Wham are Christmas number one for a second time

Wham’s Last Christmas has become the UK’s Christmas number one for a second consecutive year.

George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s festive classic beat songs by Mariah Carey, Gracie Abrams, Tom Grennan and Ariana Grande to top the chart.

Ridgeley said he was “especially pleased” for his late band-mate, who died in 2016 and had always wanted the song to reach number one.

“He would have been utterly delighted [that] his fabulous Christmas composition has become such a classic, almost as much a part of Christmas as mince pies, turkey and pigs in blankets.”

“It’s testament to a really wonderful Christmas song that in a lot of people’s minds evokes and represents Christmas as we would all wish it to be,” he added.

The Official Charts Company said the song had been streamed 12.6 million times in the week leading up to Christmas.

The only other songs to have topped the Christmas chart on two occasions are Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody and Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas. Neither managed it in consecutive years.

Last Christmas was originally released in 1984, but lost the top spot to Band Aid’s single, which raised money for famine relief in Ethiopia.

The charity made a renewed bid for the charts this year, with a 40th anniversary “ultimate mix” of Do They Know Its Christmas, blending vocals from the various versions of the song that have been recorded over the years,

But the re-release faltered after a row over the lyrics, with critics calling the song outdated and colonialist, and Ed Sheeran saying he wasn’t asked for permission to re-use his voice.

In the end, the song charted at number 12, nestled between Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath The Tree and Andy Williams’ 1963 standard It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year.

Last Christmas was written by George Michael in his childhood bedroom in February 1984, “and as far as I was concerned it was a number one”, he told Smash Hits in 1986.

Inspiration struck out of the blue, while the singer was hanging out at his parents’ house in Hertfordshire.

“There was a footy match on the telly and he suddenly jumped up and disappeared upstairs where he had a little four-track studio,” Ridgeley told BBC News.

“About an hour later, he came back and said, ‘Andy Andy, you’ve got to listen to this’. I rarely saw him as excited or as animated as that.

“And as soon as I heard it, it was so apparent that it had all the hallmarks of a Christmas classic. It was a jaw-dropping moment.”

Last Christmas has reappeared in the Top 40 every year since 2007, thanks to the advent of downloads, and then streaming – each of which allowed classic songs to contribute to chart data.

Nostalgia has been the driving force behind the Christmas charts ever since, as perennial favourites like Fairytale Of New York and Jingle Bell Rock soundtrack the holidays.

Jack Saunders, who presents Radio 1’s Chart Show, said it was hard for new songs to compete.

“It takes time for songs to warm up and become classics,” he said.

“I think it would be a huge feat for something to come along and be number one at the first time of asking.”

Consequently, 29 of the songs in this year’s Top 40 were Christmas-themed, with only two newcomers amongst the standards: Tom Grennan’s It Can’t Be Christmas and Laufey’s Christmas Magic.

Both were commissioned by Amazon Music, which automatically played them to anyone asking their smart speaker to play Christmas music.

That gave the two artists a head start in the sales race, with Grennan’s song ultimately making it to number four.

The Coventry singer campaigned hard for that position, even getting a tattoo reading “Christmas No 1 is...” on his right thigh, which he said he would complete with whichever song emerged victorious.

Another song aiming for the number one spot was Freezing This Christmas, a parody of Mud’s Lonely This Christmas that criticises the government’s decision to cut winter fuel payments for pensioners.

Although it was the most downloaded track of the week, protest songs tend to struggle on streaming – which now accounts for 87.7% of all music consumption in the UK.

In the end, the track just crept into the Top 40, placing at number 37.

US pop star Sabrina Carpenter topped the album chart with Short ‘N’ Sweet, a record that has produced three number one singles over the course of the year.

Michael Buble’s Christmas album took second place, with Chappell Roan’s Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess at three.