Last Christmas (2023, 2024, Wham!)

I know we’ve already had one post of this song but I’d been saving my cover of Last Christmas until today as the Top 40 gets announced on a Friday afternoon so we found out who is Christmas number one for 2024.

Famously, Wham! missed out on the UK number one spot in 1984 as Bob Geldof had put together Band Aid for the charity song ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’, in which George Michael was one of the featured singers.
The song regularly re-entered the charts over the years, but following the death of Michael on Christmas Day 2016, fans have been vocal on social media to finally get the number one he always hoped for. It finally reached the top on January 1st 2021 but had to wait until 2023 to hold the Christmas title. And then made the headlines today by doing it again one year later, 40 years after its first release.

Somewhere in all this is a conversation about how streaming has killed the relevance of the charts, but I will indulge my own sentimentality for this song, for George and Wham!, and how I still remember the feel of the gatefold sleeve of the 7” single that 11 year old me played on repeat for weeks.

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another song i dont know.i lke the melody and the way you swibg t. the ukelele sounds good on it as well. i appreciate all the background you give on these songs.

Room for more than one cover version, especially of this song. It’s on my playlist for my evening walk getting my steps in. You do a lovely version here - that ukulele does fit quite well with this. I’m also enjoying the stories and, yeah, something so special about holding a single in your hand. I probably had more singles than albums at one time. Unfortunately, none of the singles survived - just about a dozen albums or so.

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You’d’ve made a good “DJ” - old radio career : ) lol! If you are writing in flow of thought, as you may “speak” - and can only suppose you are within your commentaries with these tracks - you’d spew good commentary between cue ups and have a great following.

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A lovely cover. You have been very successful in your UK number 1 researches. You have created a very nice Christmas mood.

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My parents stayed in my childhood home until just a couple of years ago when my dad died, so I unearthed a lot of old treasured records from the back of cupboards and in the attic when we cleared the house. Including my dad’s old original Buddy Holly records that made me want to learn the guitar when I first heard them aged about 10.
Got my record player set up at home now and love hearing that pop and crackle as the needle lands.

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Thank you, I thought it would be fun to try something different and hopefully give some love to some less well known songs

My friends and family are fed up with me spewing my commentary, I have a tendency to ramble on quite a bit! I see myself as a storyteller, they just roll their eyes, yawn and pretend to listen- all in good humour of course. I thought that at least with it written down here you can ignore it and just listen to the song if you choose :grinning:

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That is so cool. I’ve “stalked” my childhood home for years, even wrote a novel about a woman who bought her childhood home, moved in, and discovered all sorts of secrets about her family when she started digging around - lol! Ah, that pop and crackle. Sometimes I dig up old Apple loops that have that just to pretend…

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It’s an interesting dilemma, what you comment. And there’s lots of irony to it too (longer explanations!). I am glad you mention it and comment. As you likely know - it’s a bit rare.

I would remind certain folks in my life that what irritates you is what you have often sought out that helped you. That’s TLTR and since you suffer the same, so to speak - I don’t need to explain, or example it (does no good anyway : ) ) hahhh.

However by watching for it (folks past the twitter character limits of response) I’ve found a few others here and there.

One person - that partnered on music over the years picked up on, how to say - “apologizing for explaining stuff to them”; however, concerning which they asked for it. They, with that sent a pic of an old fashion “Composition Book” that was what I was explaining, along with another - we three partnered in music for a while, several years. They said (and from another country, culture starved for relevant input I deduced)… said - I hear it as “love” and am very grateful for it. (It was certainly not “opinion” vs empirical tools to vet, use and self-develop).

We’re still friends. And, small world wound up coming to the US for University. Parents wound up knowing me; call me their/her “guru” hahhh… (not how I see myself, however, I get the meaning… it beats some other things some call “goras” over there : ) )

I try to reel myself in, as much as I can.

It comes from work - touching on the other post. The position I was in and still in many ways is - I write a “technical” report, Whitepaper, even, and would get dinged for brevity by the Techs, or the Core-dump by the Executives. “Summaries” are a standard format - however, email (no attachments) was their culture so, then got - 3 lines with, see below for further : ) with a dotted line. It satisfied both, but still got complaints. Fortunately I always had the authority to match the req’s of my job and then said - “seek assistance to do you job with this document as the guide”… or similar : ) lol!

Never would hear back after proper delegation : )

Eh, anyway… just going on a bit - I enjoy reading your content and now personal story. Wow, to me, you are indeed quite fortunate.

I have a “family” home in Germany (a post WW2 relocation as Sudeten Germans from CZECH) - and because of the post WW2 “civil-law” - impossible to really get into; but, not entirely the .gov’s fault. One day, as has happened with others… I’ll get a letter and it will be, to make this quick - a pennies on the dollar settlement after all there took their fees for “helping” us : ) omg… We couldn’t even get photo albums shipped - hard to believe, but oh so way TLTR to try to make sense of nonsense : )

Eh… still an okay memory - but yours - excellent for you!

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I want to read your novel! @sbs

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I did not know all this cool info about this song! I loved this song and other Wham hits in high school. You do a great job here!!

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Love the sound of your novel, is it published?

When we cleared out my parents farmhouse (they’d been there for 48 years so no small feat), I had to look at YouTube videos to work out how to open a safe! I had the codes for my dad’s gun cabinet and so once we sold the shotguns we just left it open, nothing else of too much value in there. Then my mum reminded me there was a floor safe under the carpet as well but no-one could find the code anywhere. We all had a good laugh for several days trying to guess what my dad had hidden in the floor- cash, a rare postage stamp worth millions, details of his secret family??? When we finally found the code weeks later there was much anticipation as everyone watched me open the floor to reveal…shotgun cartridges…oh the disappointment! Of course, we had already sold the guns so I took myself off to the local police station to hand them in, had a lot of paperwork to fill out (very different attitude in the UK to the USA). Many many stories in those walls, but no secrets!

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@JoeyCyclone and @SavvyAZ I’ve published several novels but for some reason that one remains in draft form. Hmmm… might have to polish it - lol!

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