Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to our annual detour into the utterly predictable parallel world of the Christmas Chart, where regular music fears to tread.  In fact, it’s so predictable that for the most part irregular music fears to tread here as well, leaving us with what’s mostly a motley collection of reality show tie-ins and failed Facebook campaigns.

Let’s take the album chart first, since it’s dead.  “Swings Both Ways” by Robbie Williams is the Christmas number one.  Literally nothing else is happening.  Right, onto the singles.

40.  John Newman – “Love Me Again”

Originally a number 1 hit in July, I’m honestly not sure why this is suddenly back.

39.  Little Mix – “Little Me”

Hey, an actual, regular new entry!  This is going to be Little Mix’s next single, released in January, but the video came out this week, so it’s starting to pick up a bit of interest as an album track download.  The gist is that they’d like to tell their younger selves to believe in themselves and such forth – you know the idea.

The hook is lifted from Faure’s “Pavane”, one of those rare pieces of classical music that has charted in its own right.  A version by the Wimbledon Choral Society made number 20 in 1998 when the BBC used it as the theme tune for their coverage of the World Cup.   A reissue later that year, featuring the bonus sounds of Des Lynam reciting “If” by Rudyard Kipling, failed to make the top 40.

37.  Demi Lovato – “Skyscraper”

The obligatory re-entry for the original of this year’s X Factor winner’s single.   This is the third time it’s charted; it made number 32 in 2012, and number 7 earlier this year when X Factor was using it as rousing backing music.

33.  Altern 8 – “Activ-8 (Come With Me)”

File under “failed campaign”.  Alter 8 were a rave act who had a string of hits in 1991-2, of which this was the biggest, landing at number 3.  Most of the others sound very similar.  Altern 8 were the more commercial novelty wing of the (comparatively) more serious Nexus 21, who never had any hits.  (The original point of the costumes was to disguise this.  They occasionally performed as their own support act.)

30.  Kelly Clarkson – “Underneath the Tree”

The single from her Christmas album “Wrapped in Red”.   It’s better than I was expecting, actually, but it’s not joining the pantheon any time soon.  Now a decade into her chart career, Clarkson’s track record is patchy in this country, and it’s fair to say this album has attracted rather less attention over here than her regular releases.

29.  The Killers – “Mr Brightside”

Because they performed it on the X Factor final, in order to promote their Greatest Hits album.  (Interesting that they didn’t do the current single, but if you were the X Factor producers, which track would you prefer them to do?)  Originally a number 10 hit in 2004.

21.  The Big Reunion Cast 2013 – “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday”

Dashed-off charity single from the cast of ITV2 reality show “The Big Reunion”, which basically involved reuniting some pop groups from the late 90s and early 2000s for a reunion tour.  I haven’t seen it, but reportedly it was unexpectedly good, and rather closer to documentary territory than reality shows usually are.

The record is terrible, of course.  The world did not need a cover of “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” by anyone, let alone one with a cheap backing track and a rap break.

Still.  The acts on this record, if you’re wondering, are (most of) Five, who had three numbers ones in 1999-2001; 911, a largely forgotten boy band who nonetheless managed 8 top five hits in 1997-9; the original line-up of Atomic Kitten (from back when they were a vehicle for songs by OMD); B*Witched (we all remember B*Witched, but most of us have forgotten that they had four number 1s in 1998-1999); the Honeyz (none of us remember the Honeyz, but they had five top ten hits); Liberty X (seven top ten hits, of which only “Just A Little” sticks in the mind); and Blue (three number ones, and still going in some form).

20.  Ed Sheeran – “I See Fire”

From the soundtrack to The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.  This made number 13 back in November when the hardcore Ed Sheeran fans downloaded it from the soundtrack album in the week of release, but promotion is picking up now.

4.  AC/DC – “Highway To Hell”

The other campaign record.  But let’s be honest, we did this with Rage Against The Machine, and the joke doesn’t work twice.

However, for trivia nerds, this does alter the answer to one pub quiz question.  Until now, AC/DC were co-holders of record for having the most top 40 hits without making the top 10 – twenty, never beating number 12 (with “Heatseeker” in 1988).  Now that they’ve inconveniently made the top 10, the record belongs to the Super Furry Animals.

“Highway To Hell” made number 56 on its original release in 1979.  A live version made number 14 in 1992, but this is the first time the original recording has made the top 40.

2.  Pharrell Williams – “Happy”

The highest selling regular release of the week, climbing another two places, and in good form to be number one next week.  Nonetheless, this week it was outsold two to one by…

1.  Sam Bailey – “Skyscraper”

X Factor returns to releasing its singles for the Christmas chart and, well, it’s a coronation.  This is, of course, a cover version of the Demi Lovato track which already made the top 10 earlier this year when X Factor started using it in audition footage.

Bailey is probably not the winner Simon Cowell was hoping for, since she’s a prison guard in her mid-thirties.  Mind you, he’s not been deterred in recent years from just signing the runners-up anyway.  For all that X Factor claims to embrace older acts, the reality is that Bailey is only the second person from the over-25s category to win the show.  The other was Steve Brookstein, who was dropped after one album (from which no singles were released), and now appears to earn a living as an embittered cautionary tale.

To be fair, that was back in season one, and Cowell seems a little bit more comfortable with divas who can be marketed to the MOR album buyers.  Nonetheless, I don’t expect to see Bailey around much on the singles chart in future.  It’s telling that this track had actually dropped off the number 1 slot on iTunes by Saturday.  Granted, X Factor winner’s singles sell disproportionately in physical form – which is to say, they sell in physical form at all, which just goes to show how out of line they are with the regular market.

While it’s a comfortable number one this week, it’s not a juggernaut.  Even though Bailey apparently won the public vote on eight out of the ten live shows, it sold 149,000 copies in its first week, which is less than a third of James Arthur’s sales last year, and the second-lowest sale for any X Factor winner’s single.  (The lowest was  Brookstein.)  Ratings and buzz are also down this year.  X Factor is in the awkward phase of its life cycle where it’s obviously past its peak (Shayne Ward sold 742K in his first week!), but where ITV has nothing to put in the slot that would do any better.

There’s a point worth stressing here.  For years, everyone has been running scared of going head to head with X Factor.  But on the strength of this, they needn’t be so worried.  While 149,000 is a good number, it’s beatable.  It’s very beatable.  No fewer than six of this year’s number 1 singles outsold “Skyscraper” in their first week at the top: Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” (155K), Jason DeRulo’s “Talk Dirty” (160K), Katy Perry’s “Roar” (180K), Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” (191K) and Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” (267K).

This is new.  It wouldn’t have taken a charity single or a Facebook campaign to stop Simon Cowell being the Christmas number one.  All it would have taken is for Katy Perry – for Jason DeRulo, for heaven’s sake – to offer an alternative.  And the PR hook of being Cowell’s first legitimate challenger in years would probably be a further boost to the sales of whoever tried.

Maybe next year someone will try.