George Michael – The iconic vocalist and lead singer of the 1980s duo Wham! — will forever be associated with the holiday season thanks to his hit 1984 hit, Last Christmas. Every year, the track hits the charts again and again around the festive period, including last year when it finally reached number one in the UK charts. Michael, who sadly passed away on Christmas Day in 2016, wrote and produced the song himself, and it was originally kept off the chart-topping Band Aid charity single, Do They Know It’s Christmas?.
It spent five weeks at number two in its inaugural year of release, and upon finally reaching number one, briefly set a record for the longest period of time between the release of a song and it hitting the top of the charts.
The singer formed Wham! in 1981 along with school friend Andrew Ridgeley, and soon saw their group become one of the biggest acts in the world, selling over 30 million records globally until they split in 1986.
Following the singer’s death, this week Ridley reflected on how last Christmas came to be during an interview with Smooth Radio, describing the moment Michael penned the song.
He said: “We had eaten and were sitting together relaxing with the TV on in the background when George disappeared, almost unnoticed, upstairs for an hour or so.
“When he returned, such was his excitement, as if he had discovered the gold which, in a sense, he had.”
The couple went to Michael’s old room where they “spent hours as children recording bits of radio shows and jingles…the room where he kept his keyboard and something on which to record sparks of inspiration”.
There, Michael played Ridley in the Overture to Last Christmas, and the “deceptively sad chorus tune”.
He said, “It was a moment of wonder. George had performed a musical alchemy, distilling the essence of Christmas into music. Adding a lyric telling the story of departed love was a masterstroke and, as he so often does, touching hearts.”
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To show their support for ending the Ethiopian famine, Wham! They chose to donate all of their proceeds last Christmas to the appeal.
The track, known for its ’80s musical style and beautifully crafted lyrics, is regularly voted among the greatest Christmas songs ever created, including in 2020 when it was named the best track of that decade in the channel’s countdown of Favorite British ’80s Songs. Fifth.
Until 2015, it was the most played Christmas song of the 21st century in Britain until it was overtaken by The Pogues’ Fairytale of New York.
Michael himself discussed last Christmas’s chart battle with Band Aid, a track on which he appeared alongside some of the music world’s most successful stars, in an interview for the 1986 Smash Hits Yearbook.
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He described the period as “a very strange time in some ways”, and that while he never had “any ill feelings” about Band Aid, he always felt last Christmas was “number one”.
Michael continued, “As Christmas approached, there weren’t any new records or anything, and I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe this. ‘” There is no real competition around. I knew there was a possibility that Culture Club had issued Mistake Number Three, but regardless, it seemed like we had a definite hit at the top.
“Nothing seems like it can take us away from first place!
“Then I heard about the Band Aid record and wanted to get involved. At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal. I think most of the people who showed up that day were really surprised when they saw all the cameras and everything — I was.”
He added, “I thought it was like a few people getting together to make this record and I didn’t realize what was really going on until I actually got there.”
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