Official Singles Chart Top 40 on 21/12/2018

His Music is rubbish we don't want him to be the Charts!

Shut up. Justin Bieber is one of the best singers ever. He should release more singles

He is abusive towards his fans and also also abusive towards his Ex-Girfriend Selena Gomez when he was with her.

Yeah well Selena Gomez was controlling him when they were together. The 2015 single What Do You Mean was basically about that.

Yeah I know it was. But one time when he was performing, the audience were giving him their phones and he put them on the Stage and poured water on them. Then he began swearing at them!

Who did?

Justin Bieber

They're published this Friday apparently.

That's what I thought when I saw it

The Christmas songs always exit the Charts on the first Friday in January.

That'll be a good end to the year for sure!

disqus_XJbjZC0JLD already

What was Bob The Builder a parody of?

Oops... I meant to say "novelty" not "parody", haha! :P

Hey Piran! I like seeing 'We Built This City' debut at #1, especially since it's for charity, though I definitely would've preferred either 'Sweet but Psycho' or 'thank u, next' taking the Christmas #1. I definitely think that 'Sweet but Psycho' will take the #1 spot next week, since it had a really healthy 57k sales this week, and has been increasing every week it's been on the chart. It was also 5.5k sales ahead of 'thank u, next', and I think its lead will only increase next week. I'd give 'We Built This City' a light 6/10, while Ava & Ariana's singles would both get solid 9/10s from me.

It seems like the permanent ACR isn't making such a huge impact since there's only 1 less Christmas song in the Top 40 this week than there were this time last year, though it did stop 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' from getting to #1 for the first time ever last week. Usually I'm pretty critical of the ACR rule, but in this case I actually agree with it. I feel like, while a lot of these Christmas songs are great classics, they've had their chart runs, and it's just annoying to see them taking the place of so many great contemporary hits each and every year, at least in my opinion.

With only 2 new debuts this week, it's good that they're both in the Top 10. 'imagine' is my favourite of the 2, though my views on it are pretty similar to your own. That being said, I still much prefer it to many of the songs on 'Sweetener' (other than the 4 that all made the Top 4 on my chart), and it gets a strong 7/10 from me. I'm not sure if any new tracks will make the Top 40 next week with the inevitable surge of Christmas songs as they all get ridiculous amounts of streams leading up to and on Christmas, but if any track does I think it'll most likely be 'a lot' by 21 Savage. It debuted at #60 on Spotify, but it's #23 when you exclude the Christmas songs, so it really just depends on its longevity.

It's definitely not surprising seeing 'The Greatest Showman' as the #1 album this week; the best selling albums of the year tend to do really well around Christmas. Just look at '÷', at #2 this week last year with over 100,000 sales, and at #1 the week after. Without any huge albums released this week, I can definitely see it staying there next week as well.

That's a pity that the original version of "We Built This City" by Starship didn't re-enter the chart yesterday. I fully agree with you that this classic song deserves a much better place than its original #12 in 1985. pS. Have a wonderful Xmastime Piran !!!

Yeah, it had hardly any sales nor streaming activity throughout the tracking week & ACR probably would've held it back anyway. I'm still surprised it was never a Top 10 hit though, which just further highlights that chart peak or even chart run doesn't define how people remember a song.
Thanks, I hope you have a good Christmas too & thank you for your continued interest in my reviews each week! :)

Hey Gameskiller! Good to see you back on here. :)
I'm really pleased with 'We Built This City' debuting at #1 too; 'Sweet But Psycho' will probably hit the top spot next week as you mentioned (it probably won't go on ACR due to its recent sales gains), while 'Thank U, Next' already got six weeks at #1, so it did way better than anyone first predicted!
I disagree with ACR too as you know, but it's kind of a shame that the huge streams didn't carry 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' for the first time ever last week, although I'm hoping it could next year since it'll be the 25th year anniversary of that song.
As for next week, I would expect somewhere between 20 & 25 Christmas songs inside the Top 40.
Yeah, I have noticed that thanks to streaming, the biggest albums of the year often do end up in at least the Top 5 of the Christmas Albums Chart!

