Sunday 23 December 2007

Festive double for X Factor stars

Leon Jackson
X Factor champion Leon Jackson has the UK's Christmas number one single, while the TV show's 2006 winner, Leona Lewis, has topped the festive album chart. Jackson's song When You Believe knocked What a Wonderful World by Eva Cassidy and Katie Melua into second place. Lewis also made number three in the singles chart with Bleeding Love.

Fairytale of New York, by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, rose to four in a week when BBC Radio 1 briefly - but controversially - censored its lyrics. The station decided to backtrack after listeners, and MacColl's mother, criticised its decision to remove the words "slut" and "faggot" from the 1987 hit. Completing the top five on the singles chart was Soulja Boy, who fell two places to number five with Crank That.

Jackson sold 276,000 copies of When You Believe, the highest weekly total for any track released in 2007 and five times as many as the duet by Melua and the late Cassidy. "It's been a great ending to a fantastic year and it's just the best Christmas present I could ever wish for," Jackson told BBC Radio 1's chart show.

On the album chart, Lewis's Spirit was the top-seller for the sixth consecutive week. She held off Back Home by Westlife, which remained at number two, and Michael Buble's Call Me Irresponsible, a non-mover in third place. Vivere, the best of tenor Andrea Bocelli, climbed two places to fourth, while the Eagles stayed at five with Long Road Out of Eden.

Amy Winehouse was at numbers nine and 10 with different versions of her release Back to Black, which is expected to be the UK's biggest-selling album of 2007. The original version of the album - in its 60th week on the list - fell one place to 10. And a newer "deluxe" edition, featuring a bonus disc with a further eight tracks, climbed 16 places to nine. The top-selling compilation was the 68th volume of Now That's What I Call Music.

The top 40 singles chart contained a total of nine "classic" Christmas hits, including Mariah Carey's All I Want For Christmas is You at number six. Festive favourites from Wham!, Wizzard, Slade and Andy Williams also featured, along with Shakin' Stevens, Band Aid and Chris Rea. However, a track which had been tipped as a possible Christmas number one, We're All Going to Die by "miserabilist" Scottish songwriter Malcolm Middleton, only managed 31st place in the countdown.

(BBC News)



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