Ben Haenow Has Something I Need
The Week in UK Number 1s: December 28, 2024
The Week in UK Number 1s goes back in time - ten years at a time - to explore what was hitting the top of the UK Chart. This time, Ben Haenow rides the X Factor train to the Christmas number 1…
2014
“Something I Need” by Ben Haenow
For a decade, the Christmas number 1 had been dominated, as had Saturday night telly, by The X Factor. Whilst winning the competition was not the guarantee of festive chart-topping it had been in the late noughties, there was still more chance than not that the victor would glide straight to number 1.
This proved to be the case with Ben Haenow, winner of the eleventh series of X Factor. A cover of American rock band OneRepublic’s “Something I Need”, the song came out in the wake of Haenow’s victory and sold enough to displace Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” to claim the 2014 Christmas number 1. Its 214,000 copies sold made it to the second fastest-selling single of the year, only behind Band Aid 30. It would though be the last X Factor song to claim that cherished spot, as the show began its gradual decline in popularity and influence.
For now, Haenow followed the usual trajectory of the X Factor winner: Christmas number 1, signed to Syco Records, off to America to record a debut album, a disappointing lead single from said album (in this case a duet with American Idol alumni Kelly Clarkson titled “Second Hand Heart” peaked at #21), dropped by Syco the following year.
Haenow has not returned to the chart since, while The X Factor never again produced a Christmas number 1 before it ended in 2018. The show had led to seven of the last ten festive chart-toppers but the new world of a stream-dominated music industry where people could consume what they wanted when they wanted did not fit the carefully stage-managed X Factor business model. Haenow may not have gone on to have a major music career but he had enough about him to stem the tide one last time for Simon Cowell and his telly empire.
Next time! Steve Brookstein is against all odds in 2005…