GreyAsh

The other thing to notice is that odds for Wham! have been slashed from 8/1 to 3/1 in just 4 days or less. Pogues odds though still much better, have slowly been getting worse. I’ve never been able to work out the best way to compare odds - is the best way to use a decimals setting? If so, Pogues are 1.33 and Wham! are 4 - so Pogues are, according to bookies, 3 times more likely to be number 1 (e.g 75% to 25% ignoring all other songs).

People are happy to vote at Eurovision - and they choose between songs. But people are generally not keen on the prospect of heading to iTunes to download a track. People just don’t download these days. LadBaby managed it by providing a link to download from iTunes. I can’t manage that - when I try it directs to Apple Music streaming. Any idea how it’s done? The Kunts manage it by having 20+ different remixes.

Quite liking this list! CMAT randomly made it onto my playlist. I’m someone who for several years gave up listening to the charts because I was no longer enjoying ‘current music’ - but I’m enjoying a lot of new artists.

Question: if many of us chart nerds think that Last Christmas has it in the bag, why do the odds not reflect this? Is it possible that FONY will gain enough downloads?

That’s strange… everybody I know who has tried to order ‘Last Christmas’ through Amazon UK from abroad has failed to do so.

Ah that makes sense. One thing to bear in mind is that they have not even been advertised by Wham!’s record company yet. so these sales are only from fan who have discussed it between themselves. The vinyl is already number 1 in CD/vinyl pre-orders.

Are you saying 300 sales for Last Christmas vinyl and CD? How do you know?

Perfect was deliberately aimed at Christmas number 1 with new duet recordings released to ensure it grabbed number 1. The Beyoncé version got massive numbers of streams.

White vinyl once. But not on CD. I think it took 1 week to become the year’s best seller on vinyl. It was 2019 - which was the year before Christmas songs started dominating the Christmas chart - so those sales helped it to climb above Mariah, Wham! were at 5. Mariah at 8. They were the only Christmas songs in the top 10, but the following week there were 9 (8 old, 1 new). And the following year the pandemic effect saw the number of Christmas songs in the Christmas top 10 increase from 2 to 8.

Amazon Prime: Wham!: 1, 38, 66, 164 Mariah: 2, 15, 68 Pogues: 7, 21, 35, 47 Amazon Unlimited: Wham!: 2 Mariah: 3 Pogues: 1 I call the two lists Prime, and Unlimited, but it might just be that one list combines all versions, and the other doesn’t (though the clean and explicit versions of Jack Harlow are included separately on both). I think at one point Pogues topped both lists, but have since declined.

Wasn’t that originally an Amazon Exclusive? Either way, Taylor has grown so much in popularity since then.

That’s only 1 day earlier than last year. Last year Wham! got around 55k and so far have been up over 30% on last year (though this may settle down as the season progresses.

Really interesting! Thanks for doing the analysis. A bit ridiculous these days as songs released towards the end of the year are automatically excluded!

On the Amazon Music Unlimited Charts I think they combine all versions, so both songs are higher: Mariah 10 Wham! 17 I think I remember Mariah being as high as 5 in the first 48 hours of November.

But also the gap between Mariah and Wham! is currently less than half of what it was this time last year.

Their streams are 50% higher this year. Though why, I don’t know.

It’s excluded from the public version of the (prime I think, rather than unlimited) chart because it is explicit. When you login, the explicit tracks are included.

Oh Lord! Does this mean that when White Christmas is in the US Spotify charts, it should actually be Brenda Lee?

I don’t think it’s charted on Spotify US yet! It’s got a lot of catching up to do.

Big shocks: this is the first time Wham! have charted globally or in US on Spotify on November 1st. In UK Last Christmas is closer to Mariah (20k v 27k) than this time last year with a 50% higher figure than last year. And yes - easily the highest they’ve both been November 1st. And Brenda Lee could be in trouble - she’s not charted in the US, they seem to have replaced their love for her with Bing Crosby.

I think: Consecutive years 2010/11 - All The Lovers/Higher Same album 2007/8 - 2 Hearts/Wow Same year and same album 2002 - In Your Eyes/Love At First Sight

I was going to mention that. Amazing! Two top 2 airplay hits from one Kylie album in 2023! I wonder when she last achieved that or anything close.

I think we all agree with you that Autumn Variations ‘flopped’ - or at least it surprised us in comparatively how few copies it sold. To repeat - the comparison has only been made because a) it was released a week after Tension and b) it was a surprise because c) Ed is a massive star. We had just assumed that Kylie would stand no chance against an Ed release and would struggle against Drake too. In general when we do make these comparisons, it’s intended to come across as ‘I’m really surprised that…’ Secondly: these comparisons are only being made in passing as a snapshot of how Tension is doing. In general - from what I gather anyway - most of us here are just trying to get an idea of how Tension is doing so that we can see how it compares with other Kylie albums. There’s no need to tell us that some albums have done better this year - none of us thinks that Tension is the biggest seller of the year. I know it wasn’t you who mentioned the word ‘cherry picking’ but by selecting some of the year’s biggest sellers, that is just what you are doing. And when Spotify is massively influenced by US listening habits - of course artists who are successful globally have an advantage in the UK. As a side note, I feel that US country music has had its biggest year in the UK for a long time - and that in itself says something. In the UK, British rap artists and dance artists do well, but when it comes to ‘pop’, if an artist has struggled to break the US, they are at a disadvantage here as well… which, in my opinion is part of the reason why Kylie and BMG are focusing on the US at present (and also as a result why Tension’s global streaming figures are healthier than her previous albums). We are just proud that this far into Kylie‘s career, ‘Tension’ is one of less than 30 albums this year to spend its first 3 weeks in the top 40, and less than 20 of 2023’s releases to have gone silver. Needless to say there are albums this year that have done better than ‘Tension’ and albums that have done less well. The question is - are you just in this forum to bring Kylie down? Or are you making these comments because you are disappointed that ‘Tension’ is not doing better? Or possibly because you don’t think the rest of us have this in perspective. I understand that some people are disappointed in Tension’s chart positions, but going full circle - one thing I’ve been trying to do is show that Tension is at least as successful as Disco - the chart climate for some reason has changed far more since Disco than it did between Golden and Disco.

And this too! How many female singers have had albums with better initial runs than Kylie this year? Potentially 6. Yes only 6. P!nk, Miley Cyrus, Lana Del Rey, Melanie Martinez, Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo. All at an advantage because they are American - and I assume more successful there than Kylie

This! And ‘Tension’ went silver quicker than P!nk and Lana - not that they really matters. Yes, P!nk’s album has been phenomenally successful… but no one is trying to say that ‘Tension’ is the biggest album of the year, just that the narrative that it is less successful than ‘Disco’ is based on inappropriate comparisons. And yes, BMG clearly understand the climate at least as well as, and almost certainly better than any of us.