Rolling UK Pop/Chart/"They're The New Scouting For Girls!!!" Thread 2008

Who the hell are Scouting For Girls?

So where did the Hoosiers love come from all of a sudden, then? ("Worried About Ray" is also back at #25, so there must be Something Going On.)

i always get scouting for girls mixed up with scissors for lefty and suburban kids with biblical names

Amy Winehouse, Scouting for Girls, Rihanna and the Hoosiers all with 2 entries... Timbaland with 3!...

we have no imagination. Bleeding Love sounds minging, though. I don't want to hear a song about that!

Woah, it's Swygart. What's up, homeboy?

Booty Luv is so robbed at #29.

I still think "Call The Shots" is great but the second half of "Tangled Up", basically, everything beyond "Control of the Knife" is either unlistenable or not worth bothering with and there's TOO MUCH BLOODY REPETITION even in the good bits.

This is a really, really awful Top 40.

More questions than answers, so:

1) Scouting For Girls - popular piano-MOR-pop with a sprinkling of London-indie-band 'charm'. Imagine if Ben Folds was illiterate.

2) The Hoosiers... I dunno, perhaps it's residual sympathy for them having a go at playing entirely live (i.e. instruments plugged in an' all) on TOTP and thus being made to sound like the weediest thing ever. More likely, it's because The Hoosiers are very much at home with a relentless promotional cycle for their records - they do seem like the kind of band who will turn up and play anywhere/anything in order to push their record. They make a very lightweight, shiny, catchy brand of pop that seems completely lacking in anything tangible - completely harmless, but simultaneously completely unengaging, making them perfect to fill in any gaps on any radio station in Britain today apart from, say, Radio 3.

But even so, that still doesn't quite explain how they're popular to this extent. They've had a number one album, they really have.

3) ESOJ, you poor sod. I have heard neither of those bands, but they probably don't deserve the besmirching.

4) To be fair, this chart's come out in a week with no new single releases, and was covering the week before the nation's NYE parties, so stuff from earlier in the year was always likely to creep back in this week, along with some of the Christmas stuff that's charted recently still hanging around from Christmas Eve and The Big Day Itself.

Question arising from this: to what extent does that make this chart more or less representative than any others?

5) I'm in Leeds, trying to do an essay about No Direction Home with minimal success. Oh, and it's cold. I will stick my head in on the US chart thread by and by.

Oh, and I have a blog now. Yaypaws.

6a) Pretty much.

6b) I'm really not sure on "Tangled Up"; the critical reception on both sides really isn't chiming with what I'm feeling, somehow. There's flat spots, sure, and it's nothing like as good as Chemistry (it's screaming out for a "Swinging London Town", or a "Some Kind Of Miracle", but then again, what album isn't?), but there's still an awful lot to like about it. Can I remember what "Crocodile Tears" sounds like? Of course I can't.

If nothing else, it is serving to remind me that, really, "Uninvited" was the best single of last year. An experiment that someone (perhaps not me) should try is playing Tangled Up and maybe the Freemasons or Booty Luv (or both) albums back to back on each other, and seeing what happens.

6c) It's not brilliant, no. Very vanilla in the modern British fashion.

Reason I realised "Tangled Up" was good: hearing that "Can't Speak French" was the next single and despite it being two non-bangers in a row, thinking "Excellent choice - best song on the album".

I like "Can't Speak French" a lot. It's one where the half-heartedness of the writing is kind of charming. By way of comparison, the last two albums were like multiple songs stuck together. On this one, when they get to the middle of the song they kind of repeat the whole damn thing (cf "Biology" which only has to repeat two bits out of about four equally brilliant sections), but on CSF it all comes together well.

And still, CSF would only JUST sneak into a Pick Only Twenty.

Glad to see you have an blog again. 2008 might see me come back from my enforced exile at this rate.

BAH TYPO: Tangled up WAS NOT good

You need for to do that, baaaad.

Also - BBC News Sound of 2008 has started! <A HREF=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7151422.stm>;Gigantic panel of music types</A> pick top 10 hot new things to be hot and new over the next year, with the BBC News site profiling the top 5 every day this week!

