Wham! have returned to the UK No 1 spot with Last Christmas, priming George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s festive classic as the bookies’ favourite to claim the Christmas No 1 next Friday.
The lovelorn song, which celebrates its 40th anniversary this month, nabbed the Yuletide top spot for the very first time only in 2023. In 1984, it was beaten by Do They Know It’s Christmas?, which also featured Michael.
The song has been No 1 eight times, non-consecutively, in the last four years. This week, it knocks songwriter Gracie Abrams’ That’s So True into second place; Abrams was the support on much of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, including the final dates that concluded last weekend.
Last Christmas also reached a new peak of No 3 in the US Billboard Hot 100 this week, and was certified seven-times platinum. A documentary about the song will be shown on BBC Two on 14 December, featuring new interviews from Ridgeley, Pepsi & Shirlie, who appear in the video, and fans Mary J Blige, Bob Geldof, Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys and Sam Smith.
While Tom Grennan’s new seasonal original song, It Can’t Be Christmas, has reached No 6 in the Official Charts this week, it seems likely that Wham!’s closest competitors next week are Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You – which took the crown in 2020, for the first time since it was released in 1994 – and Brenda Lee’s 1958 hit Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.
This week, Band Aid drops from No 8 to No 14. Streams of the controversial new mix of the song, featuring vocals from previous incarnations, are factored into those of the original, making it impossible to discern how well it is doing independently. The Spotify streams of the new version and a single mix tally around 885,000 plays; the 1984 original has 597,112,846 at the time of writing.
While this week’s Top 10 also features the perennials Jingle Bell Rock, by Bobby Helms, and Fairytale of New York, by the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, it also shows signs of the seasonal canon expanding. Ariana Grande’s Santa Tell Me claims its second ever week in the Top 10, at No 9, while Kelly Clarkson’s 2013 song Underneath the Tree enters the Top 10 for the first time.
The Top 40 contains 26 Christmas songs – largely very familiar hits, albeit with a couple of relatively novel appearances. The Icelandic-Chinese singer Laufey has two songs in the Top 40, Christmas Magic at 20 and Winter Wonderland at 40; Sia’s Snowman is at No 18.
In the album’s chart, Espresso singer Sabrina Carpenter’s 2023 Christmas EP Fruitcake peaks at No 5 following the release of her acclaimed Netflix special A Nonsense Christmas. Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department sticks at No 1, making the songwriter the first international solo artist to achieve 10 non-consecutive weeks at No 1 in 25 years, since Shania Twain’s Come on Over in 1999 – yet another accolade as she celebrates her 35th birthday on Friday.
