Official Charts forgot to make a nice graphic for us this week which is most unfestive of them, but the top end of the singles chart is as you would expect. Ed and Elton rocket to No.1 with the topically themed Merry Christmas. 76,708 was the single’s final chart sale, consisting of 8,101 physical copies, 14,055 downloads and the remainder via audio streams.
Sheeran tops the charts for the third time this year (following Bad Habits and Shivers) while Elton returns to the top of the British charts for the second time in the space of the last two months. And as regular readers here will note, this does indeed for the moment break his habit of only hitting No.1 with remakes or re-releases of older songs. Even if extraordinarily he’s about to reset that in fairly short order.
Elton of course already has one perennial seasonal favourite to his name already thanks to the regular chart runs of Step Into Christmas, a track that was little more than a throwaway novelty when first released and indeed only a minor chart entry (No.24 in 1973) when new. Elton himself has noted that it only became “loved” when the concept of compilations of Christmas songs came about in the mid-1980s and it was swiftly added to the canon of British favourites. Funny to think he tried again ten years later only for Cold As Christmas to peak even lower. And that has never again fought its way back into contention.