The moment George Michael lost his Christmas number one: “I sat there in absolute terror”
As far as George Michael was concerned, ‘Last Christmas’ was always meant to be a number one.
In 1984, Michael noticed what many others saw at the time: that there wasn’t much competition when it came to Christmas tunes, and no one seemed to be all that bothered about it either. Looking back, this is especially surprising because that year is often seen as the pinnacle of festive tunes, but at the time, it was anything but.
Michael would also be involved in Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, but he hadn’t really considered it to be anything close to competition at first, especially as he also hadn’t really known the extent of what he was getting into until it was too late. By which point it was clear that Band Aid ticked every box to ensure its success, from rounding up all the biggest names in music to including a melody that people actually wanted to sing along to. It also had the emotional hook, encouraging people to up the sales so they felt more satisfied that they were doing their bit during the festive season.
And so, Michael more than had his work cut out for him that year. He’d initially come up with ‘Last Christmas’ one night while idly watching television with his Wham! musical partner, Andrew Ridgeley. Ridgeley later recalled a strange moment when Michael left the room, went upstairs, and came down a little while later with the first verse and the chorus.
Ridgeley, of course, bought into the idea immediately, and Michael also knew they were onto something great – he just thought that his number one dream would come true that year, not 39 years later. In fact, Michael hadn’t even considered the Band Aid project to be “a big deal” until he showed up at the studio and got a sense that maybe the competition was tougher than he thought.
“That was a very weird time in some ways,” Michael recalled in ‘A Year in the Life of Wham!’ from 1986’s Smash Hits Yearbook. “I’d written our Christmas single ‘Last Christmas’ the previous February, and as far as I was concerned, it was a number one. Then, as Christmas approached, there weren’t any novelty records out or anything, and I was thinking, ‘I can’t believe it. There’s no real competition around.’”
He also reflected on his involvement in Band Aid, saying that “most people turned up that day were really surprised when they saw all the cameras and everything,” and that it wasn’t until then that he “realised what was really going on… I was totally shocked by the whole thing. And then I heard it, and I thought, oh well, with all these people on it, I really don’t see how we stand a chance.”
He said that the final nail in the coffin came when he heard a soundbite of him flippantly admitting he doesn’t care which song goes to number one because he’s on both tracks. “I sat there, listening to it, in absolute terror,” he added. “And I went back to the office the next day and said, ‘I think we’d better give up on our number one.’”
Unbeknownst to Michael, ‘Last Christmas’ would finally have its moment in 2023 when it became the Christmas number one for the very first time. One of the best-selling singles to not reach the spot sooner, ‘Last Christmas’ is one of the biggest sleeper hits in history, one that Ridgeley later called a “perennial bridesmaid” that should have earned the spot far sooner.
However, as we now know, its setback was a mixture of timing, changing tastes, and the fact that it emerged during a year when classic festive tunes seemed to be ten a penny. At least now it’s getting the attention that it deserves, with many even claiming it to be the best Christmas song ever written, one that ticks more boxes than any other ever could, even ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’.
