It’s December 1984. I’ve come down to breakfast, dressed and ready for school. I’m a fourth year student obsessed with pop music, and the television is on. The new singles chart is being counted down, with videos of the Top Five records. I’m a little sulky that Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘The Power Of Love’ has been knocked off Number One, a bit ‘oh dear’ at Paul McCartney’s ‘Frog Chorus’ nonsense, but encouraged by the presence of Madonna and a clip of her ‘Like A Virgin’ video. And then at Number Two, a new entry. It’s Wham! and ‘Last Christmas’. It feels a little bit more of interest to my older sister, yet I’m still entranced by the video of George Michael, Andrew Ridgeley and chums mucking about in a winter wonderland – ‘Club Tropicana’ in the snow.
After the frolicking in the snow, the Wham! gang and chums repair to their lavish chalet to have a slap-up festive tuck. Andrew produces a baked Alaska, and several extras seem to be going overboard with the bonhomie. And there’s George, moodily glowering across the table, shooting glance across the table towards his ex. She seems oblivious to the resentment, the heartbreak, the devastation they wrought on poor George, mooding through his lovely hair at his dastardly paramour. Everyone is having a wonderful time except George, the jealousy and trauma masked by alcohol (genuinely, as the video shoot featured real booze) and silliness. The day after filming, George Michael returned to London to have a sing on Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas’. What could be more Christmas 1984?
Individually, all the Band Aid turns had pretty much avoided Christmas music. Paul Weller, Bananarama, Culture Club and Duran Duran had popped up on the free Smash Hits flexi ‘Happy Christmas From The Stars’ in 1982, but it all seemed a bit of a piss-take. Christmas records at that time weren’t considered particularly cool, and it was left to the glam rackets by Slade and Wizzard to prevail, year after year. David Bowie had been defanged a couple of years earlier with the release of his ‘Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy’ duet with Bing Crosby, and even Siouxsie And The Banshees had stuck their version of the traditional French carol ‘Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant’ on the double A-side of their single ‘Melt!’ There was no good to be had with forced tinsel toe-taps – you just held your breath and got through it. Wham!, and more importantly, George Michael thought differently.
Behind the scenes of Band Aid’s success, George Michael was furious that his plan of claiming the Christmas Number One had been thwarted. When Wham! arrived back. Back. Back on Planet Pop in early 1984 with ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go Go’, Michael had indicated that he’d written a Christmas Number One. Having been shafted by the first label, Wham! were now managed by Simon Napier-Bell, the type of industry legend who could harness George’s ambition and deliver on it. Wham! meant business in 1984, though publicly Michael encouraged Wham! fans to buy the Band Aid single, even if most agreed that ‘Last Christmas’ was the better song.
‘Last Christmas’ had been written by George Michael in his bedroom at his parents house while Andrew Ridgeley was downstairs watching telly. The only people in the studio when it was recorded at Advision Studios in August 1984 were Michael’s engineer, Chris Porter, and two assistants. Ridgeley, for all the accusations that he never had much to do with Wham!, was nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t unusual. Michael had already had the gall to reject a Jerry Wexler-produced version of ‘Careless Whisper’, and ‘Everything She Wants’ was done almost single-handedly in a studio in Paris. This gave him enough encouragement that he could go DIY. He was on a hot streak having taken both Wham! and himself to Number One already that year, and about to score Wham!’s second chart-topper with ‘Freedom’ the following month. Their second album Make It Big was in the bag and set to be a stocking filler when released in November.
To conjure the requisite mood, paper chains were hung around the studio for vibes. This wasn’t unusual for Christmas songs, as pop stars having to force themselves into festive feelings mid-August required hastily assembled decorative trinkets. Advision wasn’t the most advanced of studios. There was no sign of the-soon-to-be-ubiquitous sampler or modern technology associated with pop music at that time. ‘Last Christmas’ was done using just a LinnDrum drum machine and a Roland Juno-60 synth – practically synthpop with additional sleighbells. This was enough for Michael, who wasn’t technically a musician, and the instrumental laid bare how simple yet effective it was. It sounds like cheap magic – like a song that had always been out there in the ether, found and captured by George Michael.
‘Last Christmas’ was not about flash and musicianship, more framing the vocal sentiment of George Michael’s heartbreak and yearning. It’s a prime example of the HappySad nature of the best pop – sounding jolly and at odds to the mourning of a buggered-up relationship. He’s telling himself the series of lies that often accompany dealing with betrayal – does he want them back? Can he muster a full on ‘fuck you’? There’s more than a touch of obsessive behaviour about it. The “this year to save me from tears, I’ll give it to someone special”, is utter shade, and yet sung like he’s gently stroking your hair. Knowing what we know now, was this a record about a closeted relationship, the “someone special” a man?
‘Last Christmas’ was supposed to have a shelf life. Its five weeks as bridesmaid to Band Aid was sufficient enough to make it the then-biggest selling Number Two of all-time. And then, for years after, it simply wouldn’t go away. In 1985, ‘Last Christmas’ returned to the Top Ten. It also appeared on the NOW Christmas compilation, which came out in November of the same year. It nestled in that particular sonic stocking alongside Slade, Wizzard and Greg but also with Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby’s deathless ‘White Christmas’, a song that felt positively ancient at 38-years-old.
