‘The X Factor’ UK: Winner Louisa Johnson falls out of top ten in Christmas chart
Great Britain may be the only country in the world who values the week of Christmas as the most-important time for the music industry, at least to the extent that the media talks about it incessantly. Everyone wonders for weeks who will be the Christmas Number One, and over this weekend the results were official: the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir. Their charity single was battling Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself,” but the singer encouraged fans to buy the other song instead so that it could have the honor in this season of giving. Classy move on Bieber’s part.
For “The X Factor,” this has always been important week for them as many previous champions, including Ben Haenow last year, scored this key spot in the charts. A rule change for the charts this year makes it somewhat more difficult for an artist from the show to claim the title. Blame timing for that. However, even with the rules as they were there is almost no chance reigning champ Louisa Johnson would have gotten even close to the top of the chart.
The numbers are now in, and Louisa’s cover of the Bob Dylan classic “Forever Young” landed at #12 on the chart, three spots down from where she was in the week before that. We’ve already written about some of the reasons being given for the performance so far, but we narrow it down to two things:
1. The song – There’s not too much of an interest in picking up an old song with hardly a consistent melody. It’s a great performance to watch, but a difficult thing to listen to on repeat. It’s also far from a current track for a 17-year old singer.
2. The singer – For one reason or another, Louisa did not connect with viewers enough to convince them to purchase their music for now. We think that this doesn’t doom her future, but she will need something a little edgier and different. We hope those reports about a rush album release for the song are false.
We’ll have more on all things “X Factor” in due time. For now, head over here to get some more TV news on everything we cover, sent right over to you via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: ITV.)