Thus far:

5. <A HREF=http://www.myspace.com/foals>;FOALS</A>! - <I>"We play guitar in a different way from pretty much any other mainstream indie band," declares Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis. "We have a piano which is used in a different way to how most other bands would use it."</I>

4. <A HREF=http://www.myspace.com/glasvegas>;GLASVEGAS</A>! - <I>The group have even got the seal of approval from Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of their number one musical hero.</I>

3. <A HREF=http://www.myspace.com/thetingtings>;THE TING-TINGS</A>! - <I>The pair have now successfully reinvented themselves and become one of the most credible and critically-acclaimed groups on the indie scene.
Their reputation rocketed in the summer when Steve Lamacq introduced them on a small stage at Glastonbury as "the next big thing", and their performance made it onto BBC Two.</I>

I'mma go out on a limb and suggest that the final two picks will be Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and Adele.

Congratulations to me for forgetting to press the convert button, there.

Actually, that's fucked the links, hasn't it? Right, let's do it proper:

You need for to do that, baaaad.

Also - BBC News Sound of 2008 has started! Gigantic panel of music types pick top 10 hot new things to be hot and new over the next year, with the BBC News site profiling the top 5 every day this week!

Thus far:

5. FOALS! - "We play guitar in a different way from pretty much any other mainstream indie band," declares Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis. "We have a piano which is used in a different way to how most other bands would use it."

4. GLASVEGAS! - The group have even got the seal of approval from Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of their number one musical hero.

3. THE TING-TINGS! - <I>The pair have now successfully reinvented themselves and become one of the most credible and critically-acclaimed groups on the indie scene.
Their reputation rocketed in the summer when Steve Lamacq introduced them on a small stage at Glastonbury as "the next big thing", and their performance made it onto BBC Two.</I>

I'mma go out on a limb and suggest that the final two picks will be Joe Lean & The Jing Jang Jong and Adele.

glasvegas is great.

agree with yr final 2 tips too WBS, everybdy's loving Adele

foals are good.

there are joe lean-esque amounts of pretension in that quote tho.

I'm loving 'Tangled Up' more and more but has been said it's highs and lows are neither as high nor as low as the ones on their previous albums.

hearing that "Can't Speak French" was the next single

weeeeird choice imo, as much as i like it/find it incredibly catchy.

Glasvegas look like they might be something approximating my (favourite) worst nightmare (lolololol). :(

Foals have emerged from the insular Oxford music scene, which Yannis says is full of "drone bands" who are only interested in "making really weird music".

read: "making fucking awesome music, as opposed to we, who are SELL-OUT CHICKENS"

see: YOUTHMOVIES, another Oxford act, releasing their debut album in 2008, who will sadly NOT take the charts by storm.

1) Scouting For Girls - popular piano-MOR-pop with a sprinkling of London-indie-band 'charm'. Imagine if Ben Folds was illiterate.

A boy band version of Keane?

The Foals

"We play guitar in a different way from pretty much any other mainstream indie band," declares Foals frontman Yannis Philippakis.

"We have a piano which is used in a different way to how most other bands would use it."

Guitar effects pedals are employed to "mimic the sound of the solar system", he continues, attempting to explain what sets this five-piece apart from the average rock band.

"We're just different."

he's a pretentious retard but they're a good band

Yeah I'm guessing that last quote is one of these 'jokes' I've heard about

Foals - they make interesting noises, don't they? Lots of layers and texture and density and so on, all reet toe-tapping and head-nodding and stuff like that. There's a major lack of hooks or tunes within all that, though - much marks for style but I'm not getting a feeling that there's much behind it. Also, why does his voice have to be Kele Okereke discovering sarcasm?

I want to like Glasvegas more than I do - the big problem i have with "Daddy's Gone" is that it reminds me an awful lot of I Hate Scotland by Ballboy, but not as good - both had the big expositionary dialogue thing going on, but the Glasvegas lad is singing his and it sounds so... prating, really, very harpy. On the plus side, you can definitely see what he's saying with the doo-wop stuff; on the minus, that's what the Raveonettes were doing too, and if you look at the graphic atop Glasvegas' MySpace, you might spot a wee bit more that the two have in common... I dunno, they've got heart, clearly, and they can tap that drone nicely, but his voice and his sincerity seem more like obstacles at the moment. Probably worth keeping an eye on, though.

