It’s the release week of the X Factor winner’s single!  Will it make number one?  Yes.  Of course it will.  Ooh, the tension.

37.  McFly – “Love is Easy”

This peaked at number 10 a few weeks back before plummetting out of the chart in the band’s traditional fashion, but it rebounds now thanks to an ITV special.

36.  Ellie Goulding – “Anything Could Happen” 

Rebounding after it dropped out of the top 40 last week.

35.  Emeli Sande – “Clown”

This is Emeli Sande’s next single, which technically doesn’t come out until 23 December, but since it’s already available as an album track, it doesn’t matter.  She performed it on the X Factor final, which is why the pre-release promotion has now gone far enough to get her into the top 40 – though it was much higher up in the midweeks, so this is very much a post-TV surge.

Whoever booked this song for the X Factor final either has a very strange sense of humour, or completely missed the point.  It’s a song about the tragic fate of a desperate wannabe selling out for a chance at stardom.  Just for the benefit of anyone who really can’t figure out what that might be getting at – such as the guest bookers on X Factor, apparently – the video depicts her being harangued into signing a contract, in front of a wall covered in the slogan “ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD AND THE SOLAR SYSTEM”.  Google that phrase and you’ll find all the top hits are negative stories about the contracts Simon Cowell offers to contestants on his talent shows.

24.  Daley (featuring Jessie J) – “Remember Me”

A rare attempt to launch a new artist in the immediate run-up to Christmas.  Gareth Daley is a singer-songwriter who the BBC had on their list for ones to watch in 2011, but it’s taken him this long to actually get a single out with substantial promotion.  For a bit of promotional assistance, he also gets Jessie J helping him out.  (It also helps keep her name in circulation, given that she hasn’t had a record out in eight months.)

The chorus is based on “Remember Me” by BlueBoy, a number 8 hit in 1997 which holds up well.  In its turn, it lifted the vocal from “Woman of the Ghetto” by Marlena Shaw.

22.  Shontelle – “Impossible”

The obligatory re-entry for the original version of this year’s X Factor winner’s cover.  Shontelle Layne was a singer-songwriter from Barbados who received some international promotion a couple of years back, and had a couple of moderately successful singles, but never really managed to achieve the success that had been hoped for.  This song reached number 9 in 2010 and it’s largely been forgotten since, though it’s a good record.  Her biggest UK hit was actually “T-Shirt”, which made number 6 in 2008.  She has a new album out next year, so the X Factor cover will at least have done the job of reminding people that she exists.

12.  One Direction – “Kiss You”

This was a promotional single in America in November, but it’s getting a full release in the new year.  They performed it on the X Factor final (seeing a pattern here?), hence its sudden appearance as an album download.  It’s a return to their bubblegum pop territory, and hey, it’s got a good hook.  Twelve year old girls have had a lot worse than this foisted on them in the past.

6.  Rihanna (featuring Mikky Ekko) – “Stay”

Another single scheduled for release in the new year, but performed on the X Factor final, so…

Rihanna doesn’t often release ballads as singles, nor stripped-back arrangements that showcase her voice.  But this is one.  I’m not sure it’s that great as a song, but it is one of her strongest vocal performances and a welcome reminder that she does actually do this sort of thing too.  It’ll probably have a second surge of sales in the post-Christmas period when the promotion really kicks into gear.

Mikky Ekko is a vaguely alt-ish songwriter from Louisiana who’s signed to RCA and is presumably being given the usual guest appearances in preparation for being pushed in his own right.  Here’s his last single “Pull Me Down”, if you’re interested.

2.  will.i.am (featuring Britney Spears) – “Scream & Shout”

Well, somebody unconnected to X Factor had to fancy their chances this week, I guess.

It’s will.i.am and Britney Spears.  It’s awful.  I kind of like it.  It actually works pretty hard to come up with variations on its riff, but there’s also a certain audacity in writing lyrics quite this terrible that you’ve just got to admire.  “I wish this night would last forever / Cos I was feeling down but now I’m feeling better.”  Fabulous.  Come to think of it, when you hear it in a club, how exactly are you supposed to turn it up?  I haven’t been clubbing in quite a while, I admit, but I’m pretty sure volume knobs haven’t been introduced as standard.

This is Britney Spears’ highest chart placing since “Piece of Me” also made number 2 in 2007 (not for want of trying, either).  Not that she’s terribly recognisable on it, to be honest.  Strangely, the “Britney, bitch” line is actually a sample from “Gimme More”, another 2007 single from the tail end of her heyday.

1.  James Arthur – “Impossible”

By this stage the X Factor producers probably have a little button in the edit suite that assembles these videos automatically.  Mind you, in an unusual display of restraint, this year’s single does dispense with the emotional key change.

In fact, let’s be honest – as X Factor winner’s singles go, this is really quite acceptable.  James Arthur is not at first glance an obvious show winner; he’s a nerdy, vaguely sullen bloke who must have given the stylists a heart attack when he made it through to the live shows.  But he’s not without an odd sort of charisma, and with the right material, you never know.  Oddly, it was his performance of “The Power of Love” that sent Gabrielle Aplin’s version to number 1 last week.  This is his – it’s probably a better example of why people were voting for him.

Audience figures were down again on X Factor this year (though it’s worth bearing in mind that they’re still a damn sight better than anything else would be likely to do in the slot).  So you might naturally assume that sales on the winners’ singles would be going down too.  Not so – in fact, this is the best selling X Factor winner’s single since 2008, and sold twice as many copies in the first week as Little Mix last year.  To do that while audience figures are going down is a pretty good indication that Arthur could be with us for a while.

On the album chart… well, pretty much nothing, to be honest, but:

• “Unorthodox Jukebox” by Bruno Mars at number 1, this week’s only major release.
• “Tre” by Green Day at 31 (yes, that’s how little is going on this week), proving that by this point in the three-album cycle, only the die-hards are left.
• “Storyteller: The Complete Anthology” by Rod Stewart at 36, which is pretty self-explanatory.