This all or nothing really got a way of driving me crazy

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

2018 : Someone You Loved - Lewis Capaldi

This is probably the best track we've had since the previous "someone" track - Adele's "Someone Like You" and they're quite similar in terms of the heartbreak on display. I like this track because I think it's well put together and his voice is gorgeous on it - it puts some of Ed's shabby thrown-together efforts to shame.

The track actually has two videos - one is exactly the kind of mopey, twilit nonsense you'd expect (and features Lewis doing some quite poor lip-syncing, but we just love him all the more for it) but the other one is actually a lot more interesting, featuring Peter Capaldi (a distant relative apparently) as a bereaved husband visiting the woman who received his wife's heart as an organ donation - I'm not in the slightest ashamed to say it had me in bits.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the single - Lewis wrote it after the dead of his grandmother and it took him months to pull it all together. It was released in November '18 and charted immediately upon release despite him not being that well known - it managed one week at #100! After the Xmas and New Year chaos, it cut through slightly better - entering at #66, but rising steadily to hit #1 in its eighth week, staying there for seven weeks during a 100 week run. It's managed 239 weeks in total on the chart so far, with it last being seen for a couple of weeks last month, so it's certainly still popular. It also got to #1 in the US (taking 24 weeks to hit the top there) and is the third most streamed track on Spotify, with over 3 billion streams - so I think we can say it's done OK for itself.

And so, somewhat unsurprisingly but for a change deservedly, it was the #1 track on the year-end chart - but not until '19 (and it has appeared on every year-end chart since). Looking at '18, the #1 track in that year was Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa's "One Kiss" which I remember being catchy but pointless, so obviously it was #1 for eight weeks (he's had ELEVEN #1 singles over the years). The rest of the top five were Drake's "Gods Plan" (which I don't remember in the slightest), George Ezra's "Shotgun" (catchy, yet somehow not annoying), The Greatest Showman's "This Is Me" (yeah, I don't mind this) and Rudimental's "These Days" (I vaguely remember this as OK).

Other tracks I don't mind from the year-end list are Anne-Marie's "2002" (#12), Clean Bandit's "Solo" (#16), Camilla Cabello's "Havana" (#17) and Dua Lipa's "New Rules" (#20) - the only other point of interest is that both Post Malone and The Greatest Showman have four entries in the top 50. Looking further down the charts throughout the year, we come up with very few offerings - Freya Ridings's "Lost Without You" (I really like this song), Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next", Jess Glynne's "Thursday", Ava Max's "Sweet But Psycho", Halsey's "Without Me" and Mark Ronson/Miley Cyrus's "Nothing Breaks Like A Heart" (an even stronger than usual tendency towards a female vocalist for me this year, it appears).

Looking across the pond, somewhat unsurprisingly Drake's "God's Plan" took the top spot which meant I had to check it out - and nope, I still don't remember it. I really struggle to understand his appeal but there's no denying they love him over there - he had EIGHT tracks in the year-end top 100. As did Cardi B, who is someone I kinda see the appeal of - but not that much! Poor old Post Malone and Kendrick Lamar had to make do with only four tracks each - how did they survive? Yup, there was a load of nonsense popular over there this year, but Lewis did at least make it to #29 in their '19 list.

For once, I'm completely happy that this track took the year - it's well put together and it really didn't have any obvious competition. I know Lewis has struggled with aspects of his success but hopefully he's getting the help he needs to get through it - in the meantime, people seem to be quite happy to keep listening to this.

2017 - A well constructed bunch of not-very-much
2019 - Actually a decent track