I Review Every UK Christmas #1

I find myself faced with an awkward choice this year. 'Tisn't really the season to provide some sort of low-level support for the playlist-military complex while despairing at some poor intern's attempt to make a coherent musical experience out of a requirement there be at least 23 awful brushed-drum Michael Bublé 1950s pastiches present, and next year I'll probably be reduced to "25 AI Christmas songs I was forced to consume from the mandatory slop pipe" along with everyone else who doesn't have a billion dollars or two to their name.

If that sounds like a bleak opening to a tradition of light-heartedly skewering festive songs then yeah, indeed - fuck the 2020s and the nonce-preserving wave of populism they rode in on.

But there's perhaps an interesting thought in that near future where MichLLM GenAIblé wafts a never-ending procedurally generated miasma of male singers interrupting their female counterparts in a concerningly sex pest-y manner toward our ears, and yet another person who turns out to be an awful being gets generational wealth off the back of it. 2025 is the year where, for the first time, an entirely AI-generated song topped the US country music chart.

The "moment the charts dies" is something which has happened so many times I think it would be fascinating to collate them all at some point - the first record with a synthesiser to top the charts (Chicory Tip, "Son Of My Father", 1972), the first overt fiddling with the figures to keep "God Save The Queen" off the top spot, the rise of Stock Aitken Waterman, the talent show popstars of the early 2000s, the end of physical sales, the inclusion of streaming figures... music made without any more human involvement than a bit of prompt engineering is only another death for something that was already dead in terms of cultural relevance the day Top of the Pops went off the air.

But still, here we are facing down yet another Death Of The Charts As We Know Them. So before the Christmas #1 becomes the preserve of some plastic-skinned nightmare universe equivalent of the Archies with seven fingers on one hand and none of the charm, I thought I would subject myself to this: review every human-created UK Christmas #1 from 1952 to 2024 and treat the past to some affectionate mockery.

I pick the most wonderful activities to fill my time, don't I?

1952: Al Martino - Here In My Heart

The first UK Christmas #1, and indeed the first UK #1 - the charts had only been going since mid-November and positions changed slowly in these early days. Sounds oddly like Thunderbirds disaster music for a moment before settling in to big strings and brushed drums. I know that drum thing usually haunts me throughout these Christmas playlist reviews but the difference here is... my word these guys could sing, with Martino belting this one out like no-one's told him acoustic recording was superseded quite a few years ago.

1953: Frankie Laine - Answer Me

And now we're into proper 1950s chart pop, a plodding rhythm and a faint whiff of the kind of sandwiches you're forced to invent when rationing is a thing. More powdered egg? Oh, I really couldn't, but if you insist.

1954: Winifred Atwell - Let's Have Another Party

Atwell's piano boogies were the Kylie of their time, this stuff got churned out like an absolute sausage factory and if you crossfade between them I'm not sure I could tell where one ends and another begins. By this point even the titles were referencing the fairly assembly-line nature of the things. Despite all this I'm not sure I particularly object to this one in isolation. If you consider Hilda Woodward was about 40 when this was current, you can see where Lieutenant Pigeon got it from.

1955: Dickie Valentine - Christmas Alphabet

The nice thing about doing this in chronological order is I'm going to get all the 1950s ones out of the way early and not have to worry about this style until at least the late 2010s. But also... the originals aren't anywhere near as offensive? There's a nasty kind of smugness which comes over the latter-day use of this style, whereas here it has a kind of appealing honesty to it.

1956: Johnnie Ray - Just Walkin' in the Rain

Oh, the brief craze for whistling records. There's a weird thing with '50s trad pop during the rise of rock'n'roll where it becomes less ambitious in scope and instrumentation, revealing just how simple it was underneath.

1957: Harry Belafonte - Mary's Boy Child

Wait, have the charts discovered the art of "foreshadowing"? Yes, I know we're all waiting for the 1970s for this one to come up again, but it's interesting to have a preview of what it's like played straight. The '50s stripping back its own sound is in full effect here, with parts of this almost a cappella were it not for a clarinet buried so deep in the mix I think it's losing a race with the tape hiss.