NOW Christmas itself set the standard of Christmas playlists, and is arguably one of the most important records ever made. There’d never been a compilation that combined all the festive hits – prior to this, you had to pull out the battered singles each year to play across the season, but here they all were in one place. It also inserted some tracks into the new canon – Elton John’s ‘Step Into Christmas’ was all but forgotten in 1985 and Chris De Burgh’s gloomy progger ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’ hadn’t even been a hit. NOW Christmas changed our perception of seasonal music forever, made up of nostalgic snapshots for all ages, the ghosts of Christmasses past, present and future. No-one could have imagined at the time that 40 years later, ‘Last Christmas’ would cover all three.
There is nothing more poignant than an end of year death for a Christmas hitmaker. Entire back catalogues reduced to one, possibly two, songs that now annually populate the Christmas week Top 100 with, in the streaming age, up to 80 percent of the chart. You hear them and think of those no longer with us, such as ‘Fairytale Of New York’ with Shane MacGowan (died November 30, 2023) and Kirsty MacColl (December 18, 2000); Greg Lake’s ‘I Believe In Father Christmas’ (December 7, 2016); Boney M’s ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ (Bobby Farrell, December 30, 2010), Dean Martin’s ‘It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas’ (December 25, 1995); Eartha Kitt and ‘Santa Baby’ (December 25, 2008); John Lennon’s ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ (December 8, 1980). And of course, George Michael, who died on Christmas Day in 2016. No December pop death has ever seemed sadder. Throughout that day, up and down the country and around the world, ‘Last Christmas’ was being played as its singer breathed his last.
George Michael’s own relationship with ‘Last Christmas’ was troubled – he feared that it would be the one thing he’d be remembered for, and rarely embraced it until much later on in his career. Yet here it is now, again – an actual standard that’s survived cover versions by anyone from Whigfield and Crazy Frog to Dalida and Taylor Swift. Having crept up the yuletide listings since 2007 due to streaming, it has become embroiled in regular battles with Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’, reaching Number One in January 2021, returning again the following year and then finally achieving its true calling as an actual Christmas Day Number One in 2023, spending four uninterrupted weeks there thanks to the demise of LadBaby’s annual stink.
Speaking to Official Charts about the ultimate accolade for a song that’s lasted several lifetimes, Andrew Ridgeley commented that “Yog [George] said that he wrote ‘Last Christmas’ with the intention of writing a Christmas Number One. That was the challenge; the goal that he set for himself… It’s a transcendental song, because of its nature and subject matter it has the advantage of being ever-present at this time of year. Did we ever think it’d have such longevity? Probably not! At the time, I don’t think we necessarily foresaw its endurance or thought it’d become a staple of Christmas.”
‘Last Christmas’ is not only a staple of a British Christmas, but has become inescapable around the world. Last Christmas it reached the Top Five in 32 countries, and was Number One in 15 of them, from Sweden to Lebanon. In the UK alone it has sold 4.2 million copies, and with over 11 million worldwide is on course to eclipse Band Aid’s sales of 11.7 million.
This year, to save us from tears, it will likely be there again above Mariah, Band Aid, The Pogues, Brenda Lee and Shaky. A bedroom-written, cheap and DIY effort knocked off in an afternoon has arguably now eclipsed ‘White Christmas’ to become the ultimate Christmas record.
‘Last Christmas’ feels like it has been there all my life, and it will continue to be so. Is it my ‘White Christmas’? It’s gone from the hot pop smooch smash through 40 years of upheavals, and the full house of family that I spent my sixteenth Christmas in has morphed and shed and gained over those years, and it will no doubt be burbling away in the background when I’m cooking dinner for my mum for the two of us during my fifty-fithy Christmas there as it feels like it always has (except for that time I couldn’t go home due to lockdown). It has gone through embarrassment, a vague tinge of naffness at the office party, the last thing you want to hear in an endless queue at Argos – all the confectionery adjectives, but I’ve never rejected or skipped it when on a Christmas CD. In recent years it has become a warmth, a tenderness, something of a moment that feels both homely and safe, but also haunted scrapes I may have had over the season myself. The claustrophobia of a full house of nieces and nephews getting ace Lego sets as I graduate into socks and ‘a nice jumper seen in Debenhams’ territory during my hard-to-buy-for early twenties. I’d go into further detail about Christmas 2001 and seeing someone I was ready to really give everything to, but that would bring up the misery of Christmas of 2002 writing a card to him and his new fella. Perhaps the comforting positioning of it between Low’s ‘Just Like Christmas’ and Chris Rea’s ‘Driving Home For Christmas’, or maybe between Donny Hathaway’s ‘This Christmas’ and Saint Etienne’s ‘I Was Born On Christmas Day’ on my regularly updated homemade CDs in the car when me and my fella go and buy a tree every year since 2003. Or that rapid sobering up that occurred on Christmas Day night in 2016 when I heard the news George had died. Or the first Christmas without my dad in 2000, or my sister in 2021. From the first twinkle in a supermarket in October through to the crushing of gift wrap into the blue bin on Boxing Day, it’s properly trad arr now. Bollocks to Whamageddon and the ‘oh it’s cheesy’ discourse. It’s part of my life for a good month or so each year. Part of all of our lives, even, and it will continue to be so for a good while yet.
Ian Wade’s new book 1984 – The Year Pop Went Queer is out now, and can be purchased here.
