Ed Sheeran & Elton John are setting the pace in the Midweeks with Merry Christmas, a new collaboration that’s competing with festive classics.
The pair are aiming to dethrone Adele’s Easy On Me at the singles summit with their duet in its opening week. It is currently out in front on 33,109 sales.
Merry Christmas by Ed Sheeran & Elton John, which has so far amassed 3,393,132 streams across audio and video platforms, is now the frontrunner for the Christmas No.1.
The pair have a key advantage over Christmas classics which are subject to the ACR (Accelerated Chart Ratio) rules from the Official Charts Company, which means that catalogue tracks have to register double the amount of streams of a new release for the same chart ‘sale’.
ACR didn’t prevent both Mariah Carey and Wham! finally reaching No.1 last year with their festive standards. Both acts make a big impact on today’s Midweeks: Wham!’s Last Christmas climbs a place to No.3 (18,701 sales) closely followed by Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, down a place at No.4 (18,142).
Last Christmas has 4,266,182 audio and video streams so far this week, compared to 4,178,977 for All I Want For Christmas Is You.
While both perennials had already made a chart impact, they are now joined by other festival favourites in the Top 10, including Fairytale Of New York by The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl is at No.5. The single, first released in 1987, has yet to make No.1.
Elton John is also pushing for a second Top 10 entry. In the Midweeks, he climbs 18 places to No.12 with Step Into Christmas.
In total, 27 festive songs are in the Midweek Top 40. The majority are familiar catalogue titles but new contenders unhampered by ACR include Amazon Originals from George Ezra (Come On Home For Christmas, 36-10), Olivia Dean (The Christmas Song, 46-27) and Camilo Cabello (I’ll Be Home For Christmas, 59-36).
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