(Credits: Far Out / Record Sleeve / YouTube Still)
Thu 25 December 2025 9:00, UK
A previously underrated Christmas gem, Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ was a sleeper hit created by George Michael in a moment of pure creative instinct.
Before 2023, ‘Last Christmas’ was what Michael’s bandmate Andrew Ridgeley called the “perennial bridesmaid”. For decades, the duo were quietly frustrated that their song lost the 1984 Christmas chart battle to Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. Remarkably, it took 39 years for their dream to come true when ‘Last Christmas’ finally hit number one. Its slow climb to the top was shaped by timing, changing tastes, and the fact that it debuted in a year when everyone seemed to be chasing the ultimate Christmas anthem.
Looking back, though, this struggle doesn’t really make any sense. After all, of all the classics on rotation every festive season, ‘Last Christmas’ is one of the better efforts, a glimpse of complete and utter genius from a musical visionary whose life was cut far too short. A song that ticks all the boxes when it comes to the emotional mapping of the Christmas period, it does well to capture the spirit of hope in all of us, as well as acknowledging the heartache of having to heal and move on when you’re still at the threshold of longing.
Michael gets these themes across in the lyrics, particularly the second verse, when the singer puts forward his anguish in the most poetic way possible: “A crowded room, friends with tired eyes / I’m hiding from you and your soul of ice / My God, I thought you were someone to rely on / Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on / A face on a lover with a fire in his heart / A man undercover, but you tore him apart / Now I’ve found a real love, you’ll never fool me again”.
It’s powerful stuff, and words that must’ve only come from someone who truly knows the frustration of having been vulnerable in a relationship that turned out to be a mistake. Perhaps that’s why Michael seemingly didn’t need to mull over the song too much, putting pen to paper at a moment’s notice when inspiration struck one night while he was sitting watching television with Ridgeley.
“We’d had a bite to eat and were sitting together relaxing with the television on in the background when, almost unnoticed, George disappeared upstairs for an hour or so,” Ridgeley told The Main on Sunday in 2017. “When he came back down, such was his excitement, it was as if he had discovered gold which, in a sense, he had”.
George Michael in the ‘Last Christmas’ Music video – 1984 (Credits: FO / Record Sleeve / YouTube Still)
He then recalled how the pair went into his old bedroom, the one they had “spent hours as kids recording pastiches of radio shows and jingles”, where he played him the introduction and chorus to ‘Last Christmas’.
“It was a moment of wonder,” Ridgley continued, “George had performed musical alchemy, distilling the essence of Christmas into music. Adding a lyric which told the tale of betrayed love was a masterstroke and, as he did so often, he touched hearts.”
That is, in essence, the central selling point of the song. Of course, there is also the sonic and melodic elements that make it good, too, adding in that distinctive and familiar flavouring that feels both nostalgic and fresh every single time. However, Michael’s underlying sting can also be felt within the song, breaking up an otherwise jarring streak of Christmas tunes that push too hard to be joyful and artificial when that’s not all that Christmas is about.
In fact, ‘Last Christmas’ is filled with heartbreak, but it’s also naturally uplifting, evoking the typical hope-filled rumination that many of us feel come Christmas time. At the end of the year, it’s only natural to want to draw a line under the things that seemingly tore us apart, but not before we wallow in it one more time, and lean into the thistles of a love that ended in us picking up the pieces of our broken hearts.
Related Topics