15 December 1984 and 30 December 2022
If you haven’t been following the UK singles charts in the last few years, you may have missed a bit of chart history. Top of the UK pops for the week of 7 January 2021 was ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham!, finally getting to number one a full 36 years after its first release. That long gap was a record (surpassed in 2022 by Kate Bush’s ‘Running Up That Hill’) which overwrote the track’s previous distinction of being the biggest-selling single in the UK not to get to number one. At the time of writing, the latter record is now held by the less auspicious Maroon 5’s ‘Moves Like Jagger’. You’re still thinking how old you feel about the 36+ years since ‘Last Christmas’ was released, aren’t you?
No such wait here in Ireland: ‘Last Christmas’ was an Irish number one first time around in 1984. (It has since also gone back to number one here at the end of December 2022.) I suspect that may be due to a later release date in Ireland for the single which succeeds it here and which kept it off the UK top spot. On which point, ever since its release all royalties from ‘Last Christmas’ have gone directly to the cause espoused by that other single—you’ve surely guessed what it is—which is a tremendously generous thing to have done.
Point of order: I shall use player’s privilege and consider ‘Last Christmas’ as a stand-alone track. Yes, it was released as a double-A-sided single, but (a) it clearly has a life of its own, and (b) I just don’t like ‘Everything She Wants’. My house, my rules. Now read on.
At the risk of undermining my self-appointed remit, the ‘number one’ factoid is a red herring here; regardless of chart placing ‘Last Christmas’ has always been hugely popular, perhaps even beloved. A lot of that standing is, of course, filtered through your feelings about Christmas in general and Christmas music in particular. I happen to like both, and I really like ‘Last Christmas’.
There’s no shortage of Christmas songs, so what accounts for this one’s immense success? I put a great deal of it down to a fantastic chorus. Nothing in it feels laboured or contrived; “Last Christmas, I gave you my heart” is so simple and effective an idea that it’s a surprise no one had thought of it before. Then there’s immediate drama: heartache on St Stephen’s/Boxing Day—the best day of the holidays ruined!—and a year later bitterness still. That echoing, loaded “special” at the end is where George Michael hits the sweet spot of his talent for conveying hurt and pain. It’s a great pop moment.
The verses don’t reach the same exalted heights, but they do just fine. George’s unfortunate tin ear for banal cliches is evident, though overall he balances this out. Example: the first verse starts with an uninspiring “Once bitten and twice shy” but is immediately salvaged by a more crafted “I keep my distance, but you still catch my eye”. Notwithstanding a few other slight clunkers—I always wince at “your soul of ice” and “a man under cover”—the rest of ‘Last Christmas’ continues to play the ‘I’ and ‘you’ off each other, with poor old George forever teetering on the brink of his feelings. Where ‘Everything She Wants’ topples into tired misogynistic nastiness (“Now you tell me you’re having my baby!” is particularly histrionic), the bitterness in ‘Last Christmas’ is as much self-directed, which rings a lot truer.
Where you don’t like Christmas songs, I can’t say I’m a fan of George Michael’s work in general. Still, I know ‘Last Christmas’ is a great record, certainly his best, and every Christmas I enjoy hearing it however many times it’s played. By contrast, don’t get me started on ‘Fairytale of New York’.
Irish Number Ones 