Well, I said last week that it was a foregone conclusion, and I was right.  “Meet Me Halfway” by the Black Eyed Peas only gets a single week at the top, and it’s replaced by the latest X Factor-related hit.  If you count the Black Eyed Peas (who climbed to number 1 after appearing on the show), it’s the fifth consecutive number 1 to be connected with the show.

Yes, it’s a charity single by the acts who made the live rounds of the show.  And it’s… not desperately good.

That’s The X Factor Finalists 2009, “You Are Not Alone.”  Apparently there’s no hyphen in “X Factor” after all.  You learn something new every day.

This is the second X Factor charity record, and Simon Cowell’s already said he wants to make it an annual tradition.  Last year, the 2008 finalists had three weeks at the top with a cover version of “Hero” in aid of war veterans.  This year, it’s Michael Jackson’s “You Are Not Alone”, a number 1 hit from 1995, and the charity is the Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London.

It is a good cause.  But it is a bad record.  It’s a mechanical trudge through a song that was syrupy to begin with.  Any iota of individuality is autotuned out, and the backing track might as well have been licenced from a karaoke album.  There’s some passing amusement to be had in seeing how desperate they were to marginalise the notoriously tuneless twins John and Edward (their bit begins at 1:33, and ends at 1:38).  Yes, they could fix their wailing in the studio, and they did – but there’s suspension of disbelief to worry about. 

Ultimately, it’s just a dispiritingly boring record.  Let’s be honest, even on the most generous view, it’s hardly “Do They Know It’s Christmas.”

By the way, although the YouTube page says that the hospital gets £1 from each copy sold, that’s apparently referring to the CD single.  Buy it from iTunes and the hospital gets 32p; buy the B-side as well (a slightly different mix), and it gets 64p.  So if you really want to support the hospital, as well you might, you might want to consider just giving them some money.  Then again, that’s not really how charity singles work; it’s as much about supporting the cause as anything else.

Now, last year’s single stayed at the top for three weeks.  But the first week sales are about a third lower this time (though it still shifted a more than creditable 190,000).  Judging from the iTunes chart, it’s not going to hold on for a second week – chances are it’ll be number 3 or even 4.  In fact, it’s likely that Sunday will see Simon Cowell’s strangehold broken, and we’ll get something entirely unrelated to X Factor at the top of the charts.

The tuneless twins were finally booted off the show on Sunday, bringing their divisive and highly entertaining run to an end.  No other act could do “Ice Ice Baby” and have it widely regarded as an improvement.  We may never see their like again.  For weeks, their manifestly indefensible presence in the show has rubbed salt into the wounds of one defeated contestant after another.  And by god, did they go out with a performance to be remembered.  Are they victims of a sniggering TV show?  Are they some sort of Kaufmanesque gag at the expense of people who take the show too seriously?  Or are they just two teenage boys who fluked their way past the auditions and made the most of their 15 minutes of fame? Decide for yourself.  Caution: this really is awful.

Not that the idea of John and Edward as pop stars was all that ridiculous.  Look at Britney Spears – she openly mimes in concert, and her records are drowned in so much autotune and vocal processing that for all we know, she hasn’t hit an unassisted note since 2004.  And it doesn’t matter, because what she brings to the records is branding.  If nothing else, the twins were certainly a brand.  Frankly, nobody else left in the competition seems to have the same tabloid appeal, so Simon Cowell may well be privately bracing himself for another Leon Jackson. 

The other new entries this week are an eclectic bunch:

• “Whatcha Say” by Jason DeRulo, at number 3.  Outselling the X Factor single at the moment.  This was number one in America earlier in the month.  It heavily samples an Imogen Heap song which never charted in Britain, so a lot of people will probably think he wrote it.  It also features the sort of autotune that would have made John and Edward sound passable.
• “To Love Again” by Alesha Dixon, at number 15.  The Strictly Come Dancing judge returns with the sort of off-the-peg ballad so generic that you’ll have forgotten the chorus by the time the verse starts.
• “The Official BBC Children in Need Medley” by Peter Kay’s Animated All-Stars, at number 18.  This is the official single for the 2009 Children in Need telethon, unveiled on the Friday night show, and charting on just one day’s sales.  The point is the stop-motion video, featuring tons of animated characters.  DVD singles and video downloads do count towards the chart, so there’s a fair chance of this leaping to number 1 next week.  Naturally, it’ll mean nothing to anyone outside Britain.
• “Baby By Me” by 50 Cent, at number 23.  “Have a baby by me, baby, be a millionaire.”  Well, at least he understands his major selling point.
• “Did It Again” by Shakira, at number 26.  Climbing from an unofficial number 135 last week after she performed it on the X Factor results show.  Well, I say “performed”, she mainly wandered around the stage in front of a row of drummers.  They’d have been hoping for a top 10 placing.  Fantastic video, though.
• “Sweet Child O’ Mine” by Taken By Trees, at number 38.  Unlikely but rather good piano-based version of the Guns N’Roses classic, charting because it’s in a John Lewis advert.  No video yet, but a proper single release is planned.  This is the first top 40 appearance for Taken By Trees, which is a solo project of Victoria Bergsman, former lead singer of Swedish indie band the Concretes (who’ve never had a hit in Britain either).
• “I Need You Now” by Agnes, at number 40.  Second UK hit for Agnes Carlsson, who won the Swedish version of Pop Idol in 2005 and is now being repositioned as an electropop act in the hope of wider European success.  It’s not as good as her last one.