Someone should speed this up and give it a bit of a beat, that'd make it a right banger.

1958: Conway Twitty - It's Only Make Believe

Menacingly growled intro and an "oops, was I supposed to do that" moment from the guitarist break into the classic ba-ba-ba-ba slow rocker, the kind of thing film directors use when they want you to be very aware this is the mid '50s, just in case you see the old cars with chrome and huge tail fins and assume it's 1980s Cuba or something.

1959: Emile Ford and the Checkmates - What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For?

A single I once described as "rollicking" and I stand by that.

1960: Cliff Richard and The Shadows - I Love You

IN CASE OF SONIC ATTACK ON YOUR... oh wait, this is with the Shadows and it's still in that goofy "British Elvis, but also really not" phase. Hank Marvin gives us some great whatever it is that Hank Marvin does, and Cliff is bearable I guess.

1961: Danny Williams - Moon River

Ah, Breakfast at Tiffany's. I don't really have anything bad to say here, but I still got about halfway through before switching to Greyhound's 1972 reggae version. That might say more about me than anything else.

1962: Elvis Presley - Return to Sender

Elvis' infectiously bouncy single is the one everyone apparently wants for Christmas '62, and I'm not sure I'd argue with them. While I will still die a futile and pointless death on the hill that best Elvis is gaudy post comeback gig International Hotel Elvis, this is a great pop record.

1963: The Beatles - I Want to Hold Your Hand

What else were you expecting from 1963? So deeply associated with early Beatlemania I find it odd to listen to without crowds of screaming fans dubbed over the top. This is the sound nearly everyone in the industry dismissed with well-informed reasoning as dated guitar noise, and then the public put a wrecking ball through everything by liking it.

1964: The Beatles - I Feel Fine

It's going to be a pretty consistent story through the mid '60s as we speedrun the evolution of the Beatles. A year on and the straightforward rock'n'roll is supplemented by the boys accidentally discovering feedback, an itchy electro-acoustic guitar riff and George Harrison with the Gretsch Tennessean that would define their circa-'65 sound. Despite this, the back half is still clearly in that simple boy-meets-girl, boy-likes-girl rock'n'roll tradition.

1965: The Beatles - Day Tripper b/w We Can Work It Out

And with a little application of the Christmas skip trick, only one paragraph later the Beatles have fully reached the point at which they sound like "The Beatles" rather than just another rock'n'roll band. In doing so, they also set a record for consecutive Christmas #1s that will take a long time to be equalled, before being beaten in the worst possible way.

1966: Tom Jones - Green, Green Grass of Home

I love this anomaly. Right slap at the end of 1966, the beginning of the First Psychedelic Era, interrupting a clean sweep of Beatles #1s, at the supposed "best point in the entire history of guitar music" is Tom Jones with this giant soup of a country cover.

And yes, I own an original. Of course I do. Because Treforest's loudest son is having one of his greatest moments on record. It's big, warm and comforting like one of those sofas you sink into and then can't really escape in any dignified manner.

1967: The Beatles - Hello, Goodbye

A sort of half-roll sideways onto the floor and we exit Tom's people-swallowing sofa to the Beatles back at #1. Plenty of hints we're at the end of the year of peak psychedelia and "Whiter Shade of Pale" having ruled the charts for most of summer. Trademark Beatles fake-out ending, while avoiding the worst excesses of tweeness that their late '60s singles can suffer from. The last Beatles Christmas #1, and also unfortunately the last "at least vaguely good" Christmas #1 of the '60s.

1968: The Scaffold - Lily the Pink

There seems to be some sort of human instinct to gravitate to this irksome beat (here, "Nellie the Elephant", probably others) which I don't have. Yeah, 1968, the year of Steppenwolf's fantastic album-only "Desperation", Hendrix in full flight, CCR's "Proud Mary" a few weeks away and nope, we're out in the cold looking for bomp-de-bomp rhythms and comedy lyrics.

Trivia note: features an absurd number of famous or would-go-on-to-be-famous musicians on the session.

