Chart Chasers #45

Welcome to a very special edition of Chart Chasers! Not only do we have this year’s much competed for Christmas number one, we’ve also got my top five singles of 2012!

We start off with a Christmas song that has just crept into the chart this week and as I’ve yet to talk about it the song is getting the Chart Chasers treatment right now. It’s Chris Rea with his infamous Christmas hit Driving Home for Christmas.

This is one of my least favourite Christmas songs, but it is a Christmas song and so I can’t help but like it a bit. It’s the perfect song to have on when you actually are driving home for Christmas. A classic! 3/5.

Time for something new. This track is from Ellie Goulding and is called Figure 8. I can only assume from the title that it has some link to ice-skating but it’s anyone’s guess at this point.

I still can’t really out what the title/lyric is meant to mean. The song is a decent effort by Ellie although I find her new direction a bit bland- her Starry Eyed days were much more listenable. 3/5.

The next song is something that could only hit the chart at Christmas. Brace yourselves for something very weird. It’s by a market trader who briefly appeared on The X Factor who is known as One Pound Fish Man. This is because he sells fish for a pound and when a song he sung to draw in customers went viral, this was made. It’s One Pound Fish time…

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Is this the new Gangnam Style? It’s not as good as Gangnam that’s for sure. As a market call it’s awesome, as a pop song it’s fucking awful. The British public have downloaded this enough though to get it to 29 in the chart so maybe I’m wrong. I’m not though. 1/5.

I doubt the next song is much better to be honest. It’s by Alex Day who only makes the chart because he lives with Charlieissocoollike off of Youtube, not because he has any musical talent. Here is his latest single, Stupid Stupid.

There is nothing good about this song. The singing is awful, the song is awful, the video is awful. I do prefer the One Pound Fish song to this by a long way. 0/5.

And now we come to the Christmas number one! Christmas number one is special because it lasts for two weeks rather than one and it’s the most coveted number one spot of the year. This year it’s gone to The Justice Collective, a group of musicians and other celebs to raise money for the families of those that died in Hillsborough. (Check out Wikipedia for the details about the disaster). The song is a cover of that old classic He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother.

I’ve always loved this song, I’m not sure you can really do a bad version of it. This is a decent version and the cause is a good one. I hope one day the families of those that died at Hillsborough do actually get justice. It’s also far better than having an X Factor winner as number one. Well done to all involved for putting this lovely track together.

It’s now time for me to pick the top 5 songs that I have reviewed on Chart Chasers this year! It’s going to be a really hard choice. (Oh and you made need to click “read more” to see them)

OK, I’ve figured out the top 5 after some deliberation. Remember these are not my fave songs of the year, just my five favourite songs which hit UK top 40 for this first time this year. In at FIVE is will.i.am with some help from Dutch singer Eva Simons for the song This is Love. Despite virtually every other song will.i.am has been involved with this year being awful, this one sounded amazing and I love it. It has some beautiful piano playing in it and is really catchy.

At number FOUR is Marina and the Diamonds. I loved Marina before 2012 started and her second album was superb. The best song on it, and the lead single, was Primadonna.

Number THREE is a song I only discovered because of Chart Chasers. If I hadn’t been doing these posts every week this one would have passed me by completely. It’s a lively track which hardly anyone actually knows but I adore it. Here’s The Other Tribe with Skirts.

We’re getting to the top now! In at number TWO is a song everybody fell in love with and stayed in the charts for most of the year. I would argue that it is one of the best breakup songs of all time and most people can relate strongly to the emotions that come out in this song. Yep, it’s Gotye with Somebody I Used to Know.

And now we come to number ONE. I first fell in love with this song when I heard it live as part of Labrinth’s set at the iTunes Festival and shortly afterwards it was released as a single. As well as Labrinth it contains the incredible singing abilities of Emeli Sande who has produced some incredible songs this year. It’s my favourtie song of the year and is so beautiful, it’s Beneath Your Beautiful.

And there you go, that’s my top 5 songs of the year. What would yours be? Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading Chart Chasers this year, I love doing it and from the feedback it seems you love reading it! I’ll see you back here on the 7th January for the first edition of 2013!