The Last Christmas Number One?

Last year, in 2024, the UK Christmas number one was Last Christmas by Wham! — a track first released forty years earlier. Forty years. Isn’t that a bit odd? How could this Ghost of Christmas Past be more popular than something new? Anything new? Well, no time of year is more basted in nostalgia than Christmas, and we all have our favourite tracks, but this feels like something else entirely. A forty-year-old song at number one isn’t seasonal comfort; it’s cultural stasis.

Consider this. Could a Christmas hit from 1944 — say, Bing Crosby’s White Christmas — have been number one in 1984? White Christmas is another classic, undoubtedly, but the idea is absurd. Nostalgia existed then, too, but it knew its place. When White Christmas did get a decades-later Christmas re-release following Crosby’s death in 1977, it reached number five. Respectable, but firmly bounded. Memory honoured the past, but it could not eclipse the light of the present (even when that light was dim enough to include a brass band version of The Floral Dance at number two).

So, what’s changed? The easy answer is nothing, and that Last Christmas is simply one of the better Christmas records. And it is. But the dry turkey truth is that the Christmas number one, like popular music more broadly, is no longer functioning as a site of artistic competition. It has become a plastic winter wasteland.

Christmas has always been vulnerable to dreadful records. To our eternal cultural shame, the St Winifred’s School Choir, Rolf Harris, and Mr Blobby all had Christmas number ones. The fact that Shakin’ Stevens’s Merry Christmas Everyone is regarded as one of the more palatable entries says it all. But even from this tinsel-covered low bar, the decline in recent years has been stark. Only one Christmas number one since 2010 scores above 5.5 for artistic merit on the Lazars scale. From 2018 to 2022, the rot truly set in. For five consecutive years, LadBaby occupied the top spot with novelty charity singles devoid of artistic merit — every one an Agadoo absolute-zero. Their sole redemption was philanthropic: more than a million pounds raised to fight food poverty. Admirable, yes, but beside the point.

Charity does not turn a dropped mince pie into art. You could argue that the original charity Christmas number one, the maximalist juggernaut Do They Know It’s Christmas? (the song that kept Last Christmas off the number one spot in 1984) amplified art. Now charity excuses its absence.

This is not simply a failure of taste. It is a structural shift. The Christmas number one used to be something people actively chose. You heard it on the radio, you saw it performed on Top of the Pops, you bought the single. The chart reflected collective intent, collective judgement. Today, as in other spheres, it’s all about the algorithm. Streaming platforms reward familiarity, repetition and emotional safety. Last Christmas doesn’t have to compete with new songs; it’s nailed into the infrastructure of December itself, pre-loaded into playlists, repeat-looped in shops and public spaces. It doesn’t need to be chosen; it merely needs to be endured. True, for some it is embraced, binged, even. Either way, it's not healthy.

At the same time, the shared cultural moment that once gave the Christmas number one its meaning has long since burned away with the brandy on the pudding. There is no national soundtrack, no pop music town square. What survives is an empty ceremony, a trophy without a contest.

And yet the final irony is this: Last Christmas wins not because it is bad, or ironic, or knowingly stupid. It wins because it is good — it scores an admirable 7 for artistic merit. Musically restrained, emotionally ambiguous, quietly melancholic, it dares to place romantic failure at the centre of Christmas — something modern seasonal music barely attempts. In an era that has stopped trying to make serious Christmas records, it stands uncontested by default. It is the last serious song standing. Well, apart from Fairytale of New York, of course. Oh, and the often-forgotten Chris Rea and his tireless work raising awareness of the perils of traffic congestion during the holiday period.

So, what were we witnessing last year in Wham!’s return? A cry for help? A protest? No, it was something far worse. Because Last Christmas was the Christmas number one in 2023, too. If it does it again this year, that’s the hat-trick and then we’ll be done. Mere nostalgia will have calcified into the rock-hard royal icing of tradition. The Christmas number one will no longer be something we create, but something we repeat. As much a cornerstone of Christmas as expense, plastic tat and too much Baileys. Destiny will be set. Last Christmas will become the last Christmas number one.

Merry Christmas.

Colton.

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4th January 2026. Postscript.

The glitter has settled, the tat is in landfill, and the tree is dead. So what happened?

Well, thankfully, a brand new song was number one – Kylie, with XMAS. It only scored a 4.5 for artistic merit, probably won’t go down as a classic, and was a product of the Amazon machine, so the win was as thin as a paper hat. But still, it was a new and original composition.

Unfortunately, that’s the end of the good news. Last Christmas still made it to number two, and worldwide it was the number one. As for the rest of the UK chart, well, a staggering 25 of the top 40, and 7 of the top 10, were old songs. In 1984, when Last Christmas was first released, 39 of the top 40 were original tracks.

Happy New Year.

Colton.

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If you were disturbed by this article, why not make yourself a stiff Christmas drink and dive into the Miracle of Jesus and the Espresso Martini?😃

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All images in this article were created by Gordon Meal for Colton Lazars using Playground AI base images with novel adaptations and a base photo by Edward Howell on Unsplash