1969: Rolf Harris - Two Little Boys

Oh dear. Insert some sort of concerning nostalgia here about growing up watching Jim'll Fix It and Rolf's Cartoon Club. Irksome, and perhaps a worrying portent of the kind of sickly, cloying "fings like what fings used to be" nostalgia which these days brings us Bublé wearing a Santa hat and sneaking drum brushes past the "Check Drum Brushes At Door" sign.

1970: Dave Edmunds - I Hear You Knocking

One of the oddities of the '60s is that not a single Christmas #1 was seasonal. I'm unsure if it had people running around going "these days, if you so much as say the word 'Christmas' you can be thrown in jail" and painting roundabouts about it. Maybe that's a modern thing. Edmunds carries on the non-Christmas theme here, while sounding uncannily like T. Rex.

1971: Benny Hill - Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)

Ah, the early '70s and its love of the novelty record. Fitting that Ernie and his bunfight top the charts as everyone unwraps their presents in 1971. I don't know if anyone got a bottle of gold top, I'm not really sure how the 1970s worked.

1972: Jimmy Osmond - Long Haired Lover From Liverpool

What was that thing I said about misplaced nostalgia for the horrifyingly twee and cloying? Osmondmania dominated this period and nobody seemed to notice that the records are, almost without exception, somewhere between mediocre and awful depending on how young the featured Osmond was. (OK, maybe that weird point where they decided to be a rock band and did "Crazy Horses" was at least bizarre enough to be interesting)

I know there are all kinds of factors behind the weirdness of early '70s singles charts - Led Zeppelin had convinced everyone to buy albums instead, and the same falling prices which enabled that brought singles within the pocket money budget of a whole generation of teenyboppers - but even if the buyers were young and not possessed of stellar critical faculties I still find it hard to engage with the sheer mawkishness of the decade. But then I consider that the people who bought this as tweens are probably outside right now cable-tying an upside-down Union Jack halfway up a lamp post and I'm starting to think the answer is "leaded petrol".

1973: Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

And then the 1970s Christmas chart battles begin. We've not had a seasonal record since 1957's "Mary's Boy Child" and suddenly glam rock's royalty take it upon themselves to get Christmas lyrics on your turntable and playing out the credits on Top of the Pops.

You know, you can take your Mariah Carey memes and your Whamageddon and whatever else becomes a Christmas trend (providing it's not any more of that horrible sausage roll business) but... c'mon, Slade, it's the best one innit? Or at least the most Slade, which I'm taking as functionally equivalent when talking about Christmas records. They knew what they needed to do, they went in and did it, and it's only slightly unfortunate they made all the cameras go weird by gluing reflective things to a hat.

1974: Mud - Lonely This Christmas

Les Gray's "Elvis Impersonator Village Hall" era is an oddity to behold and gives us one of the more enduring entries in the '70s Christmas song canon. There's a sweetness and home-made charm to it.

1975: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

The short run of Christmas-themed records gets broken by the sound of ballet being brought to the masses. A track considered unsaleable as a single from a band who had been singing about ogres and Richard Dadd paintings only a year ago, and now it's breaking records and establishing the promo video as a form of art with the help of a few infinite mirror effects.

1976: Johnny Mathis - When A Child Is Born

From the year I'd consider the nadir of the charts in the 20th century, a suitably squelchy ballad to wade through. Maybe that's a little unfair; the worst crime I can level at it is being of its time, and that would be hypocritical from a man who had a conversation about 3½-inch floppy disks the day before writing this.

1977: Wings - Mull of Kintyre b/w Girls' School

McCartney cheating his way into getting extra listening credit with that double A side here. "Mull" you probably know already, with its slow build and then the sudden run for cover when The Pipes arrive. Like so much later period McCartney it bends time in the way that you listen for 17 minutes and somehow the readout is still claiming you're only on minute two of five.

Yeah, screw that, let's talk about the b/w of this equation. It's... guys, it's a B side, isn't it? A generic rocker that I can feel unwinding from my memory as I listen to it, although I am getting quite old and that is now the case for the majority of things I experience. Where are my keys?

