Lucky Soul For Christmas Number One!

Save Christmas from the God-awful, snorefest that is the X Factor.

Last.fm, my favourite music based social network [my profile page], are behind a campaign to stop anything that’s rubbish getting to the Christmas number one. I’m thinking their main reason is because the public doesn’t have a great track record when left to their own devices with these things…

In 1987, the Pet Shop Boys performed Always On My Mind on an ITV special commemorating the tenth anniversary of Elvis Presley‘s death. Propelled on by the TV show, it beat “Fairytale of New York” by The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl – and you find me a better contemporary(ish) Christmas song.

The less said about Cliff Richard‘s Mistletoe And Wine, in 1988, the better.

The Band Aid II rehash of Do They Know It’s Christmas? of 1989 was produced by Stock, Aitken and Waterman and therefore had Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan, Lisa Stansfield and Bros on it. Brilliant. Bananarama also appeared, making them the only artists to appear on both versions (although thankfully they couldn’t be heard on the first…).

Cliff Richard appears again in 1990 with Saviour’s Day, his second Christmas number one single.

In 1991, following Freddie Mercury’s death, Queen re-released Bohemian Rhapsody as a doubled A-sided single with These Are The Days Of Our Lives. Both are wonderful songs.

Anyway, it goes on.

• 1992: Whitney Houston – “I Will Always Love You”
• 1993: Mr Blobby – “Mr Blobby”
• 1994: East 17 – “Stay Another Day”
• 1995: Michael Jackson – “Earth Song”
• 1996: Spice Girls – “2 Become 1”
• 1997: Spice Girls – “Too Much”
• 1998: Spice Girls – “Goodbye”
• 1999: Westlife – “I Have A Dream”/”Seasons in the Sun”
• 2000: Bob The Builder – “Can We Fix It?”
• 2001: Robbie Williams & Nicole Kidman – “Somethin’ Stupid”
• 2002: Girls Aloud – “Sound Of The Underground”
• 2003: Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules – “Mad World“
• 2004: Band Aid 20 – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”
• 2005: Shayne Ward – “That’s My Goal“
• 2006: Leona Lewis – “A Moment Like This”

Look at the immense pile of rubbish we’ve had to put up with.

Where was I? Oh, yes. According to the BBC:

X Factor winner Leon Jackson is on track to score this year’s Christmas number one single. The 18-year-old Scot is currently number one in the mid-week chart with his debut track, When You Believe, according to industry paper Music Week.

Katie Melua and the late Eva Cassidy are set to be number two spot with What A Wonderful World, while Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love is in third place.

The Pogues’ Fairytale Of New York has also seen a sales surge this week. HMV spokesman Gennaro Castaldo told the BBC that download sales for the 1987 track had increased following Radio 1’s decision to censor its lyrics. “It’s one of those songs where, as people realise it’s available to buy, they’ll pick up on it and start downloading which is why momentum is growing for it,” he said. “It’s not enough to beat the X Factor winner, but probably enough to propel it into the top three.” Radio 1 initially bleeped out the word “faggot” from the duet between Pogues frontman Shane MacGowan and the late Kirsty MacColl in case it offended listeners but changed its mind after complaints.

Castaldo added that it did not seem that Leon’s song would sell as well as last year’s Christmas number one by previous X Factor winner, Leona Lewis. “It won’t be quite as phenomenal as Leona,” he said. “She sold 500,000 copies in four days. But he’s still selling three to four times the amount of his closest rival.”

Daniel Himsworth, a spokesman for Woolworths, said that copies of Leon’s single were selling at the rate of 40-per-minute at the chain. “There are definitely no challengers. If it continues this way he’ll sell 350,000 in a week,” he said.

This, clearly, is bad news.
The blurb from Last.fm’s Christmas Chart Attack page reads thus:

Thousands of Last.fm users voted for the Lucky Soul song ‘Lips Are Unhappy’ to be the track that battles the winner of the X Factor this December.

It’s real, independent music chosen by Last.fm’s passionate community vs. mass-marketed karaoke nonsense released simply to line Simon Cowell’s pockets (in contrast, all of the profits from the Lucky Soul song will go to War Child).

Strike a blow against sanitized, predictable reality show muzak. Buy ‘Lips Are Unhappy’ for a mere 40p and you can also download an exclusive, unreleased Lucky Soul track (and know that you’re bringing some Christmas cheer to War Child). If you all buy a copy it really WILL happen, and you’ll be helping to break the stranglehold the X-Factor has on our Xmas chart.

So, there you go. Buy “Lips Are Unhappy” now and download an exclusive new Lucky Soul track as well. You know you want to.
[via Last.fm, BBC News and Wikipedia.]