As for The Ting-Tings, I got very bored with them very quickly. Her vocals do the MIA/Neneh Cherry type thing, and the sound as a whole reminds me a lot of Mania for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. Something about it (possibly that I'm listening to it at quite low volume) means that I'm really, really not interested though, and I dunno quite what it is.

I sense big Adele discussions will happen very shortly. I get the feeling I'm not exactly sticking my neck out to suggest that "Chasing Pavements" is kind of a sure thing chart-wise.

Actually, let's have Adele discussions now, cos here's...

FIRST RADIO 1 PLAYLIST FOR THE '08!

A-LIST

Adele - Chasing Pavements
Arctic Monkeys - Teddy Picker
Booty Luv - Some Kinda Rush
Newton Faulkner - Teardrop
Foo Fighters - Long Road To Ruin
Girls Aloud - Call The Shots
The Hoosiers - Worst Case Scenario
Jack Johnson - If I Had Eyes
Lupe Fiasco featuring Matthew Santos - Superstar
Mika - Relax, Take It Easy
Kate Nash - Pumpkin Soup
The Pigeon Detectives - I Found Out
Plain White T's - Hate (I Really Don't Like You)
Robyn - Be Mine
Kelly Rowland - Work [Freemasons Mix]
Scouting For Girls - Elvis Ain't Dead
Soulja Boy - Crank That (Soulja Boy) [Travis Barker remix]
Sugababes - Change
Kanye West featuring Chris Martin - Homecoming

B-LIST

30 Seconds to Mars - From Yesterday
Dave Armstrong & Redroche featuring H-Boogie - Love Has Gone
Bodyrox and Luciana - What Planet You On?
Mark Brown featuring Sarah Cracknell - The Journey Continues
Cascada - What Hurts The Most
The Feeling - I Thought It Was Over
The Fray - Look After You
Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor
Jay-Z - Roc Boys (And The Winner Is)...
One Night Only - Just For Tonight
Radiohead - Jigsaw Falling Into Place
Rihanna - Don't Stop The Music
Jay Sean - Ride It
Britney Spears - Piece Of Me
The White Stripes - Conquest
The Wombats - Moving To New York

C-LIST

(NEW) Biffy Clyro - Who's Got a Match
(NEW) Mary J Blige - Just Fine
Elliot Minor - Still Figuring Out
(NEW) Goldfrapp - A&E
David Jordan - Sun Goes Down
The Maccabees - Toothpaste Kisses
(NEW) Kylie Minogue - Wow
(NEW) Out of Office - Break of Dawn 2008

"1 UPFRONT" LIST

The Courteeners - What Took You So Long?
* Simple Plan - When I'm Hone

biffy clyro are more z-list to my ears

Thoughts on Adele - there is something really, really fucking good straining to get out here, there really is. BUT THOSE FUCKING VIOLINS! THAT FUCKING CHORUS! This is full-on no-stone-unturned production, desperate to smash your head in with... what is the comparison for those strings? I'm leaning towards 1968 Eurovision (and this ain't a million miles from "Un Banc, Un Arbre, Une Rue", the 1970 winner), but BBC Light Orchestra, Strictly Come Dancing, the bottom 50 percent of Embrace's singles, the singer from Foals shouting "HERE ARE SOME VIOLINS. HERE ARE SOME VIOLINS. HERE ARE SOME VIOLINS." - do you understand? It's so desperate to cover every single one of its fucking bases (those violins, they could be a bloody Michael Ball record) that Adele's talents (which shows signs of being very good, even if she does reach too deep when she sings "leeeed") get buried in the rubble. And it repeats the chorus, and thus the metaphor (resplendent with fucking orchestral sweep), far, far too many times. Makes me long for "Foundations".

it seems undeveloped to me, like shes written the chorus, amped it up TO THE MAX (with the strings, aye), cut and pasted it a few times, and then only had 10 minutes to think of a verse or two in-between. Its unbalanced. to have an epic chorus that climaxes you need down-time too, which she doesnt bother with. This song is going to really annoy me (and etc.), and the first line of the chorus is the only bit anyone is going to be able to remember.

