Forty years after Band Aid kept Wham!’s “Last Christmas” from reaching the top spot, the song has finally reached the number one spot for the second year running in the UK.
Andrew Ridgeley, one half of Wham! alongside the late George Michael, celebrated the achievement, saying, “Thirty seven years to get to No 1, 39 years to Christmas No 1, and then like London buses they all come along at once! I’m especially pleased for George, he would have been utterly delighted, his fabulous Christmas composition has become such a classic, almost as much a part of Christmas as mince pies, turkey and pigs in blankets.”
The song remains massively popular not just in the UK but worldwide, with 7.7m plays a day on Spotify. It is also at number 4 in the US singles chart.
Other Christmas songs that made it to the top 40 this week include Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, which is at number 3, and Tom Grennan’s “It Can’t Be Christmas”, which is at number 4. Seventeen of the songs in the top 40 are Christmas-themed, with 12 of those being classic winter songs. One outlier is UK singer-songwriter Lola Young, who scored her first top 10 hit with “Messy”. The biggest-selling song of the week is “Freezing This Christmas” by Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers, a satirical cover of Mud’s “Lonely This Christmas” that criticizes Labour’s decision to end winter fuel payments for pensioners.