Five Weeks at No. 2

In December 1984, Wham!'s “Last Christmas” spent five weeks at No. 2 in Britain. The record above it was Band Aid's “Do They Know It's Christmas?” One of the singers on Band Aid was George Michael, who had written “Last Christmas” specifically to be the Christmas No. 1.

He gave his royalties to the same cause and lost the race gracefully. “Last Christmas” did not reach No. 1 in Britain until January 1, 2021, and did not win the Christmas No. 1 until 2023. George Michael had died seven years earlier, on Christmas Day.

An Hour Upstairs

The goal came first, then the song. “He wanted a definitive Wham! Christmas offering,” Andrew Ridgeley told American Songwriter in 2024. “A Christmas number one was what George wanted.”

Ridgeley remembers exactly where it happened. “We were killing time around his mom and dad's house,” he said. “It was a Sunday afternoon, and the soccer was on TV, and George disappeared upstairs.” Michael had a small Fostex four-track cassette recorder in his childhood bedroom. About an hour later he came back down: “Andy, Andy, you gotta come upstairs and listen to this.”

Michael already had a basic keyboard part, a drum track and much of the verse and chorus. In Netflix's 2023 documentary Wham!, he is heard recalling what he told Ridgeley next: “We're going to have four number ones this year. And we're going to have a Christmas number one and I've just written it.”

The two men remembered the date differently. Ridgeley's book places it in the summer of 1984. Michael, in a 1986 Smash Hits yearbook, said he had written it “the previous February.” Either way, Wham! already had a huge year underway: “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” “Freedom” and Michael's solo “Careless Whisper” all reached No. 1 in 1984.

A One-Man Session in August

Michael recorded the finished track at Advision Studios in London in August 1984, with Christmas decorations up in the middle of a British summer. He made it almost entirely alone. According to MusicRadar, he programmed the drums on a LinnDrum and played the other parts on a single Roland Juno-60 synthesizer, plus sleigh bells. Wham!'s regular bassist Deon Estus was the only other musician.

For the video, Wham! and a crowd of friends went to Saas-Fee in the Swiss Alps in late November. “Behind the scenes it was a riotous affair,” Ridgeley wrote in his memoir, Wham!, George and Me. The friends playing extras were mostly excited about the free holiday, and the drinks on camera were real. It was the last time Michael appeared clean-shaven before his solo career.

Wham! released it as a double A-side with “Everything She Wants” in December. With no novelty records in sight, Michael thought the race was already won. “As Christmas approached, there weren't any novelty records out or anything,” he recalled, “and I was thinking, ‘I can't believe it. There's no real competition around.’”

When Bob Geldof Came Calling

The competition arrived just weeks before Christmas. Bob Geldof and Midge Ure wrote “Do They Know It's Christmas?” to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia, and recorded it in a single day at Sarm West Studios in London with dozens of Britain's biggest pop stars. Michael was one of 37 credited singers and sang a line in the first verse.

He had not realized how big it would be. “Most people turned up that day were really surprised when they saw all the cameras and everything,” he said. Then he heard the finished record. “With all these people on it, I really don't see how we stand a chance.”

In the BBC documentary about the session, Paula Yates asked him about his own single. Michael called Band Aid “a major threat to our fourth number one,” then said he didn't mind which one got there. Hearing that clip played back later was the end of his hopes.

"I sat there, listening to it, in absolute terror. And I went back to the office the next day and said, ‘I think we'd better give up on our number one.’"

Outsold Two to One

Band Aid sold more than a million copies in its first week, December 7 to 13, 1984. It spent five weeks at No. 1, including Christmas, and raised more than £8 million. According to MusicRadar, it outsold “Last Christmas” two to one, holding Wham! at No. 2 for all five weeks.

Michael and Ridgeley did not complain. They gave all their royalties from “Last Christmas” and “Everything She Wants” to the same Ethiopian famine relief fund. In January the double A-side kept selling after Christmas, as DJs flipped to “Everything She Wants,” and it briefly finished above Band Aid. By then the No. 1 was gone.

There was one more setback. MusicRadar reports that the writers of Barry Manilow's “Can't Smile Without You” claimed “Last Christmas” copied their song. A musicologist ended the claim by listing dozens of earlier songs built on the same common chord sequence. Wham! went on to two more UK No. 1s before splitting, the last being their farewell single “The Edge of Heaven” in 1986.

Thirty-Nine Years to Christmas No. 1

“Last Christmas” became Britain's best-selling single never to reach No. 1, with 1.9 million copies sold. Once downloads began counting in 2007, it returned to the top 40 almost every winter, reaching No. 2 again in 2018. George Michael died on December 25, 2016, aged 53.

On January 1, 2021, the fourth anniversary of his death, it finally reached No. 1 on 9.2 million streams that week. It had taken 36 years, a record for the longest wait for a UK No. 1. It came just weeks after Mariah Carey's “All I Want for Christmas Is You” made the same climb. “It's a fitting tribute 2 George's songwriting genius,” Ridgeley posted, “and 1 of which he would've been immensely proud & utterly thrilled.”

The Christmas No. 1 itself took two more years. In 2022 the song reached No. 1 the weeks before and after Christmas but missed the Christmas chart. In 2023 it finally held the top spot through Christmas week. “George would be beside himself,” Ridgeley told the Official Charts Company. “It would be mission accomplished – that was the challenge and the goal he set for himself.”

America came round even later. “Last Christmas” first entered the Billboard Hot 100 in January 2017, weeks after Michael's death, and reached No. 2 in December 2025. It has also lent its name to a 2019 romantic comedy starring Emilia Clarke.