I don't know what you two are talking about, "Chasing Pavements" is magnificent, and I for one LOVE how over-the-top and epic-sounding the chorus is.

by the by here are the top 20 biggest selling singles of 2007:

1. Leona Lewis - Bleeding Love
2. Rihanna ft. Jay-Z - Umbrella
3. Mika - Grace Kelly
4. Leon Jackson - When You Believe
5. Take That - Rule The World
6. Sugababes - About You Now
7. Timbaland ft. Keri Hilson & DOE - The Way I Are
8. The Proclaimers ft. Brian Potter & Andy Pipkin - (I'm Gonna Be) 500 Miles
9. Mark Ronson ft. Amy Winehouse - Valerie
10. Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
11. The Fray - How To Save A Life
12. Beyonce & Shakira - Beautiful Liar
13. Gwen Stefani ft. Akon - The Sweet Escape
14. Plain White T's - Hey There Delilah
15. Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girls
16. Timbaland ft. One Republic - Apologize
17. Kate Nash - Foundations
18. Take That - Shine
19. Kanye West - Stronger
20. Avril Lavigne - Girlfriend

Wow I had no idea Avril had such a big hit. What was the highest chart position it got?

#2

'With Every Heartbeat', the best #1 of last year, was 24th biggest seller in the end

one place below 'Starz In Their Eyes' >:(

Well that's me told - next up in the Sound of 2008 List:

2. DUFFY! - "I started singing blues and soul songs when I was really young," the 23-year-old explains. "And I didn't really have a record collection that would explain that."

(n.b. to hear her actual songs you'll ned to scroll down the MySpace to the Youtube videos, cos the song samples are only a minute long)

hmm, that 'rockferry' song is surprisingly good! i listened to it with the intention of trashing it stone-heartedly, but it's won me over to a large extent. not that i expect her other tracks to be as exciting.

Yeah, I was going to say "What, no Duffy" there.

Welcome back WBS! I've missed the chart rundowns, but I just laughed out loud at your Christmas music blog rant at work and would be even more pleased to see more non-rundown posts.

Extended Foals chat on chart thread still a bit of a shock to the system. I like Foals' music ("major lack of hooks or tunes" seems a bit unfair given how often Hummer's been stuck in my head, but point taken) but often feel quite determined not to, like on reading these quotes, getting trampled by Foals fans talking loudly about not knowing who the band they've shoved their way to the front row of are but they must be shit because they're not Foals, watching Y rolling around running his fingers over his bare chest on that Beeb yoof drama thing I forget the name of, etc.

insular Oxford music scene, which Yannis says is full of "drone bands" who are only interested in "making really weird music"

This place sounds awesome! I must move there. Oh, wait, I'm there right now and surveying a gig guide which is half bands who sound suspiciously like Foals did 2 years ago and half tunefully dull look-we-have-trumpets schmindie crew.

I saw Oxford's drone scene out in force last month watching Axolotl + Birds of Delay. There were about ten of them, I think. Top night mind.

(Don't worry Louis, maybe THE KIDS will get into Youthmovies from frantic bidding wars over my copy of their split with the pre-Foals Edmund Fitzgerald. Crossing fingers now. Weird to think how they've swapped places hype-wise and then some.)

tunefully dull look-we-have-trumpets schmindie crew

HA! Come over here and say that. Good Nature, March '08, album of the year. :D

(I've met Youthmovies at a gig, and the funniest thing about them is that they're all about 5'3" and 7 stone except for the trumpeter, who's 6'2" and looks like he could comfortably have the others for lunch.)

Anyway, Oxford hasn't been the same since its early-90's guitar-indie heroes left for the big-time.

Everyone: "I doooon't caaaare about the colourrrrrs..."

