Christmas is a time for traditions and one of a tradition of modern times is now upon us and tomorrow it will kick off in earnest. Another part of Christmas is the fact that although I was one of the first people to predict it, not one newspaper, television programme or radio show will ask for my opinion regarding the contenders for the Christmas number one. This is of course the only time of year that people remember that we have a hit parade and to be honest I don’t even know what the criteria is these days to get into the charts. Digital downloads have counted since 2007 but there was talk (that I didn’t pay a lot of attention to) that Spotify plays can be counted as can views on YouTube. This is open to abuse but as I have said before, this is the best thing to happen to music because of its vulnerability to abuse.

It has become as traditional as the turkey and a game of after dinner charades to try and stop the inevitable chart domination by the latest winner of X-Factor, some years have been more successful that others, the most famous occasion being 2009 when ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against The Machine topped the chart. “But it wasn’t a Christmas song” moaned the naysayers, who cares? It wasn’t about that, in fact if you look  at the complete list of Christmas number ones you will see that only twelve songs out of sixty two (2013 was the sixty second year of the chart) were festive. The campaigns that run on Facebook every year are simply aimed at stopping the winner of X-Factor from polluting the charts. After ‘Killing in the Name’ showed that it was possible (proving me right on something I had been saying since 2007) the floodgates opened and led to what we have now, overkill. There was too much choice in 2010, ‘Surfin’ Bird’ by The Trashmen being the biggest Facebook campaign presumably heralded by someone who only knew the song from Family Guy, and X-Factor winner Matt Cardigan achieved number one with ‘When We Collide’, a renamed cover of ‘Many of Horror’ by Biffy Clyro. The original managed to get to number eight thanks again to the power of the download. 2011 and 2012 saw charity singles reaching the top spot but X-Factor won again last Christmas with someone called Sam Bailey (me neither) winning the race.

This year we once again have a mixed bag of contenders for what is nowadays a pretty irrelevant competition. One of the people in the race is the champion of using fan power to achieve a result, John Otway. This is the man whose audience enabled ‘Beware of the Flowers (‘Cause I’m Sure They’re Gonna Get You Yeah)’ to be placed above Bob Dylan in the 1999 BBC poll to find the best lyric of the millennium. In 2002 he managed to reach the top ten with ‘Bunsen Burner’ thanks to an elaborate plot involving his loyal followers, so if anyone can subvert the institution of the official BBC chart, Otway can.

Other possible artists in the running include Iron Maiden, Wand Erection, this year’s X-Factor, some songs from this year’s Christmas adverts, and the awful Band Aid retread; hardly the golden age of popular music.

(At the time of writing this blog, this year’s X-Factor has been won by Ben Haenow. Surely a cover version of ‘Don’t Dream It’s Over’ is on the cards?)

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