6weeksatnumber7

Your estimate of £12m generated is way short of the mark. Leona's sold around 8 to 9 million albums worldwide - call the average price of an album = £6 then you have over £50m generated already. Single sales must be pushing 20m worldwide as Bleeding Love alone is estimated to have sold well over 10m. Plus her recent tour sold 200,000 tickets at average price of say £40. Throw in merchandise, private gigs (where she's known to rake it huge amounts incl. a widely reported 1m for just one gig), perfume range, her song for Final Fantasy XIII, her song for Avatar the biggest grossing movie and fastest selling DVD/Blu-Ray of all time. Songs on other films (Sex and the City II, For Colored Girls), her commercial for Cotton in the States, use of her songs in adverts, TV shows, film trailers, her co-written duet on Italy's biggest selling album this year etc. It's no coincidence that she bought herself a large house in the Hollywood Hills last year.

When was new talent ever given an airing by TOTP as a priority? They played what was in the charts and the most popular bands/acts got played/performed the most. It was only when they got away from this philosophy that the show nose-dived. A popular music show in primetime needs to be about popular music! There's been some fantastic pop music in the last few years and having live performances on primetime TV would have been superb. Those performances allow the public to form a bond with an act, turn them into fans, and thus record sales. On Jessie J - she's been writing with Leona for Leona's third album. They were pictured together on a night out a few months back, so wouldn't be at all surprised if Simon knows of her. People have to remember Simon's cold dead hand won't be hovering over this every week - he just hasn't got the time and will probably be in the States. It'll be experienced music producers applying the best production techniques to a live show. People will only turn in to see the best acts in the world, not recycled X-Factor acts.

Given there's only four major record companies in the world there are bound to be some Sony acts.

Thought I'd check on the record this year of guest artists - and remember you'd naturally expect far more Syco on X-Factor than you would get on a normal "pop show" as returning contestants would always be given prominence. 2010 Guest Artists + record company Joe McElderry - Syco Usher - LaFace/Arista Diana Vickers - RCA Records Katy Perry - Capitol Records/EMI Cheryl Cole - Fascination Michael Buble - 143/Reprise Bon Jovi - Island Jamiroquai - Universal/Mercury Rihanna - Def Jam Shayne Ward - Syco Kylie Minogue - Parlophone JLS - Epic Westlife - Syco Take That - Polydor Olly Murs - Syco The Wanted - Geffen Justin Bieber - Island/RBMG Nicole Scherzinger - Interscope Alexandra Burke - Syco Glee - Columbia Black Eyed Peas - Interscope/A&M Doth people complain too much? Remember X-Factor is aimed at a slightly older audience than a pure pop show would. And given his duties elsewhere I doubt Cowell would have much to do with it other than owning the idea/show/production rights. He'd call in a professional to run it, as they've done with the X Magazine launched this year and edited by PopJustice's Peter Robinson. A proper pop show with X-Factor production values? Bring it on. Would be a good balance to the BBC's non-pop related music programming.

zeus - Leona Lewis just off the chart on 22 weeks (13 + 9)?

Let's be honest, there's not been a bad song on the list for the last three or four rounds. 2008 was an incredibly strong year for singles.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want Silence to be #1, just think the possibility is being ignored a bit in the iTunes thread. I take on board the differences with Run, but it's not as if Alex's album has sold millions so there'll be a market for it. The new version v old version thing is irrelevant I think.

I was thinking more of a comparison to Leona's Run performance back in 2008 with it being a big ballad off a re-issued/deluxe album and getting a prime slot on the show. Run sold 132k off the back of an X-F performance depite not being available to download for another two weeks (and 255,000 copies of the album in those three weeks). Surely the potential is there to see something similar?

I'll go from the first year I really listened to music: 1975 Queen Bohemian Rhapsody 1976 Johnny Mathis When A Child Is Born (Soleado) 1977 Wings Mull Of Kintyre / Girls' School 1979 Pink Floyd Another Brick In The Wall 1981 The Human League Don't You Want Me 1983 The Flying Pickets Only You 1984 Band Aid Do They Know It's Christmas? 1987 The Pet Shop Boys Always On My Mind 1992 Whitney Houston I Will Always Love You 2002 Girls Aloud Sound Of The Underground 2003 Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules Mad World

Am I the only one who thinks the Burke will shoot to #1 tonight with The Silence after her performance? Her first big ballad post the winner's song two years ago + X-Factor performance = download frenzy.

Sad to see Take A Bow go - extremely underrated. However the 25 (?) songs left must be one of the strongest line-ups you could get in the last decade. 2008 was a very good year.

Remember it very well - from a master composer of film music of course, and think it had been used before in a couple of films. The TV series was huge at the time - Wednesday's on BBC2.

Chi Mai - Ennio Morricone - Theme from "The Life and Times of David Lloyd George" - #2 in 1981 for two weeks. Kept off the top spot by Bucks Fizz - Making Your Mind Up.

According to "Reveloution in the Head: The Beatles's Records & The Sixties", the band released 186 different songs on albums/singles/b-sides, EPs. Now there will have been some addition to this with the release of the Anthology series which had 2 or 3 new songs.

Find it strange all the comparisons between Rule The World and The Flood. For a start Rule The World was a phenomenal song and had incredible exposure in that chart period across TV, radio, cinema, on tour etc. It's also worth remembering it's first week sales were 97.8k which were astonishing back in 2007. In fact ignoring Leon Jackson's X Factor winner's single which was #1 for the last two weeks of the year, and the first week of The Proclaimers charity record for Comic Relief, it's sales were *easily* good enough for the #1 spot in 49 of the 52 chart weeks against normal single releases. The only thing in their way was Leona's Bleeding Love juggernaut - but then Bleeding Love did the same all over the world to numerous artists and singles. Take That were just unluckly to come up against one of the decade's biggest releases - and for that bad luck they could maybe blame Universal who changed the date of release to put it in direct competition with Leona. Compared to all that The Flood is just a nice song - nothing to write home about and as such can;t see the fuss with its perceived underperformance.

Cheers spicefunk + Robbie - perfectly explained!

zeus - does this mean that all of Gnarls Barkley's downloads have been included in the total i.e. the two weeks of official chart ineligible download sales before the rule was changed to allow download sales one week before the physical was out?

Take That not taking many chances with The Flood are they? http://mobile.twitter.com/takethat

How quickly did "Shame" drop down iTunes?

You two could always take this to private message ;)

They will this time - album being driven by the American side J Records as they were unhappy with Syco's handling of Echo.

The album is due out way before the X Factor in 2011. I'd expect an April release.

Ignored songs from Greatest Hits for obvious reasons.

Sounds like the Better In Time video!

We almost had a double 100k week back in October 2007 which given the rise in digital sales since was remarkable: 218805 Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love 97832 Take That - Rule The World