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And Finally Artist News Releases
LadBaby takes early Christmas number one lead – can Jess Glynne, Mariah Carey or even The Kunts catch up?
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 21 December 2020
This is it, people. We’re into the final countdown. It’s Christmas week. Your out of office is probably already on. You probably had mince pies for breakfast. Holy shit, so festive. And the big news is that the race for Christmas number one is hotting right up, with the potential of two sausage roll themed songs vying to be played last as Radio 1 announces the victor on Friday.
Taking the early lead in the race is LadBaby, who is out for his third Christmas number one in a row. It will be impressive if he does it, and already 8000 sales (or equivalent) ahead of his nearest competitor as of yesterday, it looks like he just might.
Mark Hoyle and his wife Roxanne’s latest ode to sausage rolls, ‘Don’t Stop Me Eatin’, shifted 80,000 units in the first 48 hours, and looks to have one of the biggest opening weeks of the year. Which is good news for them, because this week is the one that counts.
Much talked about last week as the big competitor to LadBaby was Justin Bieber’s collaboration with the Lewis And Greenwich NHS Choir. However, after 48 hours, their version of Bieber’s ‘Holy’ was sitting at number 33. Things will have to pick up sharply if there’s any hope of it being in line for number one. Slightly embarrassingly, Bieber’s non-charitable cover of ‘Rockin Around The Christmas Tree’ already looks set for the top ten.
Actually in second place is Jess Glynne with ‘This Christmas’, which jumped from number nine to number two over the weekend. That’s currently pushing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ down to number three. It seems unlikely Carey’s track will make it to number one now, but it’s not impossible – the song, of course, recently went to number one for the very first time, 26 years after its original release.
A late addition to the race – currently at number nineteen but rising rapidly – is the bluntly-titled ‘Boris Johnson Is A Fucking Cunt’ by The Kunts, capturing the nation’s mood towards the indecisive Prime Minister.
Over the weekend Johnson forced millions of people to cancel their Christmas plans at the very last minute, when he really could have done it with a bit more notice, by putting large parts of the UK back into lockdown.
And for those who haven’t found themselves in the all-new ‘tier four’ for COVID restrictions, Johnson’s other indecisiveness over whether or not he wants to plunge the country into yet more chaos and misery by failing to sign the Brexit deal with the EU that he claimed was “oven ready” less than twelve months ago should help to get them on board with The Kunts’ song.
Anyway, I mentioned a second sausage roll themed song, didn’t I? Yes, well, assuming that ‘Boris Johnson Is A Fucking Cunt’ makes it into the final top 40 rundown, it seems unlikely that BBC Radio 1 will be keen on playing the unedited version as the soundtrack to your Christmas lunch. Luckily, there is a clean version (play it for your kids now!), which replaces “fucking cunt” with “sausage roll”. That’s something everyone can enjoy, isn’t it? Even ‘Boris’ Johnson.
The cut-off for streaming and buying tracks if you want them to count towards the Christmas chart – which this year, of course, will be unveiled on Christmas Day itself – is 11.59pm on Thursday. Remember, you’ll have to stream a song 150 times for it to count as one sale. Or you can just buy the track to save time. Radio 1 will unveil the chart from 2-4pm on Christmas Day.
