The Hit Parade

I always thought it was? Mind you, I can remember when bookies used to refuse to take bets about charity records. I'm not sure when that taboo was broken.

Actually the last TotP shown on BBC4 to date has '(Just Like) Starting Over' at Number One - the actual Christmas episode isn't being shown this year because of the presenter. Whilst the rumour about 'Happy Xmas' has in any case been fairly convincingly debunked, the rumour was always that it had been the top seller in Christmas week itself, ie too late to be the official Christmas Number One - that was the week when there was no official chart until the mid-80s, so St Winifred's stayed at the top by default.

I saw he'd released it, I just wondered why he'd popped up with a single out of nowhere that wouldn't promote anything.

Where is that Buble song from anyway? It's a a bit late to add it to the album. Is it from an advert or something like that?

Funny that everyone was on Twitter last night saying XF was rigged for Louisa to win, and that the song was chosen to suit her specifically because they "knew" the other guys weren't going to win. But now it's out everyone's saying it's a terrible choice of song, etc.

I actually forgot that Radio 2 thing was on (although I was out and couldn't have listened to it anyway) because they've been playing the generic trail for Michael Ball's & Clare Teal's normal shows all week. Bit of a fail there.

None of those Christmas songs made the Top 40 [or whatever the extent of the chart was at the time] but I can't swear that they weren't released as singles. Particularly since he was recording long before there even was a UK chart.

Isn't 'What If' from a Christmas film though?

There's no such thing as availability on Spotify Premium - Spotify refuse to segregate releases so it's either available to free AND premium users or not at all. In this case it's unsurprising, since Coldplay have a long-standing relationship with Apple and own a stake in Tidal, that they've given them priority . Presumably the album will be on the other streaming sites, including Spotify, in a few months. They did something similar with the last album.

And because the albums at the top of the chart are further apart, the top end is almost always the same as the sales chart. It's only lower down that streaming seems to make any difference.

Didn't they edit Gary Glitter out of the Jive Bunny track at some point after 1997? I don't think he was on the version I heard on Spotify, not that I could bring myself to listen to all of it.

You might have been getting him mixed up with Showaddywaddy? His first TotP was the one co-hosted with Cliff Richard (who introduced Shaky) in 1980 and repeated a couple of months ago. Although he'd been knocking around for ages before that, of course.

And of course 'Careless Whisper' is on a Wham! album.

Why are Sigma releasing an album into the Christmas rush two years after their big hits?

It is of course possible to do a non-mimed music video - R.E.M. used to make a point of it - but miming is hardly remarkable.

The Weeknd in "whiny voice" shocker!

This is the sort of thing that makes me not understand the modern music industry.

Why should it be harder to sell albums on Friday than Thursday? I thought the whole move of the standard release day was based on the opposite assumption.

Yeah, exactly, £12:99 is a normal price for a CD album. I can remember expecting to pay that much for standard editions. It's £12:99 from HMV as well, although you can also buy an EP of remixes for £2 that gives you £2 off the album. Or you can wait six months until they reissue it with two new singles on it, of course.

I think Lyte Funkie Ones were credited as LFO on some of their releases in the US, but couldn't do so in the UK because of the existing techno act.

Yep, the 'Magic Fly' Space were French. It was in the Top 5 at the same time as Jean-Michel Jarre, probably the only time two French instrumental acts have been in the UK Top 5 at the same time.

A post on another forum has reminded me of Gun (band featuring Adrian Gurvitz, had one hit with 'Race With the Devil' in 1968) and Gun (Scottish rock act had several hits from 1989-97 and are still releasing albums today, briefly changed their name to G.U.N.).

There's also The Klaxons who went Top 50 with a novelty song called 'The Clap-Clap Sound' in 1983 and Klaxons who had a few hits circa 2006-7 but are at best an albums act now. Is that close enough to count?

I do remember Rhianna. Last time I looked her top 10 tracks on Last.FM were all spelling mistakes from Rihanna listeners. :( Skid Row is another well-known example. I believe the American Skid Row actually bought the name from the previous Irish act.

I'm not sure Syco would have paid for the song to be in the advert, but they'd have allowed it to be used, possibly for no fee, which amounts to the same thing.