1978: Boney M - Mary's Boy Child

Say the line! Yeah, what we've been waiting for since 1957 is finally here. Gloriously naff in the way that only the late '70s can be, and yet somehow also better for it. If anything, hearing the way it's supposed to be underlines just how silly this version is. Certainly one of the best uses of "mmmm" as a lyric until the Crash Test Dummies came along.

1979: Pink Floyd - Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)

"We don't need no education", as quoted by many. You probably do, it turns out to be quite useful in many facets of life. Perhaps the darkest Christmas #1 yet, Roger Waters' rumination on how schools designed to beat you into being cogs in a factory machine will eventually turn you into a fascist. Hang on a moment there...

1980: St Winifred's School Choir - There's No One Quite Like Grandma

Actually this might be the darkest Christmas #1, on the basis you are never far away from having to consider that for it to be #1, a lot of people must have willingly purchased this. With their own money, that they earned. There wasn't even online shopping, they went into a record shop and in front of another actual human proudly declared that yes, this was the musical statement they wished to make for Christmas 1980.

Yes, the tail end of 1970s mawkishness collides with child exploitation to give us one of the worst Christmas #1s until someone realised that "haha, they changed the lyrics so it's about pastry items" was a viable exploit. I usually try to listen to these all the way through to give an opinion that's at least semi-informed but no, I've heard it before and I'm done after 20 seconds.

1981: The Human League - Don't You Want Me

The '80s recover with a None More Eighties chart-topper for Christmas '81. I still can't get over how wild those few experimental years of synth-pop were between here and Live Aid, easily as fertile as the psychedelic years of the '60s. The rinky-dink keyboards and feeling it's all one overloaded fuse away from falling apart is part of the charm.

1982: Renée and Renato - Save Your Love

Thirty years into the charts and we decide to revive "Here In My Heart", or at least a weird pastiche of the style. Written by the guy who did Metal Mickey, and a bizarre outlier even in a time which was still reeling from the recent memory of post-Grease 1950s nostalgia.

1983: The Flying Pickets - Only You

"Weird" may be the watchword for early '80s Christmas #1s, as we go from Renée and Renato to an a cappella cover of one of Yazoo's finest.

1984: Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas

And then the moment at which the early 1980s un-weirds itself. Yes, my standard comments about the joyously repetitive bass line, the half-inching of the middle eight from the Doctor Who theme and this being Structurally Ultravox all remain and you can review them at your leisure in playlist reviews passim between looking under rocks for nutritious bugs or whatever else we spend 2026 doing.

What I can make a note of here is that I will likely get to test my theory that only the original of this was ever any good and all the others felt like slightly bored retreads. I'm not sure "tingle with excitement" would be exactly the right phrase but I do find myself going a bit strange once I'm halfway through these things.

1985: Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

Yeah! CS-80, preset That Christmas Song Sound! Drag your Amstrad tower system down from the loft and thank Lord Sir Alan Of Sugar for his easy-to-use single plug design. Cube all of your food items and place cheese adjacent to pineapple, and other such popular 1980s pastimes.

Yeah, I know, you're just going to put on "Walk Of Life" next.

1986: Jackie Wilson - Reet Petite

Christmas #1 in the 1980s appears to be the result of some bizarre misfiling incident. Yeah, it's fine, it's an enjoyable enough slice of '50s rock'n'roll but what's it doing here? (Claymation-induced popularity aside)

1987: Pet Shop Boys - Always on my Mind

20 seconds into this and I have the urge to own a Mk2 Volkswagen Golf or possibly an E30 BMW 3-series. This is good, since 20 seconds into 1980's entry my main urge was to turn all audio emitters to OFF. Glorious lack of respect for the source material, gone at with the enthusiasm only '80s synth pop can bring. Like a million music room keyboards all tuned to "demo" at once. I think this is the biggest grin I've had since the Boneys M had their Christmas hit.

1988: Cliff Richard - Mistletoe and Wine

DO NOT WASTE TIME BLOCKING YOUR EARS
DO NOT WASTE TIME SEEKING A SOUNDPROOF SHELTER
TRY TO GET AS FAR AWAY FROM THE SONIC SOURCE AS POSSIBLE

1989: Band Aid II - Do They Know It's Christmas?

