X Factor

1025. ‘That’s My Goal’, by Shayne Ward

/ UK #1s blog / 10 Comments

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…

Advertisements

998. ‘Against All Odds’, by Steve Brookstein

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

2005 begins with what should have been the final chart-topper of 2004, and that year’s Christmas #1…

Against All Odds, by Steve Brookstein (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 2nd – 9th January 2005

On the one hand you can feel a teensy bit sorry for Steve Brookstein, because a couple of years later winning X Factor would be a sure-fire way to have a genuinely massive million-seller, a Christmas number one, and at least one or two follow-up hits. But since he was the winner of the first series, before it was pulling in huge viewing figures, and because he came up against a juggernaut of a single in Band Aid 20’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ reboot, none of this came true. Instead he belatedly limped to #1 for a week, when nobody was watching, on a technicality.

At the same time, any sympathy for him evaporates when you hear this dull and predictable winner’s single. Did we really need another cover of ‘Against All Odds’? Mariah Carey and Westlife had taken their version to the top barely four years earlier. Phil Collins’ original was only two decades old. (Worryingly, Brookstein’s cover is now closer to 1984 than the present day…)

Of course, Brookstein isn’t a bad vocalist. But he is a glorified pub singer. Judge Sharon Osbourne didn’t like him, and I don’t think the X Factor producers were thrilled to have a thirty-six year old with a pretty limited appeal as their inaugural winner. The subsequent champions were all young, and pretty, with potential for real pop stardom. Some even came close to managing it.

The one person who did argue for Steve Brookstein was, inevitably, Simon Cowell. Cowell looks at a granny-baiting, middle-aged crooner as hungry kids look at chocolate ice cream. He lapped him up. For a while, at least. Following a debut, chart-topping album, Cowell and Brookstein feuded. Eight months after winning X Factor, he was dropped by BMG Records. According to Brookstein it was because he refused to record another LP of safe covers.

And so he faded into obscurity, popping up every now and then to rant about Cowell. He did a bit of musical theatre, a bit of TV, and a lot of provincial touring. Looking at his Wiki, has there been a more depressing sentence in a pop star’s bio than: “In June 2007, Brookstein appeared on the P&O Portsmouth to Bilbao car ferry, alongside X Factor alumni Chico Slimani and Journey South”? (More on Chico soon, btw.)

This would be the last X Factor winner’s single not to make Christmas #1 for five years, as the series dominated British pop culture in the latter half of the decade. So that’s something to look forward to covering… This also came dangerously close to being Britain’s 1000th number one single. Which feels like a close escape, but maybe it would have been fitting. Maybe it is the ultimate #1 single? Cheap, disposable, forgotten…

Advertisements