Every time you come around, you know I can't say no

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

2021 : Bad Habits - Ed Sheeran

Our third visit with Mr Sheeran and the best of the lot for me - I actually think this is a decent track (and there's not too many of his later numbers I can say that for)

It's got quite the video as well - Ed as a vampire with terrible make-up flying around in a pink suit. Errr - why? To meet up with his other monster mates, obviously! And to play with some balloons! But then the sun comes up and all the other monsters hide or burn to ashes, but Vampire Ed turns in Normal Ed - clever, huh? It looks like it was a load of fun to make (and quite a lot of work) but it makes absolutely no sense at all!

Wikipedia has a load of text on this (310 milliPeppers) but the most important news for those of you that can't get enough Ed is that there have been additional drill, acoustic and metal versions released - and this leads us to a somewhat unbelievable turn of events. Yes, I've seen this track played live from the mosh pit at Reading Festival by Mr Sheeran along with Bring Me The Horizon - something I'm still not sure actually happened. And the most amazing aspect to all this is that I really enjoyed the whole experience!

The critics were a bit mixed about it, but somewhat bizarrely a load of them mentioned this was really a The Weeknd song (which it isn't guys, because Ed wrote it and sang it - OK?). Most of the rest of the entry is about how well it's done commercially - and it really has done very well indeed, getting to #1 in a load of countries but a mere #2 in the US. To make up for that, it was #1 in the year-end chart here (and Ireland and Denmark, obviously) and still #2 in the '22 chart (but only #30 in the '23 chart!).

Wikipedia doesn't give us any cover versions whilst secondhandsongs.com gives a surprising number by people I've never heard of. YouTube is obviously full of acoustic versions by people in their bedroom - but I actually quite liked Ashley Campbell's 30s version, Sara Niemitz's funk version, Patty Gurdy's medieval version (it's a bit of a cheat, but the instruments are cool) and of course if we want a proper metal version we have to go to our old mate Leo Moracchioli

Looking further down the year-end chart, I wasn't surprised that Olivia Rodrigo was at #2, but was surprised it was "Good 4 U" there, with "Driver's Licence" only occupying the #3 slot because that seemed to be #1 forever (it was there for nine weeks, as opposed to five for "Good For You"). The top five was completed by The Weeknd's "Save Your Tears" (which is actually a decent track, but from '20) and Lil Nas X's "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)" (which I don't remember in the slightest). Looking further down the chart, there's remarkably little I recognise from '21, with an amusing selection from previous years including Glass Animals' "Heat Waves" (#8 - 2020), Lewis Capaldi's "Someone You Loved" (#30 - 2019), The Killers' "Mr Brightside" (#30 - 2004) and Wham!'s "Last Christmas" (#36 - 1984). I appreciate that things go a bit mad over Christmas (this was the year that "Last Christmas" finally made it to #1, which it did again recently), but if a track from nearly forty years ago is making the year-end chart then something really is wrong with the whole thing.

Looking further down the charts, I really wasn't expecting to turn up too much but we came up with Nathan Evans's "Wellerman", Anne-Marie & Little Mix's "Kiss My", Sam Fender's "Seventeen Going Under", Gayle's "ABCDEFU" and Griff's "Black Hole", which is a limited but pretty decent selection of tracks. Looking across the pond, somewhat surprisingly the top song in their year-end chart was Dua Lipa's "Levitating" but below that normal service was resumed with The Weeknd and Olivia Rodrigo occupying a fair bit of the top ten - poor old Ed was only #15 (although he was #13 in the '22 chart).

I think we have to bow to the inevitable and accept that Ed deserved to take the year - what wasn't inevitable in the slightest though was that I would actually like it! So well done Mr Sheeran - it's easily the best of the three he's had on the chart for me.

And with that, we've only got one more year to go - and it's another surprisingly bearable song from a male singer, albeit one slightly cooler than Ed.

2020 - Catchy, if inessential