I didn't mean Youthmovies by the trumpets thing! I actually forgot about theirs. (Here's one, but trumpets are quite the thing right now.)

I've had my bouts of thinking them desperately overrated (the Guardian declared YMSS the most math-rock band ever back when every song had the same kick-kick-snare beat) and of being excited for them and am now settled into being gently glad to see them occasionally. Did I post this last year on the Oxford thread or did I just consider it? Ah well. Al Youthmovies posted on ILM a couple of times so maybe I should watch my language anyway.

I feel like I ought to attempt to stay on-topic but if I try it'll only be complaining about SfG or Kate Nash which will show me up as even more of a corny indie fuck.

Well, I expected to be like that too but you really should give that Duffy song a go - it's pretty good!

YMVS' (no SS) new stuff is, on the evidence of the recent gig I saw, a quantum leap better than the old. I had a long chat with them about their album and it seems they've pulled out all the stops with overdubs, tweaking, outright perfectionism. I'm looking forward with mad excitement.

I dunno wi' Rockferry. I just keep hearing "Slow Graffiti" with a better singer but with a lot of the emotional pull taken out. I do love "Slow Graffiti", though, so I'm not exactly shocked or appalled or anything. It all seems a bit Ronson-ised, though - the black and white of the video seems to be deliberately inviting Cathy Come Home comparisons, and the sound all seems to have this very carefully aged texture to it.

Which kinda brings me back to the strings on "Chasing Pavements" - it's not the over-the-top-ness that I mind, it's that it's a very lazy kind of over-the-top-ness, the kind that seems to have been very specifically engineered to glide easily into the Radio 2 daytime schedule. The strings just so seem so generic, so deliberately in thrall to this idea of the "big band sound" as being the real proving ground for singers, like they've gone down to B&Q and brought a five-litre tin of "QUALITY" that they can just throw all over the song and it will then sound of "QUALITY". It sounds lazy, that's the thing: too obvious, too easy, much too unsurprising.

I really, really feel the need to try and expand my earlier comparison with Foundations here, but I'm honestly not sure I can come up with the words. Let's have a go anyway. The thing with "Foundations" - what past does it hark back to? What musical heritage has this thing come from? It ain't the future, no, but when all of Knash's contemporaries seem to be deliberately putting themselves in a kind of musical heritage in order to bestow credibility upon themselves by showing just how well they've learnt their history, just how deep they dug in them there crates, "Foundations" sounds strangely vital, alive - I'm not a huge fan of the vocals, the verses, or whatever, but the arrangement, the production, and the god-damn chorus are all really excellent. It reminds me of the job the producer, Paul Epworth, did on Bloc Party's first album, how he turned that into so much more than just another guitar record - So Here We Are, for example. That was a top 5 record. "Foundations" got to number 2. Dammit, the charts can be exciting sometimes, and "Chasing Pavements" feels like a kind of cop-out, somehow, like the record company has decided to give the public an Amy Winehouse who can walk in a straight line occasionally.

Let's discuss some more stuff off that playlist, cos there's a lot of it and some of it looks kinda intriguing.

You may have heard this track from the Lloyds TSB bank advert in the past. You may want to open several bank accounts after hearing this song.

That's how the Youtuber that put up the video for The Journey Continues by Mark Brown and Sarah Cracknell decided it would be best sold to the internet. The poor thing never quite gets past that appellation - the bumping bass augments the soprano peeps, but never really overcomes them. Cracknell is Cracknell, but, sadly, this ain't Etienne - she sounds a bit too much like a guest here.

I saw Oxford's drone scene out in force last month watching Axolotl + Birds of Delay. There were about ten of them, I think. Top night mind.

I think I know 3 of them.

