Christmas number one: Wham! reaches Christmas number one for the second time in a row – watch live

Paul Glynn
Entertainment and Arts Reporter

image source, PA Media

So Wham! win again, but why and how exactly?

Well, firstly, the track has benefited from being heavily promoted by streaming services like Spotify, Apple and Amazon in their top Christmas playlists – the ones you’ve been hearing in stores since mid-October, in a thinly veiled attempt to cash in precious pennies to grab your bags.

To mark its 40th anniversary, the song was reissued on CD and 12-inch vinyl in the final week of the chart run, giving it even more of a boost with gift purchases.

Physical or download sales count much more than streams in the table in the digital age.

Chart expert James Masterson recently told the BBC that Wham! last year Wham! “filled the void” left by sausage roll enthusiast LadBaby – a five-time winner between 2018 and 2022 – who did not release a track.

“Last Christmas” “won across the board,” he said, because it was at the top of all Christmas playlists and played “the same old songs in pretty much the same order every year.”

This year it was at least boosted further by a new song from Gracie Abrams as well as another enduring Christmas hit from Mariah Carey, but still became the most streamed (12.6 million times) and physically purchased song of the week in the UK.

Last Christmas is so popular that it spawned its own game called Whamageddon, in which players try to get through from December 1st to the end of Christmas Eve without hearing the song.

Anyone who listens to today’s chart show is now out of the race. All the best to everyone who is still in the race.