A View From The Top #78

It’s the year 3017. Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You has just enjoyed its 52,000th week at the top of the UK charts, narrowly holding off every song from his new album Infinity, as well as hits from his previous hundred LPs, Drake’s Even More Life, and Steps’ seminal classic Tragedy. PearShaped remains the University’s premier Ed Sheeran journalism society, publishing twice as much Sheeran content than Exposé (who only made the move to Sheeran-exclusive coverage in the mid 2500s).

Adele’s latest effort, 1025, barely made a dent in Sheeran’s sales. “We’re over her,” revealed a fan I spoke to last week. “Although the song she did for the new James Bond reboot – no, not that one, the new, new one, you know, the one after the old new new one where he shoots that guy – was alright.”

All of this has, of course, once again sparked the debate over the charts. Since the introduction of streaming, number ones have stuck around with increasing tenacity, as fans can now repeatedly stream a track in a simulation of listening to Radio One, rather than buying it once and being a weekly statistic no more. However, a representative for Sony, ExecBot3000, claims the methods are as accurate and as relevant as ever:

“I think it’s time we all relaxed and realised that the charts are an accurate representation of the public taste,” ExecBot3000 claimed. “No matter that we transcended physical bodies two-hundred years ago when scientists uploaded every human consciousness to the cloud. Sheeran’s poetry about so called ‘shapes’ remains the most moving work since Shakespeare’s sonnets.”

He then added, “Castle on a Hill can piss off though.”

Who knows. Maybe next week, the next PearShaped writer tasked with writing A View From the Top might be released from this musical Groundhog Day, this endless journalistic purgatory. Until then, you might as well join me in singing the new national anthem.

The club isn’t the best place to find a lover and so the bar is where I go…