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Artist News
Little Mix top chart with second worst performing X winner single
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 20 December 2011
‘X-Factor’ winners Little Mix may have had the best selling single last week by quite some margin, and with 210,000 units sold their cover of ‘Cannonball’ was the fastest selling single of the year, but it’s still the worst performing ‘X-Factor’ winner’s single release since Steve Brookstein’s cover of ‘Against All Odds’ back in 2004.
Last year’s ‘X-Factor’ winner Matt Cardle sold 439,007 copies of his winning single ‘When We Collide’ in the week after his victory on the ITV show, while in 2005 Shayne Ward shifted 742,180 copies of ‘That’s My Goal’. All previous ‘X-Factor’ winners have outperformed Little Mix on first week sales except first ever winner Brookstein.
The slip in record sales follows the slide in viewing figures for this series of ‘X-Factor’, which has been blamed on various things, including unpopular judges, disappointing contestants and a general fatigue for the format. Though it is still one of the biggest shows on British TV, and certainly the biggest music show on UK television. And, of course, the success of that first single immediately following an ‘X’ win has never guaranteed a long pop career, and by the same token, lower than expected sales won’t necessarily mean the winners’ debut album will bomb when it’s released next year.
Fortunately for ‘X’ bosses, by basically bailing on the Christmas number one race this year by bringing out the winners’ single a week early, they aren’t having to openly compete with the charity single from the Military Wives Choir, which is likely to be Christmas number one this Sunday, and which would very possibly have beaten Little Mix to that spot even if the two singles had been released in the same week. The output of another TV programme, a documentary for the BBC, the Military Wives single has been getting huge coverage across the Beeb’s TV and radio networks.
If the Military Wives are number one on Sunday, they will be the first act to receive a new award that will subsequently be given to every artist who tops the singles chart. Dished out by the Official Charts Company, and set to be formally handed over by Radio 1 chart show host Reggie Yates, the new awards will provide a useful photo opportunity to promote the singles chart each week.
Apparently Olly Murs, Professor Green, Emeli Sande and The Wanted have all given the new award their official “backing”, though I don’t really know what that means. Presumably they were asked “if you get a number one, would you like a prize to take home and your photo in the paper?”, to which Olly, Steve, Emili and The Wanted drones all said “oh, yes please”. By which logic, presumably anybody even vaguely likely to ever have a number one single is backing the new gong also.
