30 December 2022; 27 December 2024
If you haven’t been following the 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. Here in Ireland the wait was slightly longer: ‘Last Christmas’ finally got to the top of our charts in December 2022 – but the week after Christmas. The same thing happened in 2024, which means that ‘Last Christmas’ has been number one in Ireland twice but never our actual Christmas number one.
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 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’.
