By Sara Nathan and Alanah Eriksen


-Wherever You Are sold 242,000 copies in two days
-More sales than X Factor winners Little Mix sold for the whole of last week following their victory
-Simon Cowell admits defeat and congratulates choir
-Women launch the single in Oxford Street today


We're number one! The Military Wives choir signal what they want for Christmas as they launch their single with Gareth Malone on Oxford Street today


The Military Wives' single has become the fastest selling songs for six years, almost guaranteeing it will be the Christmas number one.

Gareth Malone's choir sold more in two days than X Factor winners Little Mix sold last week following their victory in the TV talent contest.

The Wives shifted 242,000 copies of their track Wherever You Are up to last night, figures showed today.


The Official Charts Company said the sales tally is the biggest since Shayne Ward's That's My Goal in 2005. He sold 313,000 as he too made his bid for the festive chart-topper.

Little Mix, who are currently number one, were thought to be the Military Wives' only real challenger for the Christmas number one, but the girl group could only achieve 210,000 sales for their single Cannonball last week in the wake of their victory.

It proved to be the worst first-week sale for an X Factor winner since the show's first series in 2004.

But the only other time an X Factor winner has failed to win the Christmas top spot since the show began was in 2009 after a successful online campaign propelled the band Rage Against the Machine to No 1 ahead of Joe McElderry.


Drumming up support: The group's song Wherever You Are has become the fastest selling single in six years, after 2005 X Factor winner Shayne Ward's That's My Goal

Mixed fortunes: X Factor winners Little Mix's sales peaked too soon


The Wives are outselling the group by a margin of six to one. Cannonball has sold just 38,000 copies so far this week.

The ensemble was put together by Malone for BBC2 series, The Choir, which climaxed with the group performing at the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall.

The 100-strong choir features the spouses of servicemen in Afghanistan and has tugged at the heartstrings of the British public – winning the crucial support of Radio 2 breakfast DJ Chris Evans.

Proceeds from its single will go to The Royal British Legion and SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association) Forces Help.

Bookmakers William Hill are resigned to losing a five figure sum over the charts.

A spokesman said: 'The Christmas No.1 is now a one-horse race and it's just a question of how far they win it by. We are so amazed by them that we are offering just 3/1 that the single sells a million copies by midnight on Saturday 24, December.'

X Factor supremo Simon Cowell has already conceded that the Wives will beat Little Mix to the top of the festive chart when it is announced on Christmas Day.


Santa baby! The Military Wives choir was put together by Malone for BBC2 series, The Choir, which climaxed with the group performing at the Festival of Remembrance at the Royal Albert Hall


Good cause: The choir features the spouses of servicemen in Afghanistan ¿ winning the crucial support of Radio 2 breakfast DJ Chris Evans (centre)

Plugging the song: Gareth says the success of the choir is thanks to DJ Chris


The 52-year-old spoke out as bookmakers Ladbrokes closed betting on the Christmas No 1 slot, such was the weight of money behind the choir’s song.

He said on Twitter: ‘Congrats to Little Mix & congrats to Military Wives. It’s a great cause & a worthy Christmas No 1.’
Little Mix' sales appear to have peaked too soon.

Indeed, they are currently at No 3 in the Amazon download chart, behind Nirvana’s 1991 single Smells Like Teen Spirit, which has been re-released for Christmas.

Cowell and his team usually release the X Factor winner’s single in the week running up to Christmas, guaranteeing it the top spot on a wave of publicity. But, in an apparent oversight by executives, this year it came out a week earlier.


All together now: Proceeds from its single will go to The Royal British Legion and SSAFA (Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Families Association) Forces Help

Oversight? Simon Cowell and his team usually release the X Factor winner¿s single in the week running up to Christmas but it came a week early

The Military Wives were giving their single an even greater push today by launching it with a performance at HMV in London's Oxford Street.

Dressed in Santa hats and festive-coloured clothing the women sang the hit song before posing for photos which included planting kisses on Gareth's cheeks.

Gareth said the song had caught the public imagination because it had been released at 'a particular moment'.

'This single has come at a time when we're thinking about Afghanistan, we've been there 10 years and the feeling for the armed services is really positive in the country at the moment,' he said.

'People have been telling me they have been crying every time they hear it, crying in their cars when they go to work, and that makes me really proud and it means they understand what these women's lives are like, crying every day about their husbands'.

He credited Chris Evans for the choir's success

'There was one morning that my phone went red hot with everyone saying 'Chris Evans says you should be Christmas number one' and everything changed from that moment.'

'I'm going to go nuts with the champagne on Christmas day. I had planned a really quiet Christmas but its not going to be quiet.'

Choir soloist Sam Stevenson, 28, admitted beating the X Factor would be the ‘icing on the cake’.

‘It would be something to disrupt the boat a little bit,’ she said.

‘Why should it always be them?’

Mrs Stevenson, whose husband John is a lance-corporal in the 24 Commando Engineer Regiment, had said: ‘I was all behind Rage Against the Machine.

'I am not saying we are the same, but we have the same sort of message.’

Online retailer Amazon said the Military Wives were ‘streets ahead’ of their rivals.

Roger Greensmith, music and MP3 manager at Amazon.co.uk said: ‘Military Wives have been smashing records throughout the pre-release order period and now that the single has released they are continuing to perform well, making this year’s Christmas No 1 a foregone conclusion.

‘Wherever You Are has no real competition for the race to top the charts on Christmas Day and the single is now one of the top 20 best-selling music products of all-time at Amazon.co.uk, a tremendous achievement for a single.

HMV's Gennaro Castaldo said it is only Christmas when there are such contrasting contenders for the top spot.

He said: 'You get novelty versus serious and classical versus pop because you never quite know what the public mood is going to be.

'This year you would have expected X Factor to dominate as it has before and no one would have expected military wives emerging in the way it has but it's caught the mood of the public and we saw amazing sales yesterday.'

He said the record could sell as many as half a million copies by the end of the week.

'From a standing start, from a group of people we hadn't heard of a few weeks ago, that is amazing.'




source:dailymail