Anyone who considers themselves a true music lover will probably hate the Christmas number one. What with all the dire pop covers, talent show dross, and worthy charity ensembles, there really hasn’t been a good tune at the top of the Christmas charts since Mr Blobby in 1993.

Lots of people will think critics of the Christmas number one are just music snobs. After all, the masses love a talent show – and you can’t deny some of those pop hits were catchy. Who are these haters, anyway? They’re probably sitting in a dank basement somewhere, streaming some unreleased Radiohead B-side off the dark web – right?

Well, we didn’t want to take sides (at least not straight away). Instead we looked at the facts and figures. Sales stats weren’t very helpful, because we’ve changed the way we record them, and illegal downloads have stopped sales figures really measuring “popularity”.

Instead we decided to start with the amount of weeks spent at number one (as a general marker of how long each track stuck around). Here’s what we found.

Graphic showing weeks Xmas number ones spent at top

With the exception of a few random outliers (particularly Whitney Houston’s ludicrous 10-week run in 1992) there’s a definite trend in Christmas number ones spending less and less time at the top – especially over the last decade of talent show hits.

Let’s pick through some of those stats.

Al Martino
American crooner Al Martino (AP)

The very first Christmas number one ever (Here In My Heart by Al Martino) was actually the first official UK number one ever. It stayed in the top spot for nine weeks.

Compare Al’s offering to our three most recent Christmas number ones. One’s the product of a talent show and two are charity singles, but each spent only one week at number one.

Girls Aloud
The first in a long line of Christmas-chart-topping talent-show-winning poptastic mega acts(Ken McKay/PA)

No Christmas number one ever failed to stay more than one week at the top until 1990, when we quickly tired of Cliff Richard’s song Saviour’s Day. Since then, however, it’s happened another four times – all in the last five years.

In the ’50s the mean average number of weeks at the top was 6.25. In the 2000s we were looking at 3.2 weeks. So far in the 2010s we’re on an average of just 1.5 weeks.

In fact, it’s been 19 years since any Christmas number one has stayed top of the charts for more than four weeks. More than half of all Christmas number ones before that managed to stay for five weeks or longer.

The Darkness on Oxford Street
The Darkness entered a Christmas song into the charts in 2003. It only reached number 2 (Ian West/PA)

And this isn’t happening because songs are season-specific and therefore have a limited shelf life. We’ve only had one explicitly Christmas-themed tune at number one since 1990 (Band Aid 20′s re-working of Do They Know It’s Christmas).

Non-Christmassy pop songs have really dominated the charts in recent years. Since the first talent-show Christmas number one in 2002, eight out of the 12 singles have been poptastic.

Why has this happened – and have the songs got worse?

We’ll leave the answer to the second question up to you. The public may have been forced to take an anti-X Factor stance in 2009 with Rage Against The Machine, but can anyone seriously argue that Leon Jackson’s any worse than Jimmy Osmond or Benny Hill?

As for why has this happened, we’ve got a few thoughts (none of which we’d back in a court of law).

Jimmy Osmond young
The awfulness of Jimmy Osmond (Anwar Hussein/allactiondigital.com)

1. People have much shorter attention spans these days.

A week after X Factor finishes everyone’s forgotten it and is looking forward to Britain’s Got Talent. Or Celebrity Big Brother. Or The Voice? Do people look forward to The Voice?

2. The charts don’t mean as much any more.

Now there are lots of ways for young people to listen to their favourite tracks without making a mark on sales figures. In fact we’re amazed that the granny-thrilling warblings of Michael Bublé aren’t top of the charts every single week.

Michael Bublé
Would you trust this man with your nan? (Jonathan Brady/PA)

3. There are better songs that aren’t aiming for Christmas number one.

There are lots of other decent artists who can’t be bothered competing with the talent-show machine. Is it any surprise that fans soon jump ship to the January offerings from Beyoncé, One Direction, or whoever?

4. Everything Simon Cowell produces is truly god-awful.

Okay, so a lot of people will disagree with this, but let’s dissect the average X Factor winner’s first single. It’s usually a cover of a song that wasn’t very successful to begin with. It’s always done in the same soppy pop ballad way (no matter what genre the artist actually prefers). And it’s usually accompanied by a tedious music vid showing their X Factor experiences.

Joe McElderry
(Yui Mok/PA)

No wonder Rage beat Joe McElderry.

Rage Against The Machine
(Yui Mok/PA)