Ed Sheeran scores first Christmas No 1 with Perfect

The singer-songwriter hit the top spot after releasing six versions of his single, including duets with Beyoncé and Andrea Bocelli

Ed Sheeran has capped a hugely successful year by winning 2017’s Christmas No 1, with his song Perfect.

“This is an actual dream come true and I’m very proud and happy,” Sheeran said, wishing his fans “a very merry Christmas, happy holidays and a happy new year”.

He benefited from – or perhaps shamelessly exploited – chart rules that count streams and sales of multiple versions of the same song towards its chart placing. Sheeran released six versions of Perfect to aid its chances of getting the festive top spot: the original, an acoustic version, remixes by Robin Schulz and Mike Perry, and two duet versions with A-list names: Beyoncé and Andrea Bocelli.

Sheeran also features on the No 2 song, River by Eminem. The rapper scored the Christmas No 1 album for Revival, its commercial fortunes left undented by generally negative reviews.

A campaign to get Wham!’s Last Christmas to No 1, 23 years after it was pipped to the top by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? – and one year on from the death of George Michael – didn’t quite succeed. The song reached No 3, with Mariah Carey’s festive perennial All I Want for Christmas Is You at No 4.

The era of streaming means that there are numerous other Christmas classics coming back into the charts this year, with the Pogues’ Fairytale of New York at No 7, Band Aid at 12, Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree at 14, and a further 11 festive hits in the top 40.

British rapper Big Shaq made a late bid for the top spot by releasing a version of his viral comedy hit Man’s Not Hot with added sleigh bells, and rose two places to No 6.

Classical music brings money to the pits

The classic Lucerne Festival brings the business and public sector an annual benefit of almost 24 million francs. The sponsorship contributions and the subsidies are worthwhile for the Lucerne economy as well as for the city and canton.

Lucerne Festival had its economic benefits analyzed in 2015 by the University of St. Gallen. It was, after the years 2000 and 2008, the third study. The same method was always used.

Adding to this economic added value for the region of CHF 22.6 million is the advertising value generated by media reports abroad. The study puts this at 1.1 million francs.

According to the St. Galler study, Lucerne Festival today contributes 20 to 22 million francs to regional value added. In 2000, the value was 18 million francs lower. In 2008, when the festival time was a week longer, it was 24 to 25 million francs higher.

The visitors were responsible for the high regional purchasing power inflow, which made substantial expenditures in the context of the festival, according to the study. This contribution to value creation was around 11 million francs.

According to the study, the sponsors, who in addition to the sponsorship contributions contribute around 8 million francs, play an important role. In addition there are investments of the festival and expenses for the care of the artists.

The regional purchasing power inflows benefit primarily the restaurants and the hotels. Through pre-production, the overall contribution of Lucerne Festival to regional value creation in model calculations increases to around 30 million francs.
Lucerne Festival had budgeted revenue of CHF 24.2 million in 2015. The majority is covered by the ticket sales as well as sponsorship and patronage contributions. Government subsidies amounted to 1.4 million francs. The investments in the festival were worthwhile for the economy as well as for the canton and the city, is the conclusion of the Lucerne Festival.


If the Lucerne Festival were to expand its program, as planned with the Salle Modulable, the economic benefits could be further increased. There is considerable potential for growth, says the study. A reduction in subsidies, as reflected in Lucerne, would clearly be counterproductive.

The classic playlist for a depressed day

From Purcell to Shostakovich, from Mozart to Schubert, here is a musical selection that should bring tears to your eyes.

In case of slack, depressed, it is better sometimes to let go, evacuate the sadness that lives in us. What could be more effective, then, than moving and tragic musical pieces to accompany our letting go?

According to science, crying is good for your health because it relieves stress and relieves pain. And since we want you only good and that the tears are better outside than in, we have concocted an ideal playlist to cry, to let go ...


We begin with the Requiem of Mozart classical, but devilishly effective. A liturgical work completed by two close friends of the composer after the master's death, the Requiem is as dark as it is brilliant, sublime and terrifying. A perfect conditioning for our session of desperation (musical).

People who prefer listening to rap over pop and classical music are more likely to by PSYCHOPATHS

If you're a big fan of the rapper, Eminem, there's a chance you're also a psychopath, according to a new study.

Researchers have found that people with psychopathic traits prefer listening to rap music.While the findings are yet to be published, the researchers even go far as to suggest that rap songs could be used to help predict the disorder in the future.

Researchers from New York University looked at how people's musical preferences correlate with their psychopathic tendencies.And unlike Hannibal Lecter - a psychopath portrayed in the 1991 blockbuster, Silence of the Lambs - who had a fondness for classical music, it appears that psychopaths are more likely to prefer rap.

In the study, 200 people were played 260 songs, and took tests to assess their psychopathic score.The results showed that people with the highest psychopath scores were the biggest fans of rap songs, including No Diggity by Blackstreet, and Lose Yourself by Eminem.

Public Service Broadcasting take their instrumental music to lofty, political heights

Public Service Broadcasting have made waves with their new album, Every Valley. The album is definitely not your typical adolescent trope on the vicissitudes of love and loss. Deeply empowering and phenomenally rich in storytelling, the band made its sophomore release a story about miners – specifically, miners from Wales.

