AcerBen

‘Slow Lightning’ Conner Reeves & Joss Stone out 13th March

God, it's so sad. Yeah there's the odd megastar kids can still follow, but wasn't the whole world of pop just so wonderful? I thumb through my old issues of Smash Hits and wonder where it all went.

Yeah, I guess again it also depends on how much work the person put into it - did they spend hours playing around to get what they wanted, or did they just click a few buttons and take all the credit.

If you're into a bit of 90s pop, check out my Mixcloud show Back 2 The 90s! I've just uploaded my first show of 2026. 2 hours of smash hits and forgotten gems from Haddaway, En Vogue, Five, Annie Lennox, Robyn, Deuce, Boyzone, Alanis Morissette and many more.

December 10 single Run My Way Jan 30 https://www.instagram.com/reels/DTsyow8iHIR/

Oh and yes, Frankie's sales did go up from 5379 (panel sales) to 7291. https://www.ukmix.org/forum/chart-discussion/chart-analysis/10895472-uk-singles-charts-1984-including-chart-panel-sales/page25

Wet Wet Wet's Love Is All Around's sales went up a lot the week Whigfield knocked it off the top. A lot of people think it went down because the single was deleted, but actually the publicity around its deletion led to people rushing out to buy it (which I suspect was the real reason the label did it). It just wasn't enough to stop Whiggy.

If it's notable enough for you, A*Teens will release their potential Eurovision entry "Iconic" on 30 Jan.

She sang it on the Royal Variety last night and it was stunning

Well, that's debatable. People don't care about it very much anymore, but it is still a thing, in that it gets media coverage every year, and reminds people that the charts still exist. I think if the same record was #1 every year it would be the final nail in the coffin. I don't see OCC standing by and doing nothing.

It's the lesser of two evils seeing a good Amazon Christmas single there than Wham! every year until the end of time. One knock-on effect is that it puts off any need for OCC to make any changes I guess. I think Wham! continued doing it every year they would feel the need to tweak, because they won't want the Christmas Number One to die.

Do we think Kylie has benefited from the Christmas chart week being quite early this year? Would she have made it had it been closer to Christmas Day? Of course she's benefitting from Christmas streams, but would there be more streams for Wham! etc overall plus the weight of the physicals/downloads be less of a factor? It's a weird one.

of course not, but the Christmas Number One means nothing at this point anyway when it's just based on what happens when you ask a smart device to play Christmas songs. It might as well be a new song.

And a Christmas production too, to be fair. Give me this any day over the usual cliches about snow and mistletoe

Don't think we need to track that vile anti-migrant song.