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X Factor’s Little Mix Cannonballs to Number 1 while Buble’s Christmas leads albums festive charge

18/12/2011

With just one week to go before the Official Christmas Number 1 Single and Album are crowned on Christmas Day, the race is on to secure the festive titles….

The Official Singles Chart No.1 : Little Mix’s Cannonball
X Factor 2011 winners Little Mix blast to the top of the Official Singles Chart with debut release Cannonball shifting over 210,000 copies in its first week; the biggest first week sales for a single so far this year, outselling the rest of this week’s Official Singles Chart Top 5 combined.

Little Mix were the first ever girl band even to reach an X Factor final. Band members Jesy, Perrie, Leigh-Anne and Jade all entered the 2011 competition as solo artists but got together to form a group at the suggestion of the judges. This echoes the career path of boyband One Direction, who started as solo contenders in X Factor 2010, before joining forces to make last year’s final. One Direction were previous title holders of the biggest first week sales for a single so far this year when their debut, What Makes You Beautiful, sold over 153,000 copies in its week of release in September.

Cannonball was originally recorded by Irish folk-singer Damien Rice and first released in 2003 when it peaked at 32. A re-release the following year saw the record reach Number 19. In October this year, the song was back in the Official Singles Chart at Number 9, after a contestant’s X Factor performance, and this week, Damien Rice’s original version re-enters the Official Singles Chart at Number 19. En Vogue’s Don’t Let Go (Love) also receives a boost this week courtesy of Little Mix’s performance of the track on X Factor final night, climbing to this week’s Number 27 from last week’s 89.

The Official Singles Chart Top 10 New Entries: There is just one new entry in this week’s Official Singles Chart Top 10: Leona Lewis, herself an X Factor winner back in 2006, is straight in at Number 8 with her cover ofHurt, a song written by Nine Inch Nails and previously covered by Johnny Cash.

The Official Albums Chart No. 1: Michael Bublé’s Christmas Grammy-award-winning Canadian superstar Michael Bublé sees his festive album Christmas score the biggest weekly sales of any album this year so far with over 269,000 copies bought in the last seven days, a week-on-week sales increase of over 42%.

This is the second week that Christmas has spent at the top spot, having previously peaked at Number 1 in November. Christmas entered the Official Albums Chart at Number 3 back in October and has never been out of the Official Albums Chart Top 5 since.

Bublé has scored six Official Albums Chart Top 10 hits, including the Number 1s Christmas and last year’s eight-times-platinum Crazy Love. Bublé has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.

The Official Albums Chart Top 10:
It’s not just Michael Bublé fans who have got into the Christmas spirit. This week festive fever really takes hold with the Official Albums Chart Top 6 all recording sales over 100,000.

Coldplay record the biggest percentage increase in week-on-week sales (113%) as Mylo Xyloto climbs to this week’s Number 4 from last week’s Number 8.

While there are no new entries in the this week’s Official Albums Chart Top 10, Westlife see their Greatest Hits collection re-enter at Number 9, up from last week’s 11, having previously peaked at Number 4 in November.

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