Yeah, 'Sweet but Psycho' definitely won't be going on ACR any time soon since https://chart-watch.uk/index.php/graphs-and-stats, so it's got a few weeks left at least. I did want 'thank u, next' to be the Christmas #1, but 6 weeks is a really fantastic run so I can't really complain.
'All I Want For Christmas Is You' may even have a chance next week, even with halved streams. This year we've got 5 days leading up to and including Christmas that count towards the chart, and only 2 days after. Next year it's 6 up to and including Christmas and 1 after, so there's an even better chance it'll do it then. I would prefer new singles to be at the very top, though.
I don't even think streaming is the main factor keeping the big albums near the top around Christmas (though it certainly does help). I think it's just people buying the albums as Christmas gifts. 'The Greatest Showman' did get 85% of its total this week from physical and download sales, after all.

Oh, well it'll probably end up at #1 for most of January then. It's also worth noting that is has a 2:1 lead on iTunes, whilst also remaining fairly consistent on sales.
While 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' rose slightly on yesterday's update, it does have a massive 1,637,877 daily streams for Christmas Day that wasn't included in that, although hardly any will be added on anymore now. Also, it appears to be close to be dropping like a rock in downloads to the point where it's nearly out of the Top 100 by then. This year, 13 festive songs got over 1 million Spotify streams on the 25th, while there were just 5 last year.
As for 'Thank U, Next', it appears that even with another three weeks until ACR, it won't be returning to the top spot anymore.
That said, it's probably gained enough points to easily sneak into the Top 40 of the chart of the year, maybe even Top 20.

Yeah, I can see 'Sweet but Psycho being #1 for a few weeks, unless a brand new song comes along that can knock it off the top. It should definitely be #1 this week, at the very least.
It's insane how only 5 regular singles have broken 1mil streams in a single day on Spotify in the UK ('Shape of You', 'Castle on the Hill', 'Galway Girl', 'Despacito (Remix)' and 'thank u, next'), while 13 Christmas songs did it this year, and will almost definitely do it again next year, and the year after, and the year after...
I also find it quite interesting to look at the difference on the Spotify charts for the 25th and 26th. On the 25th the #1 had 1.6m streams, whereas on the 26th the #1 had just 370k. The #1 on the 26th was also all the way down at #57 the day before. Post Malone's new song 'Wow.' is interesting as well. On the 24th it debuted at #24 as the highest non-Christmas song with 406k streams, on the 25th it fell to #72 with 248k, then on the 26th it shot up to #6 with 242k.
I don't think that 'thank u, next' will be returning to #1 either, but I think it does have a pretty good chance of reaching Top 20. 'Havana' was #18 last year and, although it had been out for longer, it never reached the same heights as 'thank u, next'. It's currently at 482k sales, and when you add the sales it'll get this week it'll end the year with over 500k easily. And that's on the new streaming ratio; I'm pretty sure the year-end charts are calculated using the old 100:1 ratio, so its year-end total will be much higher than that.
'God's Plan' will undoubtedly be #1, while I think 'One Kiss', 'This is Me', 'Shotgun' and 'In My Feelings' will complete the Top 5, not necessarily in that order.

Your prediction of the Top 5 of the year was actually fairly close. I already know what it is from watching Christmas Top Of The Pops.
As you mentioned, 'God's Plan' will definitely be #1, but then we had: 'One Kiss' (#2), 'Shotgun' (#3), 'These Days' (#4) & 'This Is Me' (#5).
I can't remember where 'In My Feelings' was, but I'd imagine is was in their Top 10 countdown. The biggest surprise for me was seeing 'Feel It Still' as high as #9! I believe: 'IDGAF', 'Nice For What' & 'Perfect' also made the Top 10.
Also, do you know why 'Shotgun' has suddenly sprung back into the Top 10 on iTunes & remained stable throughout the month? I know George Ezra has been performing that song a lot recently, but I was still surprised at the sales surge for it, especially when he now has 'Hold My Girl' out.
EDIT: 'In My Feelings' was actually 15th... way lower than I would've expected myself! It turns out there was a bit of change in the past few days, but the only major one was 'This Is Me' & 'These Days' getting swapped around.
SECOND EDIT: Okay, not complaining... but how did 'One Kiss' pass 'God's Plan', especially in the past three days?! :O