First song that gets me properly excited on the R1 list - the return of Jay Sean. An early version of Ride It was met with widespread apathy in the Jukebox last year, but ooh, how it has grown in the intervening months. Essentially, we have ourselves a mini-epic in the style of "What Goes Around...///'''@@@[']#€€€...Comes Back Around", but it gets its job done in under three and a half minutes, doesn't kill Scarlett Johansson, and uses its expansiveness to lead you on and make you wonder exactly what else the young feller's got up his sleeve. For rest assured, Jay Sean is a canny motherfucker. He's not averse to dropping falsetto, but compare it to, say, Shayne Ward - it actually sounds sexy, as opposed to creepy, or as some kind of demonstration of range. He keeps his hooks wide and varied: "pulling me, pulling me, pulling me clooose...", "hooold ooon dooon't gooo", and that chorus - he knows something's going wrong, but he's led by his hormones into deeper waters. The balance of power keeps shifting: he tries to seduce her, she tries to seduce him, then the third party gets lobbed in at 2:20, leading to the big, chunky breakdown segment, and then the chorus takes it home.

It's really a bit fascinating, as is JS himself: originally came along in Radio 1's flurry of promotion for Bobby & Nihal, as well as the launch of the BBC Asian Network; once the hype had died down, he seemed like he might be on the scrapheap, thus fulfilling his billing as "the Asian Craig David". "Ride It" is a serious indication that he's got an awful lot more to offer.

doesn't kill Scarlett Johansson

This is a fault.

doesn't kill Scarlett Johansson

This is a fault.

He doesn't kill Thora Birch either, if that makes it any more palatable.

One of those bands this kind of thread was built for would appear to be The Feeling, who also have a slot on the B-list with I Thought It Was Over, the first single off their second album. They're the kind of band who rumble along near the foreground, never quite enough to get people talking about them, but there nonetheless.

And this single will not change that one tiny bit. It's 'a bit electro', kind of - not enough to induce dance or anything, the rhythm is very politely buried away behind some morphed guitar riffs, but noticeably enough so that people can go "ooh, haven't you grown!" But have they? If they're coming out of their shell, they're doing it bloody slowly - Dan Gillespie-Sells seems like a good egg, but his voice is really thin, very unengaging. This is about him realising he's still in love with someone. I know this because that's what the title says. There's lyrics, lots of lyrics, and you can make them all out, too, but how are you meant to care? It never puts a foot wrong, but it never dares to try - there's no danger in this, no conflict, no turmoil, it's just another love song.

Let's use that as an excuse to post the video for Party Fears Two - an unfair comparison, since it sets the bar that fucking high, and Billy Mackenzie's voice is the kind of sound you can go forever without finding comparison to, but it does this so much better - there's turmoil, peril, melodrama - all the stuff.

But I think we ought to talk about The Feeling. And Jay Sean. And Mark Brown and Sarah Cracknell. All the stuff. I don't want this being the kind of thread where songs get marooned within one post. Part of the reason for this thread is that I'm scared I don't pay enough attention these days, that I dismiss things too out of hand, and I get the horrible feeling everyone else does too. So have at it! (More songs off the playlist to follow)

It appears a passing space cadet bought all my friends releases on her label too.

OK, now that's embarrassing! Drunk old woman memorably not blending in with rest of audience who are almost a decade younger and all know the promoter shocker.

They're good CDs though and it's exciting to find drone/noise stuff locally, and I enjoyed the gig, especially Birds of Delay.

(I hope I didn't rip them or yr friend off, I realised at home that the compilation the merch guy sold me for the same price as BoD's cdrs has 3 discs and costs a lot more online; should have emailed the band to ask, and also your friend about one of the cdrs not playing, but it's been a busy couple of months)

You know you're old if every time someone talks about Duffy your brain fills in "Stephen Tintin", right?

25. RIHANNA ft. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE - Rehab

This is from the finale of Star Academy, the French series that I'm guessing became Fame Academy in the UK, so the man here is not Timberlake but rather Some French Dude.

Skippings:

24. GURU JOSH PROJECT - Infinity 2008

23. TI ft. RIHANNA - Live Your Life

Incidentally, Fearne announced 23 as Rihanna with TI, which is, erm. Just don't hold your breath for the chart emergence of "Whatever You Like", eh?

And now Sugababes interview. Much crosstalk.

MUCH crosstalk.

Those skipped:

(the second one's more of an approximation, to be honest, but, well.)

