much more out of it than this because of one simple fact, there is no reason for anyone to listen to McElderry’s ‘The Climb’ cover over Miley Cyrus’ original, it adventures into nothing and shows little emotion in comparison to Miley's at least decent emotional performance to the point that you don’t even get a sense of Joe’s experience of winning a talent show with it. Joe just oversings it. Very bland, very unexciting, and an easy drop for me at this early stage. Wasn’t the song I forgot by the way, I knew this one was part of the deal, but I’m not spending too long on it either.

Great stuff to see Plaid coming in first, Rhun seems like he'd be a good First Minister - I imagine they'll sort out a deal with Labour on those results or possibly just try and rule as a minority?

Greens have won Hackney mayoralty, their first ever mayor - which bodes well for results in that area of London. BBC NewsSir John Curtice: Election results show politics in the U...Reform are the winners so far, with more results still to be declared. To support my last post, this looks like Greens' best result in local elections assuming predictions hold out and a huge increase from the last time this set were run. I would frame this more as Labour need to watch their left flank. If the Greens can damage them in these sorts of elections then Labour's tack should be to try win those voters back, we don't generally see much movement between the party blocs so going after Reform/Tory voters will have diminishing returns. In a 5-party system there's so much less leverage to hold voters to ransom voting for you to keep the other party out, as it's comparatively easy for that insurgent party to outdo the institutional party, as we saw in Gorton & Denton.

Can we please not post sales figures or confirmation of final album positions until the charts have been announced? Thanks.