Hassaan

Maybe being autistic plays a part in it - for me anyway. There's a lot of "mainstream" things I've liked over the years that would not be deemed cool. I've never been particularly bothered, even while having the odd comment at school about me being a One Direction fan. I suppose the older you get, the less you care about that sort of thing.

In my defence, I didn't say that. I said that the ones I've surrounded myself with do not. But then I'm also from an ethnic minority background so music (certainly Western pop) is not really something people from my background tend to engage in.

Even if he did, artists like him fall into the "cool to dislike" category. I'm a straight male and I've never known any other straight men in my life that have had an interest in pop music.

Ronan on The One Show making it very clear that they're not going on tour or getting the band back together, but merely looking to do something as a celebration. 2026 isn't a notable anniversary either - I almost thought it was with No Matter What but it's the musical that launched in 1996, whereas their version of it was released in 1998.

Only #66 on the sales chart too. Her last top 40 that she achieved on her own (not as a feature) was Yours in 2014 (#16), though Brave in 2022 came close at #42.

Interesting that Sapphire and Azizam have been his most commercially successful singles of this era, when even he felt they were the riskiest things to put out. I guess Old Phone and A Little More pleased old-time fans of Ed but didn't punch through in the way that those two did. Certainly for me anyway, they didn't. They're not bad by any means, but I didn't get excited by them. I'm interested to see what his sales will be actually. If Coldplay could get over 200,000 in their opening week, surely he can? I know that would beat his opening tallies in 2023 and 2021 but Coldplay managed to beat some of their previous opening tallies too.

With regards to the Union Jack, I have no strong opinion on them myself. You'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware of the sentiment around them though. There's only one group of people to blame for it being viewed as some kind of far-right symbol.

How is that "we should protect our own" thing going? https://news.sky.com/story/man-59-arrested-after-racist-and-abusive-messages-sent-to-england-football-star-jess-carter-13419935

The thing that mostly concerned me about him was the cult-like fanbase he had. He could do no wrong no matter how much he'd been caught out for lying. They interviewed a Welsh woman (during his PM tenure) who said she liked him despite his lying because "he's human".

Where she called for people to set fire to a hotel. I don't know why you're dismissing that as just anger like she's a 6 year old with no control over their emotions.

"Purely for being angry" is a really crass minimisation of what happened here.

To think they were all kicking off when they announced that the man involved in the Liverpool attack in May was white. It's almost as though they actively wanted to blame a non-white person.

Seems to reflect those who like to downplay the whole thing by saying "people are getting locked up for tweets". No, if you're actively encouraging people to set fire to a hotel, you deserve to face the consequences.

I mean, a lot of those people seem to be angry about everything. Even if they happened to be satisfied with all of that, they'll find something else.

There's a Hassan on this series. He has the normal spelling. 😃

27,065. This album has already outsold what that did in terms of CDs (15,750).

Robbie Williams' Candy in 2012 wasn't playlisted cos at 38 he was deemed too old. Still managed to get to #1 though.

He'll probably get a lot of votes from those not even watching just to "wind up the woke lefties" or something.

He did Apprentice in 2019 so it's slightly odd timing (though he's not exactly been out of the news since then).

I like a fun and cheesy music video, perhaps more so now as they're often considered a product of the past. They're not the sole or large part of selling a song anymore but there's still an audience for it. You're right that doing comedic music videos isn't something Ed has done much of but he's at the stage in his career where he can afford to have some fun.

He spoke about it briefly on the Louis Theroux podcast a short while back. There's no beef. It was just a jokey thing between them and Ed even invited Danny to watch a football game.

At least it sort of charted, but (perhaps unsurprisingly) it looks like his focus is now on the album and touring. I'd love him to get another top 40 single though.

It is interesting though because one could argue that Old Phone is less of a risk creatively for Ed than the other two singles from this era, but they have ultimately done better. Hard to compare directly as Azizam was released two months prior to Sapphire but if we're simply taking online traction, the latter seems to have done a lot better.

I have a Switch (which I primarily use) but we also have a Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 2 in the house.

Climbing slightly to #7 this week. Azizam is at #54.