• Singles: The #1 club revealed, Travis/Drake & Ava Max top 10
• Albums: The 1975 new at #4, six Christmas albums top 20
Singles
There are only a couple of weeks every year we can chart the movement of Christmas singles so that is one feature of the chart commentary just two weeks from Christmas Day. That and how so few people who have cracked a #1 single this year.
Before we do that let’s note the top 10 is again largely unchanged this week with a couple exceptions.
Ariana Grande is spending a fourth week at #1 with Thank U, Next. Ariana is a member of the ARIA Singles Chart #1 club, which is a very tough place to get into. She’s had two #1 singles this year.
Just nine members this year have occupied top spot between for 48 weeks so far. Just two artists were on top for one week only – Post Malone and Childish Gambino.
Biggest chart hog this year was Drake who held top spot for a total of 16 weeks with two singles with a run of 12 consecutive weeks early in the year and then notched up another four mid-year.
Others who were hard to dislodge from the top were 5SOS (eight weeks), Ed Sheeran, Ariana, Dean Lewis and George Ezra (five weeks each) plus Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper with three.
Now to Christmas…Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You jumps from #65 to #14, while Wham!’s Last Christmas re-enters at #47.
Albums
Christmas is having a much bigger impact here than on Singles.
But first…again not much movement in the top 10 apart from The 1975 with A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships new at #4. It is the UK band’s third album and the second to make the ARIA top five.
Michael Bublé’s Christmas album (#5) has now overtaken Love (#6).
Both The Greatest Showman albums remain top 10 with the original soundtrack notching up a year on the chart this week.
Other Christmas top 20 chart action this week:
#13 Friends For Christmas from John Farnham & Olivia Newton-John
#14 Merry Christmas from Mariah Carey
#15 The Christmas Album from Human Nature
#17 The Most Wonderful Time Of Year from Mark Vincent
#18 Baby It’s Christmas from David Campbell
Four other new releases made it into the top 50 on debut:
#30 Meek Mill with Championships
#35 Ski Mask The Slump God with Stokeley
#40 Earl Sweatshirt with Some Rap Songs
#48 Clean Bandit with What Is Love?