　　Comprised of multi-instrumentalists J Willgoose Esq, Wrigglesworth, and JF Abraham, the band brings a curious mish-mash of genres — echoing the stylistic power of post-punk, electronica, krautrock and punk rock — together to create an intriguing narrative from start to end on Every Valley.
　　As if their musicality isn't enough to impress you, the story behind the album is interesting – and we had the changes to speak to frontman Willgoose (whom we will affectionately call J) about the bands thought process behind it, as well as about the thrills and spills of touring.
　　Instrumentation was, of course, the first questions on your mind – the band professes to have the trusty flugelhorn in their gear cabinets, among other standard instruments like the keys, guitars, and drums.
　　“Our bass player is a classically trained trumpet player by trade and he plays the flugelhorn as well," J shares, "and I think for him playing the bass and playing the keys – those are the things that he picked up just for fun."
　　"I’m self-taught and from a very different way of writing and thinking about music," J says. "The drummer, as well you know, he did a degree in drum studies so he’s not really a kind of very accomplished drummer. He’s a percussionist — he can play tuned percussion like the vibraphone on this album or the glockenspiel. It just gives you more options to work with really.”

Dillon Francis Drops Spanish-Language 'Say Less' Remix 'No Diga Mas': Listen

Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee have had so much success with their English-language remix of “Despacito” -- shout out to Justin Bieber -- that Dillon Francisfigured it might work in reverse for his tune “Say Less.”

That actually might have nothing to do with it, but it doesn't change the fact that Francis just released a Spanish-language version of the song called “No Diga Mas.” It features vocals from Mexican rapper Serko Fu and it's pretty damn spicy. It also follows a bogus threat by Francis to stop using social media for the rest of the year, which is pretty funny, given the theme at hand.
The lyrics here are not a straight translation from the English version, but the spirit of the song is essentially the same. It doesn't matter who you are. When it's 2 in the morning, you're either going home with someone or you're going home alone.

Classical music app to send programme notes to your phone as orchestra plays

Classical music-lovers are not famous for their tolerance of distractions during a concert.
Anyone who has been tutted at for turning the pages of their programme too loudly may be permitted a wry smile at news of the latest innovation: an app which texts notes straight to ticket-holders’phones.

The app, Octava, is intended to “assist the participant through a musical journey”, with Chris Evans, director of press and marketing at RPO, saying its tone is “specifically aimed towards new and potentially younger audiences”.

The app has already raised eyebrows in the classical community, after BBC Music magazine featured it in a review.
“I was surprised to see you endorse Octava, an app which sends texts to your phone during a performance with information about the music,” one concerned reader wrote in this month’s edition. “

Summer Classical Music Preview

Operatic productions, given their ambitions and expense, are always planned at least a year in advance. But, in making their selections for this summer, the region’s major players uncannily reflected our moment of deep political unease. One of the two productions that Francesca Zambello, who runs Glimmerglass Opera, in Cooperstown, is directing herself is the Donizetti rarity "The Siege of Calais" (July 16-Aug. 19), which takes place during the Hundred Years’ War. Zambello has moved the setting to the present day, the better to reflect on the refugee crisis in which all of Europe is currently embroiled. (Zambello will also direct "Porgy and Bess," an opera whose political dimensions are a permanent part of the American experience.) Those who prefer their bel canto straight up can always head to Caramoor, where Angela Meade, one of the Westchester festival’s artists-in-residence, will be featured in a semi-staged presentation of Bellini’s "Il Pirata"
Dvořák’s "Dimitrij," which will be mounted at Bard Summerscape (July 28-Aug. 6), also has a political thrust. The Bard Music Festival’s focus this year will be on Chopin (Aug. 11-20), a composer whose fierce love of his native Poland was wrapped in layers of personal and aesthetic contradiction. But without a Chopin opera to stage, Dvořák’s potent work, which plunges gamely into the ancient intra-Slavic conflict between Catholic Poland and Orthodox Russia which flared up after the death of the tsar Boris Godunov, makes a fine substitute.

Back in New York, Mostly Mozart has shown wisdom in bringing back the thrillingly radical production of "Don Giovanni" (Aug. 17 and Aug. 19) by the conductor Iván Fischer, one of several prominent Hungarian artists who have spoken out against that country’s increasing tolerance of anti-Semitism and homophobia. The festival’s other theatrical presentation is "The Dark Mirror," a staging of Schubert’s "Winterreise," featuring the captivating tenor Ian Bostridge (Aug. 12-13), which continues New York’s near-obsession with this most personal of composers. (Tanglewood also presents a series of Schubert concerts this summer.) Seeming to float above it all is Morton Subotnick, the electronic-music pioneer whom the Lincoln Center Festival is hosting at the Kaplan Penthouse (July 20-22). "Silver Apples of the Moon," created, in 1967, specifically for a recording on Nonesuch Records, will provide a fix of analog-era high-tech bliss. But its new companion work, "Crowds and Power," is based on Elias Canetti’s disturbing book from 1960, a volume that, sadly, remains just as relevant as ever.