The Sugababes are now doing a live version of "Girls". I am unsure why this is. It actually sounds worse live, oddly.

So let's have "Live Your Life Be Free" instead.

22. GABRIELLA CILMI - Warm This Winter

Skipped over for another play of:

21. KINGS OF LEON - Sex On Fire

But here's Cilmi anyway. Apparently it's being used on the Co-Op's TV ads. Stay classy:

20. BEYONCE ft. N.E.S. POWER GLOVE - Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)

This is very possibly the best sing they've played this afternoon. Almost definitely, actually. Possibly excepting Len.

19. GIRLS ALOUD - The Promise

Unsure if there's any Bob Fosse mashups available for this one... suspect not.

STILL NO NEWS ON XMAS TOTP.

Incidentally, thing I forgot to point out earlier - that Guru Josh video has had over 22 (twenty-two) million hits on Youtube. That's 5,500 times more than Prolapse's "TCR":

Incredibubble.

Fearne/Reg are describing Sugababes as "our official carol singers". Number of carols sung by Sugababes thus far: 0.

18. AKON - Right Now (Na Na Na)

Doesn't embed, so here's John Cena's version instead:

MORE XMAS TOTP NEWS:

TAKE THAT ARE ON IT AND IT SNOWS DURING THEIR PERFORMANCE - TAKE THAT "STILL BIG BUT SO HUMBLE WITH IT"

17. MARIAH CAREY - All I Want For Christmas Is You

Much, much better when it's not ambushing me on 4Music and TMF all at once. 11 places down from last year's Xmas chart, btw.

ALBUMS - Take That head Leona and Kings and Killers off at the pass for a third week. I can't remember what was number five.

They then play bits of an old interview with (I think) Little Mark Owen with clips of songs from the album interspersed.

VURRNUNN KEHH WILL BE JOINED BY THE CAST OF GAVIN & STACEY ON CHRISTMAS DAY

THEN HIGHLIGHTS OF ONE BIG WEEKEND

THEN ZANE LOWE'S INTERVIEW WITH EMINEM

CONCLUSION: INSUFFICIENT JUDGE JULES

16. ALESHA DIXON - The Boy Does Nothing

Further checking on Chart Stats reveals that Wizzard are down 15 places from last Christmas, and "Last Christmas" is down 11. No word on Malcolm Middleton just yet.

15. X FACTOR FINALISTS - Hero

Fearne and Reg now discuss pissing in bottles.

14. KATY PERRY - Hot and Cold

Number one in Germany!

13. SIR TERRY WOGAN & SIR ALED JONES - Sir Little Drummer Boy

12. SIR POGUES & SIR KIRSTY MacCOLL - Fairytale of New York

Down eight from last year.

It has only just occurred to me that that's Lemmy behind her.

Sugababes think X Factor monopolising Xmas number 1 is "great". Laura was their favourite.

They're playing Sugababes' LIVE performance of their single, which I think means:

11. SUGABABES - No Can Do (NEW)

The live version is a bit of an improvement, even if this is essentially a Joss Stone record.

And now they sing an actual carol, namely "We Wish You A Merry Christmas". It actually sounds fantastic. Not on YouTube, though.

Except that wasn't 11 after all. Because instead:

11. THE KILLERS - Human

Is it just the live stream from Radio 1 that's screwed, or does this Britney single have even more vocal processing than usual?

GIRLS ALOUD ALSO DO "THE PROMISE" ON XMAS TOTP

THEY WEAR DRESSES

Christmas Top 10 kicks off with:

10. BRITNEY SPEARS - Womaniser

Also, for some reason iPlayer thinks I'm Welsh...

AND CONTINUES WITH:

9. TAKE THAT - Greatest Day

TOTP! Christmas Day! 2PM! Don't forget!

And now a new/re-entry, third X Factor-related entry of the day, and the ending of it sounds much better on radio than on TV...

8. BEYONCE - Listen

7. KINGS OF LEON - Use Somebody

6. JAMES MORRISON ft. NELLY FURTADO - Some bullshit or other

(this is obviously Keisha from Sugababes instead, btw)

"Broken Strings"

Chris Moyles, the fat unshaven smug face of Radio 1...

