11 December 2015
Having already topped the Irish charts twice just before this, Justin Bieber also pockets our 2015 Christmas number one. What’s more, those other two chart-topping songs, ‘What Do You Mean?’ and ‘Sorry’, were at numbers 2 and 4 that Christmas. In fact, thanks mostly to his latest album, Purpose, he had a total of 12 tracks in the Irish top 100 of 18 December 2015. We’re now seeing a consequence of the inclusion of streaming in Irish chart data – the charts are no longer counting one-off sales of a physical object released as a designated single, but repeat plays of any track available on streaming services. In other words, every track on an album can now feature on the “singles” chart. And Justin Bieber being 12% of that week’s Irish charts is because there was not yet a rule limiting the number of tracks per artist – the consequence of that will reach its zenith in due course.
One of those dozen Bieber tracks in that Christmas 2015 chart was ‘Mistletoe’ from his 2011 Christmas album Under the Mistletoe – all the way down at no. 97. It originally reached no. 16 in Ireland in 2011, and popped back into our top thirty for Christmasses 2022 and 2023. That lowly 2015 chart place for ‘Mistletoe’ indicates something else interesting about our charts. At Christmas 2024, 22 of the Irish top thirty were festive-themed. Back in 2015, though, even with streaming there were only three Christmas songs in the Christmas Irish top thirty: ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ and the dreaded ‘Fairytale Of New York’ in the top ten, and then all the way down at no. 23 that year was ‘Last Christmas’ – nowadays a perennial contender for our Christmas number one. Clearly in the intervening years something changed – and we’ll see exactly what that was in due course too.
Anyway, Christmas 2015 belonged to a non-Christmassy Bieber, and if you got a physical copy of Purpose under the tree that year then good for you. I’d prefer a lump of coal on Christmas morning than ‘Love Yourself’, though. Ed Sheeran co-wrote it, and it sounds like a typically gauche semi-acoustic Ed Sheeran folk-pop joint even down to Bieber’s vocal. Worse than that, though, is the song’s unpleasantness. With the stunning lack of self-awareness and grace that was now his hallmark, Biebs is serving snark to an ex like sick on a plate: “My mama don’t like you and she likes everyone” was the would-be burn of burns in the chorus, along with the old misogynistic trope of accusing a woman of vanity and superficiality. Ireland has a long history of nasty Yuletide number ones, and Justin Bieber on ‘Love Yourself’ aptly shows himself to be a bit of a wanker. Happy Christmas 2015.
