This year marks 40 years since the publication of one of the most established Christmas pop classics in the last decade: ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham! Its anniversary coincides with that of ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ by Band Aid, the collective charity single with which it competed and which would end up taking away the Christmas number 1 in the United Kingdom that distant 1984.
The BBC has recently broadcast two documentaries in which it recalls the development of both songs. The one dedicated to Band Aid rescues unpublished images of the recording, in which George (who also participated in the song) is seen interviewed by Paula Yates, to whom he explains that they are going to release ‘Last Christmas’ soon and that he hopes it will be his next number 1… he even sings the song a little. Ironically George arrived at the studio directly from Switzerland, where the filming of the ‘Last Christmas’ video clip had concluded the day before.
A few weeks later it would be known that Wham! It would not reach No. 1 in the United Kingdom, a type of hit that in that country has always been a highly desired and symbolic feat for its artists. In 1984 George and Andrew already had two number 1s (‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ and ‘Freedom’), as well as a third by George alone (‘Careless Whisper’), so under normal circumstances ‘Last Christmas ‘I would have reached the top. Now we know that that No. 2 from 1984 would finally become a Christmas No. 1 in 2023.
The efforts of George Michael’s fans undoubtedly had a hand in last year’s achievement, but the ultimate reason for that triumph—and for the general global ubiquity of ‘Last Christmas’ every Christmas—is simply that in In the last decade it has gradually established itself as a classic, accepted and loved by almost everyone. Time has placed this song in the place it deserved in the Olympus of Christmas pop, and even beyond: last year I witnessed my son’s class singing the song at his school’s Christmas festival, where it sounded completely natural. in the middle of more traditional Christmas carols. The audience present, of all generations, sang and applauded: ‘Last Christmas’ was already completely normalized in the traditional Christmas canon.
There is something tremendously timeless and beautiful about the melody that George Michael composed for this to happen 40 years later. Of course, there are other reasons to explain this legacy: such as its cinematic and endearing video clip, which once 1984 ended, MTV and other music video channels returned to recover every new year during the month of December, perpetuating the song in the ears and eyes of a generation of pop-loving teenagers (mine) year after year for the rest of the 80s. Or its inclusion on the highly influential compilation ‘Now! The Christmas Album’, released in 1985 and which sold millions of copies in the UK, with the consequent impact on Christmas listening in the following decades in the homes of that country (at a time when it was practically the only Christmas compilation of pop). But none of this in itself is enough to go down in history (who remembers ‘Thank God It’s Christmas’ by Queen, also charting in 1984, and also included on ‘Now! The Christmas Album’? Indeed, no one ).
That is why the true secret of the legacy of ‘Last Christmas’ is the immense quality of the song and its eternal and tremendously melancholic melody. In fact, there have already been many detailed analyzes of what is special about it: one of the best was made in 2020 by French pianist Chilly Gonzales on the ‘Switched on Pop’ podcast, where he explained the benefits of the song, highlighting the simplicity of the song. sequence of chords (simply four, looped equally in verses and choruses), or the fascinating fact that the song begins with two choruses and an instrumental motif, and the verse does not reach until a minute has passed. He also exposed the unusual nature of the melodic construction of these elements, because the chorus and instrumental motif have a stable melody, but the verses are pure “ad lib” that vary depending on how George decides to sing the lyrics, an approach that Gonzales related to operatic technique. of the “recitative”.
Certainly that almost random aspect of the verses is fascinating, especially because of the amount of great improvised melodies that Michael was able to extract from the lyrics: verses like “once bitten, twice shy”, “now I know how fool I’ve been ” or “tell me, baby, do you recognize me?”, are hooks as good as those in the chorus itself, completely singable despite sounding only once in the entire song.
