Should Christmas classics be segregated from the chart?published at 15:42 GMT
15:42 GMT
Mark Savage
Music correspondent
Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption,
“Ho, ho, how many years are you going to keep streaming this song?”
The Christmas chart used to be the peak of the musical
calendar. In the biggest sales week of the year, bands would duke it out for
the top spot, hoping to claim Christmas glory.
That all changed in the 2000s. First came the X Factor,
which engineered huge sales by releasing the winners’ single just in time for
Christmas week. Then came downloads and streaming, which opened the gates for
Christmas classics to clog up the countdown every year.
So now we have a situation where Mariah, The Pogues and Wham!
inevitably make the top 10 every December.
And that’s a problem.
More than half of the songs in today’s chart will be oldies.
Eventually, an AI George Michael will have to re-record his lyrics: “Last
Christmas and the Christmas before that and the Christmas before that, I gave
you my heart.”
So, here’s my proposal. Siphon all the classic Christmas
songs into a separate countdown – in the same way that compilations are
excluded from the album chart. We can still check to see whether Fairytale of
New York is more popular than Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.
But crucially, new talent will get the spotlight. In fact,
if we enacted the rule today, Olivia Dean would be a strong contender to score
her first ever number one, while Kylie Minogue’s XMAS would stand a better
chance of entering the Christmas pantheon.
Everybody wins, right?