Will Mariah Carey, James Corden or Kylie Minogue have the Christmas number one hit? Photos / Supplied
Will Mariah Carey, James Corden or Kylie Minogue have the Christmas number one hit? Photos / Supplied
For a multiplicity of not very logical reasons, the contest to top the charts at Christmas is one of pop music's annual high profile moments. During the last half decade it's been a battle between the X Factor winner and a choir. If we include the choral 2012 cover of He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother by the Justice Collective then, three years out of the last five, the choirs have won out.
This year, say bookmakers William Hill, it's the most unpredictable competition in a long time, between Matt Terry, winner of the X Factor, and Friends of Jo Cox's choral Rolling Stones cover, honouring the murdered MP. There are, however, curveballs that could change the game. Until the 2016 Christmas chart is announced on Friday 23rd, it's anybody's race, from solo One Directioners to Italian goth-metallers...
Matt Terry - When Christmas Comes Around
"And I'm sick of all the songs, the Christmas sing-alongs, the merry and the cheer, I don't feel like that this year." So sings Bromley boy and 2016 'X Factor' winner Matt Terry on this gloomy, Ed Sheeran-penned number. The TV talent behemoth has been slowly losing its grip - last year's winner, Louisa Johnson, only just made the Top 10 - but this is the first time a winner has debuted with a seasonal song so don't count Cowell out just yet.
Friends of Joe Cox - You Can't Always Get What You Want
In a year of increasingly bitter political division it's apt that in the season of good will a main contender for the Yuletide top spot is The Parliament Choir, wherein MPs and Westminster staff gather to sing, regardless of affiliations. Joined by the Royal Opera House Thurrock Community Chorus and pop stars such as Kaiser Chief Ricky Wilson, KT Tunstall and David Gray, they assay the Rolling Stones' gospel-flavoured 1969 classic.
William Hill Odds: 6/4
Steve Aoki & Louis Tomlinson - Just Hold On!
Californian DJ Steve Aoki, famed for throwing cake around when he performs, has been a key player in turning rave culture into a giant jock-heavy American frat party called EDM. He now adds a member of One Direction into the mix, to sweeten things further. The result is the sound of suburban Saturday night high streets, club music dipped so many times in sugar and sparkles, that it's mutated into the sonic equivalent of glittery pink candy.
Zayn Malik & Taylor Swift - I Don't Wanna Live Forever
More 1D action, as the ex-boy band hunk drops his contribution to the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack. It's not very Christmassy. However, it is a sultry, synth-boosted power-ballad that has "Big Hit" written all over it. It's also the first new song that Taylor Swift, the biggest female pop star of the age, has released since 2014's 1989 album. Added up, the above facts might make it commercially unstoppable.
William Hill Odds: 8/1
The London Hospices Choir - The Living Years
Another choir! But it's to be expected that choral numbers appeal at the carolling time of year. That includes last year's chart-topper by the Lewisham & Greenwich NHS Choir, which inspired this charity outing. The London Hospices Choir, made up of patients and staff, take a run at Mike + the Mechanics funeral song staple, fronted by Paul Carrack, who sang the original. It's a maudlin monster given wings by the gusto with which the chorus attack it.
William Hill Odds: 7/1
Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas
It has, as everyone knows, been a bad year for deaths in music. Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen were the biggest names but prog rock giants Emerson, Lake & Palmer lost two members too, madcap keyboard-player Keith Emerson and singing bassist Greg Lake, the latter earlier this month. Thus Lake's melancholy 1975 paean to a more innocent, less consumerist Christmas, with its twinkly instrumental passages merrily nicked from Prokofiev, has a particular poignancy.
William Hill Odds: 20/1
Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas is You
Every Christmas song goes through an imperial phase, the years when it's unassailable. Once upon a time, it was Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody', then The Pogues for a while, but right now Mariah is empress of the heap. Her 1994 zinger, a near-perfect Phil Spector pastiche created with songwriter-to-the-stars Walter Afanasieff, is now one of the best-selling songs of all time, enjoying an unprecedented run at the top.
William Hill Odds: 25/1
Kylie Minogue - Everybody's Free (to Feel Good)
If you've seen the TV ad where Boots throw an early Christmas party for female emergency workers you'll have heard some of this. In Kylie's hands Rozalla's 1991 rave-pop banger has become two parts ballad to one part stadium-friendly, over-the-top, orchestral disco work-out. It's many miles from the original but, alongside last year's Kylie Christmas album, it shows La Minogue covets her own slice of the Christmas cake.
James Corden - The Greatest Gift for Christmas is Me
The most original aspect of this song, which accompanies Sainsbury's claymation seasonal TV ad, is that it contains repeated mention of train delays, a very topical British Yuletide theme. Other than that, sung by Mr Carpool Karaoke himself, it's a forced, schmaltzy cringe-fest. Its creators must hope it does better than this year's John Lewis Christmas ad song, London electronic act Vaults' version of Randy Newman's One Day I'll Fly Away, which stalled at No.53 in the charts.
By far the most entertaining and least likely to succeed song on our list, 'Naughty Christmas', by gothic Italian metallers Lacuna Coil, is a tongue-in-cheek celebration of pagan anti-Santa Claus figure, The Krampus. A duet between female singer Cristina Scabbia and the growled death metal vocals of Andrea Ferro, it borrows the tune of 'Jingle Bells' and contains lines such as "I'm on my way, naughty children be afraid." What a blast!
