Well, what an interesting month.  I think this year we’ll loosen up the format and go a bit more freeform, yes?  Alright.

So.  We left off with the Christmas chart, and with the Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir at number 1 with “A Bridge Over You”.  Normal service was swiftly resumed as “Love Yourself” by Justin Bieber, which had already been number one for three weeks, returned to the top for a further three.  Admittedly, that’s during the normal early-January dead season for new releases.  But since Bieber also had the immediately preceding number one (“Sorry”), the NHS Choir wind up as the sole week of respite in nine weeks of Justin Bieber.

Less predictably, the NHS Choir single dropped like a stone after its week at number one, even by the standards of campaign singles.  The next week it was at number 29, and the week after, it was outside the top 100.  Which kind of puts a damper on the claim that the single represented an outpouring of public love for the NHS, since by that logic, the public apparently loves Justin Bieber nine times more.  Which doesn’t sound right.

At any rate, the Bieber blockade finally broke last week, and the first new number one of 2016 (at two weeks and counting) is “Stitches” by Shawn Mendes, completing a painfully slow climb from the lower reaches – it first showed up in the top 75 back in October.

Shawn Mendes is a Canadian teenager who was apparently the third-most-followed musician on Vine in 2014.  Because apparently some people use a six-second video site for music.  I know, I don’t get it either.  Anyway, this is pretty middling.  “Now that I’m without your kisses / I’ll be needing stitches” isn’t much of a metaphor to hang a song on, but the chorus builds nicely enough, I guess.  It’s all fairly bland.

You probably didn’t come here to read about Shawn Mendes, though.  We can skip over the 1 January 2016 chart, which was the usual post-Christmas affair with the Christmas records dropping out and the “best of 2015” stuff taking its place, and move straight to the 8th, which is the week after Lemmy died.  And as you’d expect, there at number 13 is “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead.

For all Lemmy’s iconic status, and a career stretching over decades, “Ace of Spades” seems to have become universally accepted as The Motörhead Song.  Which song will we buy when Lemmy dies?  Well, “Ace of Spades”.  Obviously.  It’s the archetypal one.  It’s the one that sums him up.  Come to think of it, it’s decidedly possible that the second most-played Motörhead song these days may genuinely be Triple H’s entrance music.

Yet “Ace of Spades” wasn’t their biggest hit.  This was.

That’s the lead track of the “St Valentine’s Day Massacre” EP, which got to number 5 in 1980.  They had two other top ten hits in 1980-81.  “Ace of Spades”, in contrast, only got to number 15.  But posterity rightly judges it a classic, perhaps at the expense of overlooking everything else.

The rest of that chart, we can pass over fairly quickly in the circumstances.  “Light It Up” by Major Lazer featuring Nyla entered at 21 and is now at 9; “All My Friends” by Snakehips featuring Tinashe and Chance entered at 27 and is now at 5; “Bang My Head” by David Guetta featuring Sia debuted at 30 and went on to peak at 18; and “When the Bassline Drops” by Craig David & Big Narstie entered at 36 and peaked at 12.  No, that’s not a legal credit for a sample, it’s actually a new Craig David single after a six-year hiatus.  Watch the video if you want to feel old.  But hey, his number one hit “7 Days” was over fifteen years ago now.

The 15th January chart is another matter again, because it’s the David Bowie chart, which followed on a week of online outpourings of grief in which people variously paid tribute to his artistic influence, range and quality over a nearly unrivalled stretch of decades, reminisced about the impact of his music on their lives, or (if they worked in the media) recounted tedious anecdotes about how he once came to the studio for an interview and had a cup of tea and a biscuit.

Unlike most artists of his age, not only was Bowie making music to the end, it was still selling and it was still getting great reviews.  His previous album “The Next Day” was a number 1 in 2013; the one before that got to number 3.  All that said, it’s the height of his mainstream fame in the 70s and 80s that really cements him as a cultural icon, so it’s hardly surprising that  it’s the big hits from that period that swarm the chart.  As with Michael Jackson (and unlike Lemmy), there’s no clear consensus on which one to go for, which means the vote is split multiple ways and nothing gets above 12.

The highest position goes to “Heroes”, perhaps because it combines classic status with a much-needed note of optimism.  It’s another song that’s been elevated by posterity; on its original release in 1977, it peaked at number 24.  Behind it comes “Life on Mars” at 16 (originally number 3 in 1973); “Starman” at 18 (originally number 10 in 1972); “Let’s Dance” at 23 (three weeks at number 1 in 1983); “Space Oddity” at 24 (two weeks at number 1 in 1975).  It’s a veritable parade of decades-old singles that sound timeless.

Despite its unnerving relevance, current single “Lazarus” winds up just missing the top 40, at number 45.  I suspect that if you were in the market for something quite that close to home, you probably bought the parent album “Blackstar”, now in its third week at number one.

Of course, some other records were also released that week.  And most of them got shouldered aside by Bowie.  “Secret Love Song” by Little Mix (which doesn’t have a video yet) entered at 34 and is now at 12; “Stay” by Kygo featuring Maty Noyes entered at 40 and is now up to 20.

Moving on, the 22nd January chart is nice and quiet, aside from the change at number 1.  The highest new entry is “The Sound” by the 1975 at number 15; they’re an increasingly rare example of an indie band who still do well with singles, at least in the first week.  And a handful of other new entries showed up right at the bottom – “Army” by Ellie Goulding at 35 (climbing to 30 today), “Renegades” by X Ambassadors at 38 (and straight out again), and “Lush Life” by Zara Larsson at 40 (up to 23 today), which is a Swedish number 1 being re-issued on the back of her appearance on MNEK’s “Never Forget You”.

With that, we come to today’s chart, in which the highest new entry is this thing – “Fast Car” by Jonas Blue featuring Dakota at number 3.  You might not think the world was crying out for a tropical house version of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”, but apparently it was, since this has been a hit in Sweden and the Netherlands, while in Australia they opted for a not entirely dissimilar version credited to Tobtok & River.

Further down, number 11 is “Work” by Rihanna featuring Drake, which was a midweek release and only has one day’s sales.  So that’s going to climb.  It’s currently a Tidal/Apple Music exclusive (format wars seem to be a looming issue in the streaming era), but you can actually stream it for free on Tidal’s front page if you want.  Number 15 is “Ex’s & Oh’s” by Elle King, which was a top 10 hit in the US last year, and has presumably been judged to have enough crossover potential to overcome its country elements.  I kind of like it.

Number 24 is “7 Years” by Lukas Graham, whose suspiciously gushing Wikipedia page proclaims them “the most popular live band in Denmark”.  The song has been a number 1 around Europe, though.  Number 28 is “Here” by Alessia Cara, which is another outing for the riff from Isaac Hayes’ “Ike’s Rap II” (best known from “Glory Box” by Portishead).  It was a hit in the US, though.   And number 35 is “Dessert” by Dawin, which combines the bland and the grating in a way that I’m going to assume makes sense to the younger generation.