{"id":346683,"date":"2025-12-15T12:16:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T12:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/346683\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T12:16:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T12:16:09","slug":"kylie-leads-three-way-race-for-christmas-number-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/346683\/","title":{"rendered":"Kylie leads three-way race for Christmas number one"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pop star Kylie Minogue is leading a three-way race for this year’s Christmas number one, says the Official Charts Company.<\/p>\n

Her festive single XMAS is currently 7,000 units ahead of the nearest competitor, Wham’s Last Christmas – which has topped the charts for the last two years.<\/p>\n

In third place, and only 231 sales behind Wham, is the charity single Lullaby, by Together For Palestine – a supergroup featuring Bastille’s Dan Smith, Celeste, Neneh Cherry, Nadine Shah, Brian Eno and Little Mix’s Leigh-Anne Pinnock, amongst others.<\/p>\n

If Kylie maintains her lead, XMAS would become her first number one single since Slow in 2003. “I think I’d cry,” she told BBC News.<\/p>\n

“It’s been an unbelievable year, so that would be the cherry on top.”<\/p>\n

Kylie’s song, which she performed on Strictly Come Dancing on Sunday night, comes complete with a dance routine spelling out the letters X-M-A-S, making it a yuletide YMCA.<\/p>\n

More importantly in chart terms, it’s an Amazon exclusive. That means it’s prominently placed on the playlists you hear when you ask Amazon-branded smart speakers to play Christmas music – and every one of those streams counts towards the chart.<\/p>\n

Kylie’s Christmas jigsaw<\/p>\n

XMAS is a brand new song, recorded for the 10th anniversary edition of the star’s Kylie Christmas album, which topped the album charts last week.<\/p>\n

It dates back to the original recording sessions, but never quite made the cut. Kylie told the BBC it had always bothered her that the song wasn’t finished.<\/p>\n

“It’s not something I’ve constantly thought about, but it’s had a place in my mind.<\/p>\n

“As the years went by, I kept thinking someone else was going to release a song called Xmas – and it would have been so annoying that I didn’t get it done in time.<\/p>\n

“It’s the only song that’s ever lived with me this long.”<\/p>\n

However, it’s not the first time that Kylie’s been in the running for the festive top spot: In 1988, Especially For You was a close runner-up to Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine.<\/p>\n

However, no matter what happens, the star won’t be in the UK to celebrate.<\/p>\n

“I’m heading home,” she told BBC News. “I’m looking forward to spending time with my family and, you know, obsessing over a jigsaw with the cricket on.<\/p>\n

“That’s about the level I want to get to.”<\/p>\n

\"Andrew<\/p>\n

Last Christmas was denied the top spot in 1984 by Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas, and eventually rose to number one in 2021 [Getty Images]<\/p>\n

Wham’s Last Christmas is the current number one single; and it’s huge streaming numbers could allow the band to hold on to the top spot.<\/p>\n

If they do, Last Christmas will make history as the first ever song to reach Christmas number one three times.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the UK’s best-selling song of the weekend was Together For Palestine’s charity single, which will raise funds for aid for people in Gaza.<\/p>\n

It’s based on the traditional Palestinian folk song Yamma Mwel El Hawa (Mama, Sing to the Wind), with new English lyrics written by Peter Gabriel.<\/p>\n

“The song’s really been a part of my life since an early age,” says Nai Barghouti, a Palestinian singer who features on the track.<\/p>\n

“I remember recording it for the first time when I was 11 years old, and it’s been going a lot of places with me since then.<\/p>\n

“The lyrics are always a strong confirmation of what it means to be Palestinian – a never-ending sense of resilience, defiance, beauty, dignity and hope.”<\/p>\n

Getting into the Christmas chart, she says, would represent “a small beam of light in such darkness”.<\/p>\n

The song has sold just under 10,000 copies so far according to Official Charts Company data. However, it has yet to make Spotify’s Top 100 – which means it may fall down the rankings as the week progresses and streams for other contenders accumulate.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Fairytale of New York is another perennial favourite [Getty Images]<\/p>\n

Those songs include Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You (currently predicted to land at number four) and The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale of New York (which is at five).<\/p>\n

Fairytale is the third best-selling single of the week thanks to a limited-edition zoetrope vinyl, which was released on Friday.<\/p>\n

The song has famously achieved every position in the Top 20 except for number one; and strong streaming numbers could help it leapfrog the competition.<\/p>\n

Less than 10,000 “sales” separate the top five, according to the Official Charts Company.<\/p>\n

“However, with this also being preliminary data only, expect the picture to evolve as more streaming data arrives throughout the week.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pop star Kylie Minogue is leading a three-way race for this year’s Christmas number one, says the Official…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346684,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[20233,49,48,10446,131270,75,3484,86742,151065,341,151068,151064,151067,151066],"class_list":{"0":"post-346683","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-brian-eno","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-christmas","12":"tag-christmas-music","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-getty-images","15":"tag-kylie-minogue","16":"tag-last-christmas","17":"tag-music","18":"tag-neneh-cherry","19":"tag-official-charts-company","20":"tag-together-for-palestine","21":"tag-xmas"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}