If I claim the middle eight to the original owes a debt to Peter Howell's Doctor Who theme, then I'm doubling down on that for the opening of this one.

I'm surprised the follow-up came so soon, and also how big a diversion this fifth year anniversary version is from the original. It sounds oddly like Janet Jackson, by which I mean the Bridge Zone music on Sonic for the Master System. I kinda respect them trying to do something new with it, although my point about the original and its "Ultravox song about rainy night-time streets in Prague... no wait, feeding Africa" vibes stands.

1990: Cliff Richard - Saviour's Day

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RESCUE FRIENDS, RELATIVES, LOVED ONES
YOU HAVE ONLY A FEW SECONDS TO ESCAPE
USE THOSE SECONDS SENSIBLY OR YOU WILL INEVITABLY DIE

1991: Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody b/w These Are The Days of Our Lives

It's... back? Not in Pog form, that's not due for a couple of years yet.

Of course this was a nation processing the recent death of Freddie Mercury, and on the flip is the poignant "These Are The Days of Our Lives". Written by Roger Taylor with the knowledge that his bandmate was very ill and the end was approaching, Freddie took it and turned it into a dedication to his fans. That he often put himself through severe pain to record these last few songs and especially the videos shows how much the man lived to perform.

That I write something so heavy after a running joke where I review every Cliff Richard record with the words to Hawkwind's "Sonic Attack" shows what a whiplash ride the world of pop music is.

1992: Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You

Breakfast at Tiffany's brought us "Moon River", The Bodyguard brings us this. We're into that world of soft '90s pop with its signature glissandos and soporific electric piano.

I suppose it's not the worst thing which could happen.

1993: Mr Blobby - Mr Blobby

This, on the other hand...

Yes, tidy-bearded Noel Edmonds gave us his House Party, and his House Party begat the latex-costumed monster, and Mr Blobby resulted in... EVENTS OCCURRING. Cribbing wilfully from the Addams Groove over the short theme which introduced the pink golem on TV, featuring hagiographic lyrics which hint strongly at Friday afternoon pub time coming like a jail on wheels, and employing keyboards with the kind of "whatever preset it's set to, that'll do" attitude Stock Aitken Waterman would have been proud of, the result is.

Yes, that's right, it is. Of all the things which exist, this is one of them.

1994: East 17 - Stay Another Day

From vaguely menacing sentient blancmanges to scientists at the forefront of highly dangerous baked potato research, it's Walthamstow's "actually we were quite happy just being known for the Bevis Frond" crew. Regulation standard 1990s boy band stuff. I think there was a point I made somewhere in my music writing that stuff like the Bay City Rollers, Showaddywaddy etc. wasn't really bad, it was just bland, and I think that point may as well be resurrected.

1995: Michael Jackson - Earth Song

The first entry in this list to manage the distinction of pissing off Jarvis Cocker, and that's a man who put "Ten Guitars" in his Desert Island Discs and had an opinion about the second side of "'Til the Band Comes In". I find myself agreeing with the skilful avoider of pavement turds there, the messianic act comes on a bit too strong and I'm not sure how often I'd want to listen to a song whose major lyrics are the noises people make when they're looking at fireworks.

1996: Spice Girls - 2 Become 1

It's another run! The absolute hugeness of the Spice Girls and "Girl Power!" in the late '90s is hard to overstate, to the point that as the largest of the pop groups they simply ate the other five thousand. Career kick-off "Wannabe" is too early to still be around for Christmas so we get this glissando-laden soft R'n'B one instead.

I didn't much care for them at the time, and if I was hoping for some kind of epiphany this isn't it.

1997: Spice Girls - Too Much

Neither is this. We open with the obligatory sparkly '90s glissando and more soft R'n'B. This is a bit weird for me as I always had them in my head as more of a brattish sort of pop, but then by this point pop marketing and production were so well-integrated that I wouldn't be surprised to find that a specific tempo and style of arrangement had been identified as the kind of thing which sells well as the weather gets cold and the nights draw in. There is something which sounds oddly warming about this.

1998: Spice Girls - Goodbye

Equalling the Fab Four's winning streak, although this time there's almost no detectable evolution between the three. They should have given Sporty Spice a Gretsch Tennessean in 1997, that would have livened things up.

