Wham! have made history with their classic festive single Last Christmas.
As well as being the official Christmas No.1 for 2024, Last Christmas is also the only song in UK chart history to achieve such a feat for two consecutive years.
Wham!, George Michael Entertainment and Sony Music commemorated 40 years of Last Christmas, by releasing a 40th anniversary EP, available in limited edition vinyl, CD and digital.
Spending its second consecutive and ninth week overall at No.1, Last Christmas by Wham! held on at the summit for a second week so far this year with consumption of 59,426 units (2,067 CDs, 4,397 12-inch vinyl, 1,860 digital downloads and 51,101 sales-equivalent streams), according to the Official Charts Company. Weekly consumption was up 28.66%.
As a catalogue title, Last Christmas is subject to ACR in the singles chart, which requires double the amount of streams to register a chart ‘sale’ Its unadjusted consumption, on the Top 200 Combined Tracks chart, was up 20.44% to 110,528 units.
As reported in Alan Jones’ charts analysis, Last Christmas is now approaching six million units with the unadjusted ACR figure in the latest frame propelling its all-time tally to 5,984,618 units. That total includes its original physical release, when it was a double A-side hit with Everything She Wants. The post-1994 total tracked by the OCC is 4,564,703 units.
The song has now claimed the No.1 spot nine times and has amassed five billion combined streams.
Internationally, Last Christmas has peaked at No.2 in Canada where it went Diamond this week, and No.3 in the US. Across Europe, the song has reached No.1 in the Netherlands for the first time ever, has been No.1 in Sweden for four consecutive weeks, and currently sits at the top of the charts in Austria, Germany and Poland.
It is surely, undeniably, established now as the British Nation’s all-time favourite Christmas song
Martin Talbot
Wham!: Last Christmas Unwrapped debuted on BBC 2 in the UK this month, and is now available to watch on demand via BBC iPlayer.
Andrew Ridgeley also appeared as a guest on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan performed a duet of Last Christmas on Carpenter’s A Nonsense Christmas on Netflix, whle Rosé covered it for BBC’s Radio 1 Live Lounge.
Carpenter’s Short N’ Sweet returned to the summit to become the Christmas No.1 album.
“Many, many congratulations to Andrew Ridgeley and Team Wham! on achieving an incredible piece of Official Chart history this week,” said Martin Talbot, chief executive, Official Charts. “It is incredible to think that four years ago Last Christmas was the biggest-selling single never to hit No.1 – then it finally hit the top in January 2021, finally became a Christmas No.1 in December 2023 and is now the first consecutive Christmas No 1 in history, with nine weeks at the summit (in five separate runs) to its name. It is surely, undeniably, established now as the British Nation’s all-time favourite Christmas song.
“Also, of course, we should all take our caps off to Sabrina Carpenter too, whose Short N’ Sweet album tops off what has been an incredible year for her to become the Official Christmas No.1 album.”
As revealed in Alan Jones’ analysis, there are seven Christmas/winter songs in the Top 10, 16 in the Top 20, 29 in the Top 40 and 42 in the Top 75 (excluding Holiday Road, Stay Another Day and Stick Season). Last Christmas, there were eight Christmas/winter songs in the Top 10, 16 in the Top 20, 32 in the Top 40 and 45 in the Top 75.
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