40 years of “Last Christmas”: this is how Wham! they created a phenomenon
For a few years now, a game has been popular on social media, invented in 2010 by some Danish kids but which only recently became trendy, called Whamageddonportmanteau between the name of the English band and the biblical word “Armageddon”. It consists in being able to avoid listening to “Last Christmas” by Wham!: the loser must post the hashtag #whamageddon on their account. Few hits in the history of music boast the existence of competitions connected to them: further proof of how George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley’s 1984 hit has become, over the years, a real phenomenon, not only musical, but cultural in general This year we all risk losing Whamageddon sooner than expected.
Never like this Christmas is “Last Christmas” preparing to resonate everywhere: yes, because last December 3rd – the day the song was released, in 1984 -.the celebrations of the song’s fortieth anniversary have begun and will continue throughout the month with reissues, specials, documentaries and more.
The BBC documentary film
In the United Kingdom, anticipation is sky-high for the one-hour docu-film to be broadcast Saturday 14 December in prime time on BBC Two and BBC Music: “Wham! Last Christmas unwrapped”, presented by Sony Music Entertainment and produced by Blink Films, will tell the story of the genesis of a hit which forty years after its release is considered one of the greatest Christmas songs ever, with four billion audio streamings, one billion video views, six Platinum album wins in the UK and US. The documentary will move the hands of time back forty-one yearsto 1983, when George Michael went to visit his parents and, locking himself in the bedroom where he had spent his childhood, wrote the introduction and chorus of the song which he would then record in total solitude a few months later, in August 1984 , at Advision Studios in London.
Sony Music reissues
On the eve of the BBC special, Sony Music will ship a series of special collector’s releases to storeswhich can already be pre-ordered on the Wham! page. of the official website and which include various versions of the hit, including the unreleased recording of a version of “Last Christmas” performed by George Michael at Wembley in 2006: ranging from a vinyl Picture disc with photos of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley printed on the side a and b to the single CD, passing through the single printed on black vinyl or on white vinyl, up to a limited edition zoetrope 12″ single which brings together all the versions in a special Christmas package.
The story of the song
When he wrote “Last Christmas” George Michael was 21 years old. The Wham! they had debuted two years earlier with “Wham Rap! (Enjoy what you do)”. For critics, the duo composed of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley was second-class, if not second-class rubbish: a project constructed on the drawing board, destined to soon end up in oblivion. “Last Christmas” was born precisely as a reaction to those prejudices: Michael wanted to disprove the criticism by trying to write more authorial songs. In the lyrics of the song, Christmas is only the backdrop to the story told by the British singer-songwriter, the end of a relationship: “Last Christmas I gave you my heart, but the next day you threw it away / this year, to avoid crying, I will give it to someone special.”
The pop star had not yet come out (she will do so in 1998, fourteen years after “Last Christmas”): in the video, which was shot hastily in Saas-Fee, a ski resort in Switzerland, the person to whom the song is dedicated hit is a girl, the model Katy Hill, who at the time was engaged to the Greek composer Vangelis. .In the BBC special there will also be a reunion of the cast of the video clips, directed by Andrew Morahanas well as contributions from artists such as Mary J. Blige, Bob Geldof, Neil Tennant and Sam Smith, who celebrate the song’s legacy: “It is a privilege after forty years to have the opportunity to celebrate the wonderful and lasting musical homage to the Wham Christmas! and I am thrilled to present this joyous and touching tribute,” says Ridgeley, now 61. In reality the latter had a very marginal role in “Last Christmas”.
George Michael’s solo career was effectively born with “Last Christmas”.
Michael, who had already taken creative control of the duo, in the recording studio performed, played and produced the song completely independently, playing a LinnDrum drum machine and a Roland Juno-60 synthesizeradmitting only the sound engineer Chris Porter and two assistants, Paul Gommersal and Richard Moakes, into the room.
The voice of the singer-songwriter, who passed away prematurely in 2016 on Christmas Day, will live on through recordings and archive footage: “Christmas was a special time of year for George and Christmas songs were a special type of song for him too and it is which is why he considered writing a Christmas classic one of the great successes of his career. .Only he will ever know exactly what inspired him to reach such dizzying heights, but his songwriting genius led him to distill the quintessential essence of Christmas into a song whose breadth of appeal spans generations.”Ridgeley insists. While George Michael Entertainment, which manages the pop star’s legacy, underlines how “Last Christmas” is “a timeless holiday classic” and how it occupies “a place among the greatest Christmas songs ever written, inspiring new generations today as it did forty years ago”. Released on 3 December 1984 as a double-side with “Everything she wants”, “Last Christmas” stopped at number two in the UK Christmas week’s best-selling singles chart that year, overtaken by “Do they know it’s Christmas” by the all-star Band Aid (which also featured Michael himself). “Last Christmas” will only reach the top of the British charts on January 1, 2021, thirty-six years after its release.