1999: Westlife - I Have A Dream b/w Seasons in the Sun

Westlife at it on the double A sides, and I suddenly realise how weird it is that ABBA managed to be such a dominant force throughout the late '70s and yet never have a Christmas #1. I suppose this can act as some sort of substitute, given the '90s habit for doing covers which are just the original thing covered in so much glitter you're still sweeping it up from the corners six months later.

(Yes, I know that amount is technically just one elementary particle of glitter, a single glitton.)

We get a choir because hey, it worked for grandma, and then on to "Seasons in the Sun". It's... er... generic.

2000: Bob the Builder - Can We Fix It?

The 21st century opened with a weird couple of decades for Christmas singles. It's a time littered with novelty records, the painful inevitability of marketing machines grinding talent show winners to the top spot, and unexpected word-of-mouth hits - the last often as a reaction to the seemingly foregone conclusion of that year's X Factor winner being gifted the top slot.

It's therefore appropriate that 2000 gives us the theme song for the uncharacteristically enthusiastic tradesperson as Christmas #1, inspiring thousands of slightly bitter middle-aged men to create variations on a theme of, "can we tread wet rubble and brick dust into the good carpet? yes we can!" in response.

2001: Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman - Somethin' Stupid

Robbie was a strange one, wasn't he? Comes out of perhaps the most emblematic boy band of the early '90s, decides he wants to be taken as a serious rock star and does an unexpectedly decent job of that, then discovers a love of the Great American Songbook.

Actually competent, and weird to be doing one of these Christmas music reviews where the duet is by people who understand that this is supposed to be a co-operative activity and you don't just keep interrupting each other.

2002: Girls Aloud - Sound of the Underground

"This is the sound of the underground... MIND. THE GAP."

Right, good, now we've got the inevitable out of the way this is really un-Christmas, isn't it? Not that many of the entries have been particularly festive-themed apart from that brief stretch in the mid-'70s but this sounds like the kind of thing you'd play very loud on a fairground waltzer to disguise the sounds of the rattling bolts and make sure it's a big surprise for everyone when all the tubs ping off and go rolling away scattering groaning casualties everywhere.

I have such great mental images, you should try living in here.

2003: Michael Andrews and Gary Jules - Mad World

Oh yeah, Donnie Darko.

2004: Band Aid 20 - Do They Know It's Christmas?

OK. Hear me out on this one.

Band Aid 1984 sounds like an Ultravox song, and that is very era-appropriate. This one opens and I'm immediately thinking, "fuck. It's Coldplay." Alright, that's probably a bit of auto-suggestion from Chris Martin getting the opening lines in this one, but that soaring piano and the self-consciously big instrumental sections... it's them, isn't it? Then Justin Hawkins comes in on the guitar and ruins my ruminations because there's no way you're confusing that for anything other than the Darkness.

I'm not sure I'm changing my mind on the original being the best rendition on some fundamental level, since I quite like Ultravox, but I am finding a kind of respect for how they tried to keep these feeling current. The 20th anniversary edition does dissolve into a bit of a mess when it tries to sample things which were happening in 2004 that weren't Coldplay, but it's not quite the stale retread I'd always written these off as.

2005: Shayne Ward - That's My Goal

What does Shayne Ward yell at someone stealing his football equipment?

The beginning of the SyCo chart lockout and if it is possible to glissando with intent, the opening of this record does it. There's some things I won't blame Cowell for as it was really Messrs. Waterman, Aitken and Stock who perfected the idea of pop records as a framework you just slotted whoever was available into, and while having that didididididi beat ready to go on the shelves might have been their idea it was in a tradition dating back to '60s bubblegum pop and beyond. But the cynicism of laying bare the process and getting people to be so invested in what had previously happened on the quiet in an upstairs room in Knaphill that they went out and bought the record in droves, that I will lay at Simon's door.

Also possibly a dog turd, but only if I can get Jarvis Cocker to swerve round it on a bicycle.

