{"id":191997,"date":"2025-12-19T16:10:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/191997\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T16:10:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:10:10","slug":"watch-live-as-radio-1-counts-down-to-this-years-christmas-number-one-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/191997\/","title":{"rendered":"Watch live as Radio 1 counts down to this year’s Christmas number one – live updates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should Christmas classics be segregated from the chart?published at 15:42 GMT<\/p>\n

15:42 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Mark Savage
Music correspondent<\/p>\n

\"MariahImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, <\/p>\n

“Ho, ho, how many years are you going to keep streaming this song?”<\/p>\n

The Christmas chart used to be the peak of the musical
\ncalendar. In the biggest sales week of the year, bands would duke it out for
\nthe top spot, hoping to claim Christmas glory.<\/p>\n

That all changed in the 2000s. First came the X Factor,
\nwhich engineered huge sales by releasing the winners’ single just in time for
\nChristmas week. Then came downloads and streaming, which opened the gates for
\nChristmas classics to clog up the countdown every year.<\/p>\n

So now we have a situation where Mariah, The Pogues and Wham!
\ninevitably make the top 10 every December.<\/p>\n

And that’s a problem. <\/p>\n

More than half of the songs in today’s chart will be oldies.
\nEventually, an AI George Michael will have to re-record his lyrics: “Last
\nChristmas and the Christmas before that and the Christmas before that, I gave
\nyou my heart.”<\/p>\n

So, here’s my proposal. Siphon all the classic Christmas
\nsongs into a separate countdown – in the same way that compilations are
\nexcluded from the album chart. We can still check to see whether Fairytale of
\nNew York is more popular than Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.<\/p>\n

But crucially, new talent will get the spotlight. In fact,
\nif we enacted the rule today, Olivia Dean would be a strong contender to score
\nher first ever number one, while Kylie Minogue’s XMAS would stand a better
\nchance of entering the Christmas pantheon. <\/p>\n

Everybody wins, right?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should Christmas classics be segregated from the chart?published at 15:42 GMT 15:42 GMT Mark SavageMusic correspondent Image source,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[156,157,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-191997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}