I talked in our last post about the ‘competition’ for Xmas number one 2005, with Westlife and Diana Ross, and the JCB Song, jostling for the title. Except, in reality, there was no contest. The festive chart-topper would cease to be a competition for most of the next decade.
That’s My Goal, by Shane Ward (his 1st and only #1)
4 weeks, from 25th December 2005 – 22nd January 2006
A year ago, the first ever X Factor winner, Steve Brookstein, took his cover of Phil Collins’ ‘Against All Odds’ to the top. But Brookstein was a middle-aged man, who by this point a year on had argued with Simon Cowell and was persona non grata, and anyway he didn’t make Christmas #1. It feels like he’s been erased from the history books. Here then is the first winner of the X Factor proper: young, handsome, endlessly promotable Shayne Ward, with an original song.
Well, I say ‘original’. Technically it was written for the winner of that year’s competition, but there’s nothing original about it. If you’ve heard any of the previous reality TV winners singles, from the likes of Will Young, David Sneddon, or Michelle McManus, then you know how this song goes. I’m here to win your heart and soul, That’s my goal… It is a mid-tempo, mid-range, mid-everything, common or garden pop ballad. (It is so bland that it makes Michelle’s ‘All This Time’ sound epic. She’s the true queen of winner’s single balladry.)
But, of course, this is the third fastest-selling single of all time, with the 5th highest weekly sale (since 1980, as before that records are patchy) behind Band Aid, ‘Candle in the Wind ‘97’, Will Young and Gareth Gates. Considering how poor overall sales were in 2005, and that we’re mere weeks away from them hitting an all-time low in early 2006, it makes Ward’s opening week sales of almost 750k quite jaw-dropping.
For my sins, my flatmates at the time and I were very invested in this series of X Factor. Who remembers the heady days Chico (more on him soon), Journey South, and Andy Abraham the singing binman? We even, cough, went to the see live tour… And I remember thinking it obvious from very early on that Ward would win. I genuinely thought he could be a big star.
And yet, like most winners of the X Factor, he burned brightly for a while, then fizzled out. Two #2s, a handful of other Top 10s, but nothing post 2000s. He was dropped by Cowell in 2011 but kept releasing music independently, as well as moving into acting. He was in Coronation Street for three years. Who knew?
We may never hear Shayne Ward on top of the charts again, but there are several years’ worth of X Factor winner’s singles to come, and if you can tell one from the other then you’re a better critic than I…
Side note: I did wonder if a Xmas number one staying on top until January 22nd was a record, so I did a look through the annals. It’s relatively late for a festive chart-topper to still be hanging around, but a handful of records have gone longer. Can anyone name the only Christmas #1 to have still been topping the charts in February, though? Answers in the comments…
