Fantasy Top Of The Pops 2015 review

Happy New Year to all you TOTP fantasists.

I hope you had a good Christmas break, and especially that you enjoyed the real-life Christmas and New Year editions of TOTP. I know I did. My highlights were Coldplay (the show-stealers in my view), WSTRN, OMI, Katy B and Tinie Tempah, and the two dance acts who had to get random guest vocalists to sing along to their samples. My lowlights were Hozier and the lack of Little Mix.

And what were the Vaccines doing on there? They've never had a hit significant enough to make it on to Fantasy TOTP ever, let alone this year! Still, marks for effort.

Anyway, here's my annual round-up of the most-featured (fantasy) Top Of The Pops artists of the year:

Seven appearances: One Direction, Ellie Goulding, Rita Ora, James Bay, Maroon 5, MO

Nine appearances: Sam Smith, Little Mix, Hozier, Olly Murs, Years and Years, Kygo, Major Lazer, OMI

Ten appearances: Jess Glynne

Eleven appearances: Mark Ronson, Justin Bieber

Twelve appearances: Ed Sheeran

A massive thirteen appearances: The Weeknd

Well done to bondage-centric MJ soundalike and dancealike The Weeknd, who remarkably pips King Ed for first place after never having appeared on TOTP at all before 2015. His most performed track was The Hills, but he scored no fewer than seven hits big enough to make the show, only one of which was a feature on someone else's track (with Ariana Grande). There were long periods of the year where he had multiple top 40 hits, and often when one song dropped down the chart another would be climbing.

Also noteworthy is that the top performers are getting featured more this year - 19 artistes with seven or more appearances, compared to around 20 with five or more last year. No doubt this is because of the inclusion of streaming in the chart causing the big hits to stay around for longer.

Normal service will be resumed on Thursday for the first non-real TOTP of 2016. In the meantime I'll end with the updated all-time most featured Fantasy TOTP friends of the show:

1  (1)  Ed Sheeran (31 appearances)

2  (2)  Sam Smith (22)

3  (8)  Jess Glynne (20)

=  (2)  One Direction (20)

5  (4)  Ellie Goulding (19)

6  (6)  George Ezra (15)

7  (12) Jason Derulo (14)

8  (N)  The Weeknd (13)

=  (34) Little Mix (13)

=  (12) Avicii (13)

=  (10) Calvin Harris (13)

=  (6)  Clean Bandit (13)

Bye for now!