2006: Leona Lewis - A Moment Like This

Actually, did they even go out to buy the records? This is getting into the download era, isn't it. Checkbox glissando and of course some "oooh-oooooh-ooh" because it's a female performer. Made more disconcerting when you realise who else uses these techniques to make songs appealing for people who are hearing them for the first time. That's right, it's Disney. Make it about snow and you could put this in Frozen.

Hang on, you don't even need to do that, there's that point where Anna falls in love with the guy who turns out to be a bit of a helmet. Sorry if I've just spoilt Frozen for you, but you've had a few years to watch it.

2007: Leon Jackson - When You Believe

And this one's even from an animated film, or at least the original is.

2008: Alexandra Burke - Hallelujah

The fourth consecutive X Factor Christmas #1 and the third to be a cover, this was the one which had your late middle-aged dads in uproar about how they dared to ruin Leonard Cohen's classic. Where were you when Kelly Clarkson needed defending, eh?

By far the least offensive of the X Factor entries so far. This may shock you given I'm about to trip the moisture damage sensor in my laptop with the amount of cynicism being dripped here, but... it does not feel like a record that was readied before there was even a performer to perform it. It feels like someone having a decent crack at covering "Hallelujah". About the biggest complaint I could make is that orchestra crashing in at 2:07 has all the subtlety of Vegas-era Elvis, and given my love of that gaudy edifice I'm not sure that's even a complaint.

2009: Rage Against the Machine - Killing in the Name

And then everyone got fed up with X Factor.

Somehow still slightly more Christmassy than "Sound of the Underground", the main thrust of the campaign here was about how the lyrics discuss politely indicating your disinclination to comply with a given instruction. One of those wonderful pop moments where everything you expect to happen takes a hard left and yeah, now Rage Against the Machine are on an equal standing with Slade when you're assembling your Christmas playlist.

2010: Matt Cardle - When We Collide

X Factor goes emo, and with those four words I upset everyone including the Biffy Clyro fans who previously had no particular stake in this situation. Before we spend several hours in a tense situation where phrases like "post-hardcore" get thrown around, I find it surprising how quickly these things have gone from interchangeable assembly-line pop to a much broader palette. I'm not sure there's even a glissando in this one.

2011: Military Wives with Gareth Malone - Wherever You Are

There is in this, though. In fact, the first 30 seconds is positively infested with glissandos. This is the point the big public campaigns start to win out over the X Factor machine and so we're going to see a few big charity records while down below there are concerted efforts to send everything from novelty records to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" to the top spot.

2012: The Justice Collective - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother

There's something which feels a trifle curmudgeonly about criticising a charity single, with the possible exception of the various Bands Aid which have earnt so much they can take it. So it's a relief for this to be one of those "what it says on the tin" moments - a faithful cover of the old '60s standard with a different celebrity taking each line. I'm maybe curmudgeoning with faint praise there.

2013: Sam Bailey - Skyscraper

X Factor are back, with a cover so close to the original I'm not sure I could tell them apart in an identity parade. Yeah, they also both sound kinda contemporary Disney. Let it go, indeed.

2014: Ben Haenow - Something I Need

AI cannot kill the Christmas charts, for it cannot kill that which is already dead.

2015: Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Choir - A Bridge Over You

The 2010s switch gets flipped back from "X Factor" to "charity single". Although maybe it gets stuck somewhere in the middle, given the choir had been runners-up on a talent show back in 2012. This was the second time they'd tried to get this record up the charts, the initial attempt in 2013 failing due to people purchasing it in the wrong week.

I'm still not sure what to make of a choral mash-up between "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "Fix You". It feels like one of those odd sandwich combinations you get handed by someone who is very, very high and I generally like the idea that I can get through these seasonal music reviews without needing to go away and roll up a spliff.

2016: Clean Bandit ft. Sean Paul and Anne-Marie - Rockabye

This record holds an odd achievement, which is to be the first "organic" Christmas #1 after thirteen years of things which are either public campaigns, charity singles, or X Factor. Which is a bit disconcerting as we emerge from something very artificial straight into the middle of the pop world circa 2016 wondering where the hell all this Jamaican dancehall has suddenly come from.

