Cannonball (Damien Rice Song) - Little Mix Version

Little Mix Version

British girl group Little Mix covered the track in 2011 as one of the finalists in the eighth series of The X Factor. Following the announcement that they had won the show, their version of "Cannonball" was released as the winner's single on 11 December 2011. Little Mix and eventual runner-up Marcus Collins performed the song during the final show of the series. Third place runner-up Amelia Lily also pre-recorded her version in the studio, which made headlines when HMV made it available for pre-order on their site days before the final. HMV later apologised and stated that it was a technical issue. The song debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming the fastest-selling single of 2011 but the lowest-selling winner's single since 2004. The landmark was beaten by Military Wives the following week, and, although Cannonball sold 390,000 by the end of 2011, was only the 41st biggest selling song of 2011, 17,000 below Lego House by Ed Sheeran, making it the only ever X Factor winners single to miss the End Of Year Top 40 all together, despite it having an extra week of sales compared to the normal number of weeks that the winners single is released before the End Of Year Top 40 is counted. This is because of the very high sales other songs received, in spite of the fact Steve Brookstein's winners song only sold half Little Mix's sales and was 2004's 30th highest seller. Also the target market was predominantly young children, and ratings of that series X Factor were, whilst higher than most, lower than the previous series. In 2007, this total would have been the 5th highest selling. The song, however, was Christmas Number 1 in Ireland, its 2nd week of a 4 week spell in Rice's home country.