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'Tis the season for last year's Christmas classics to reach number one in the charts as Wham!'s 'Last Christmas' was named the UK Christmas number one this week, 39 years after the song was released.
The hotly contested number one Christmas album annually measures the popularity of a single in the UK in the week before Christmas, with classic rockers, pop singers and festive songs such as “Do They Know It's Christmas?” For Band Aid. Winning in the past decades. In recent years, the number one Christmas song has been dominated by reality competition singers, YouTubers, charity singles, and Ed Sheeran (Rage Against the Machine's “Killing in the Name” notwithstanding). I hijacked the race in 2009).
However, just as Brenda Lee found herself atop the Hot 100 with “Rockin'around the Christmas Tree” 65 years after that song's release, Wham!'s “Last Christmas” arrived! Finally reached number one, nearly 40 years after “Do They Know.” “It's Christmas?” (which also featured George Michael) kept it off the top spot on Christmas 1984. “Last Christmas” also managed to reach number one in 2022, taking the second spot on Christmas again.
Michael strike! Bandmate Andrew Ridgeley said in a statement following the feat:via Watchman), “George will be beside himself [that] After all these years, [we’ve] I finally had Christmas No. 1. Yog [George] He said he wrote “Last Christmas” with the intention of writing Christmas No. 1. Mission accomplished!
Ridgley continued: “It was a huge disappointment for both of us when she didn’t make it to first place [in 1984] Because, in our opinion, it has been installed… it has been aborted for many years after that – the perpetual bridesmaid – over recent years, it seems to have become part of the fabric of Christmas for a lot of people.
The 80s duo beat out Sam Ryder's “You're Christmas To Me” (2nd Christmas), Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and Noah Kahan's “Stick Season”. Despite a valiant effort to get the Pogues' “Fairytale in New York” topping the charts after singer Shane MacGowan's death, that song — a No. 2 Christmas song in 1987 — only reached No. 6 this week.