2017: Ed Sheeran - Perfect

I wonder if Ed considered when he was sequencing the single releases from "Divide" that this might be the last ever genuine Christmas #1 single. The last outpost where the Christmas #1 reflected the music people of the time consciously chose to listen to, before novelty downloads took over and then were themselves displaced by the sheer weight of Christmas playlists running through unheeded in the background of a million households.

This is the last point at which the Christmas #1 tells us something about the people of its time, unless we want to remind ourselves that the people of the late 2010s were perhaps a little too easily pleased by changing the lyrics of a song to be about baked goods.

I don't know if streaming killed the charts, and I've probably got a lot of writing about pop ahead before I can determine that for myself, but it definitely killed the Christmas #1.

2018: LadBaby - We Built This City

no.

2019: LadBaby - I Love Sausage Rolls

no.

2020: LadBaby - Don't Stop Me Eatin'

no.

2021: LadBaby - Sausage Rolls for Everyone

no.

2022: LadBaby - Food Aid

no.

2023: Wham! - Last Christmas
2024: Wham! - Last Christmas

A double entry for everyone in the country managing to Whamageddon themselves some time in mid-December and, well, I made some big point about things reflecting their time on the Ed Sheeran one but maybe this itself is also reflective of its time? I wouldn't be surprised to see this taken again by Wham!, or maybe Mariah Carey for a bit of variety, and probably the same again until 2027's surprise hit of "36 hours of discordant sounds for keeping the mutant squirrels away from your collection of hoarded cog fragments".

For me, AI music is less a horrifying ratcheting up toward the days where a tiny cadre of billionaires in private island bunkers will harvest us in a variety of gruesome ways to top up the enormous piles of soul sand with which they keep score, than it is a symptom of the way media is engaged with now - as little more than pleasant background. Playlists and second-screening and "lo-fi chill beats to study to" and all the rest leads to an inevitable point where if AI can do it well enough that you don't really notice unless you pay attention to it, then, well... AI is possibly cheaper and definitely far more biddable and prolific than humans so why not have it do the thing?

Wham! now have two consecutive Christmas #1s with the same song, a new record which had never been achieved before (Queen required a gap of 16 years and a double A side to achieve the same feat). That's not because everyone in the UK decided, "yes, I desire to listen to Wham!'s 1984 classic hit single, I shall purchase it forthwith". It's because they left a Christmas playlist on in the background and across all those playlists in aggregate, "Last Christmas" was the most common song.

Look at the rest of 2024's Christmas Top 10. "All I Want For Christmas Is You". "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree". Flipping "Jingle Bell Rock", a 1957 record so out of step with modern times the Official Charts Company still illustrate it with a picture of the 45rpm single. That thing now enters the Top 100 in November. "Last Christmas" is reliably in the Top 20 by the end of that same month. Most of it thanks to the kind of playlists I used to rip the piss out of sitting there as background music. It's not a huge stretch to imagine the 1950s-style filler tracks done by people you've never heard of being slowly replaced by three neural networks in a trenchcoat.

This is what makes me appreciate and maybe even love things like "Merry Xmas Everybody". Not only is that record what I am almost certainly too old to call a "banger song", it reflects what the people of 1973 were going out to record shops to buy. It's glam rock and big sideburns and ill-advised applications of tartan. Do I want to look at a chart and go, "well what I take from this is that nobody really cared about anything?" Yeah, I guess that's rhetorical and also it doesn't really matter either way, since we'll soon start caring about more important things like THAT DAMN SQUIRREL GETTIN' A HOLD OF MAH PRECIOUS COG FRAGMENTS.

Is that a bit of a downer ending for something which used to be about laughing at playlists bending under the implausible weight of too many Michael Bublé tracks and imploring people not to mess with the perfection that is "A Christmas Gift To You From Philles Records"? Maybe. Although I think all the others I was pretty drained after getting through the "you weren't supposed to listen this far" stage of a 75-song playlist so they probably ended in a pretty fed-up and (as I recall) often quite perfunctory manner.

Perhaps we should start a public campaign to get a Cliff Richard song to #1 this year, then I can go back and edit this to end on a "Sonic Attack" joke.