There are more factors, such as the melancholic lyrics of heartbreak that contrast with music that subjects you to delicious swings of happiness and sorrow, or simply Michael’s impressive vocal performance. But I personally have my own theory about what makes ‘Last Christmas’ so seductive and touch the hearts of so many people, and that’s the fact that it’s technically a “hi-fi demo.” George’s intention when recording it was to maintain the spirit of that 4-track demo that he created one Sunday afternoon at his house, while Andrew was watching a game on TV (as reported in the BBC docu). With his record company willing to grant them whatever they asked for after obtaining three number 1s, George got what he wanted, which was to be able to record the song alone, in the style of the demo, but in a higher quality studio. He programmed the drum machine himself (the warm and legendary LinnDrum), and recorded all the keyboards with a single Roland Juno 60. Even the doubt that he harbored until recently about the electric bass line is dispelled in the documentary by Andrew Ridgeley, stating that George recorded it too.
All of this occurred under the watchful eye of sound engineer Chris Porter, who in the documentary talks about George at the peak of his powers, knowing exactly what he wanted for the song, and highlights how crucial it was for George to work “without intermediaries.” ”. This is how he managed to maintain the spirit of the original demo, which is something that so often dies when artists enter a studio and lose control of their own song, or of the sound that will result from the recording. A recording that in this case left room for a surprisingly simple arrangement, for a whimsical and unpredictable structure, for some phenomenal programmed rolls that are so absolutely what a drummer would NEVER do, or for that masterful voice, yes, but at the same time she made her ad libs unchallenged by a producer obsessed with structure and predictability. The result was true magic captured in the magnetic layers of the master tape, and some of that, that preserved magic, undoubtedly resonates with listeners. It is something sincere, not artificial, that ends up being captured.
This way of working – without intermediaries or concessions – would give in the 80s some of the best songs by artists completely vindicated today, people like Prince or Kate Bush, and it is very striking that the song in which George Michael applied the same philosophy has ultimately been the most celebrated. A philosophy in which they were pioneers, anticipating the work of thousands of bedroom pop artists who would come later, even those who have – like George – access to million-dollar studios but who essentially make personal music without concessions or intermediaries: Billie Eilish is a good example, and in fact there is a very curious parallelism between ‘Last Christmas’ and one of their best songs this year, ‘Birds of a Feather’. Both songs share the same four chords, in constant sequence during verses and choruses, and in the song Billie accumulates more and more new melodic sections, very much in George’s ad lib style. With almost identical BPMs, they are two songs waiting to be sent together in a mash-up.
The success of songs like Billie’s in parallel to the growing popularity of ‘Last Christmas’ does not seem like a coincidence. History has simply caught up with George Michael’s musical merits, which we must remember were not always so praised by critics. In fact, the fairly widespread opinion has been dissipating in its first 20 years of life – and which we are quickly forgetting – that ‘Last Christmas’ was a kind of Christmas classic, but “kitsch” (Chilly Gonzales himself calls it that in the aforementioned podcast), especially for sounding so eighties because of its synthesizers. That you could enjoy but raising your eyebrow with the eternal irony of the 90s. In that sense, perhaps the first purely post-ironic version was that of Erlend Øye of the Kings of Convenience in 2002, although it surely still suffered from the imprint of “ authenticity” which gives a version with acoustic guitar and minor chords.
Luckily the arrival of an army of millennials and Gen Zers, who in their metamodernity do not practice that type of irony, and who have assimilated the sound of pop with synthesizers as something classic, timeless, and with value, would definitively destroy those outdated notions, dragging the rest of the world with them.
‘Last Christmas’ is all this and many things more. One last note, then, as an epilogue to say that the song leaves us another legacy on a musical level: that of a subgenre that we could call “melancholic Christmas synthpop.” A series of songs whose main weapon to evoke the tinsel, glitter and melancholy inherent to the holidays is the synthesizer. From the legendary ‘Anorak Christmas’ by Sally Shapiro to ‘So Cold You’re Hurting My Feelings’ by Caroline Polacheck, through the enormous ‘Merry Xmas’ by Dragonette or the vindictive ‘This Fucking Time of the Year’ by Charles Cave, nothing says “Christmas” like a good heartbreak song with the vaporous sounds of synth pop. This is also a direct and exclusive inheritance of the work with which George Michael will go down in history.