5. PETER "GERALDINE" KAY - Variegated bullshit (NEW)

If I had a TV I'd kick it in.

4. BEYONCE - If I Were A Boy

Incidentally, the Rolling UK Pop/Chart/"They're The New Scouting For Girls!!!" Thread 2008 would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Tony Mowbray and his jumper on their victory against Man City.

http://images.dailyexpress.co.uk/img/dynamic/67/285x214/56375_1.jpg

Quality knitwear.

3. LEONA LEWIS - Run

And your winning "Hallelujah" is...

not...

STOP MILKING IT RADIO 1 FFS!!!

It's Jeff Buckley of course Fearne, because obviously he didn't have hundreds of thousands of preorders.

2. JEFF BUCKLEY - Hallelujah

Which means your winner is:

1. ALEXANDRA BURKE - Hallelujah (NEW)

Why the hell was she worried about whether or not she was going to get to #1? Maybe Bowell didn't tell her about his super secret #1 grabbing techniques?

Whatta night. Elsewhere in the albums, Girls Aloud were that mysterious number 5, just ahead of:

Beyonce's album is up to number nine, which I think is its highest position in the UK thus far. Other major climbers include Bette Midler at 21, Simply Red at 31, James Morrison at 29... your lone new entry - Fall Out Boy at 39. GO HOME EMO KID.

FFS Radio 1 is right back in the bad old days of Blackburn, Edmonds, Bates, and wacky DLT.

So they skipped about 30 of the top 40?

Well, it's been a wonderful thread all year, here's to next years'"Who were those Scouting For Girls anyway?" obscurity beckons but for now a vague presence outfit?

FFS Radio 1 is right back in the bad old days of Blackburn, Edmonds, Bates, and wacky DLT.

I said radio 1 was back to smashey and nicey years ago

Wahey. We made it! Last chart of the year! Whooooo!

And, as is traditional with the not-quite-xmas-not-quite-new-year top 40, nothing really happens. Alexandra Is Pop for a second week, James Morrison is at number four because... oh, I dunno. Buckley at seven this week.

New: Fiddus at 27, Saturdays 36, STOP BEING MEAN TO KANYE 38. I think Kardinal Offishall may be a re-entry at 39. That's how interesting this chart is.

Sum total of happenings in albums: Nickelback re-enter at 39.

Still - we kept it going for a whole year! And hey, Lady GaGa happens next year... um... whoo!

End of season round-up sees Duffy pip The That to year's biggest-selling album. Then again, she had a bit longer to get there. Also, subtracting BOO HISS COW-SMELL from the equation, "Mercy" was second-biggest seller of the year, only song other than "Hallelujah" to flog over half-a-million copies, etc.

Scouting for Girls had the 10th biggest-selling album of the year, btw. Released last September. So, to answer the question at thread top, the new Scouting For Girls were Scouting For Girls.

That doesn't surprise me about about 'Mercy'. I strongly dislike all the other Duffy songs I've ever heard. I also don't really like her face and find her vocal style unconvincing and 'put on', but whenever 'Mercy' comes on the radio I am pleased, because I like the record very much.

Lady GaGa happens next year... um... whoo!

'Just Dance' is over 6 months old right? can't understand why they're holding it back this long here

i'm just grateful for every second she's held back tbh

sad thing is that Cyndi Lauper's take on the same sound ('Into The Nightlife') comes off slightly better

most people's take on that sound (and there are many people doing takes on it right now) come off better than "gaga"

Midweeks:

The Lady still holding off the Kid at the top & the top five completely unchanged; Tinchy up to 8, Kanye to 9, new FRanz F only makes it to 22.

In the albums the fucking awful White Lies are in at number one FFS OBTUSE BRITISH PUBLIC GIVE ME SOME DECENT NUMBER ONE ALBUMS TO WRITE ABOUT IN MY OLD AGE and the new Antony is in at 6.

mate: We got a 2009 dated thread now.