{"id":325139,"date":"2025-12-19T18:59:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T18:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/325139\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T18:59:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T18:59:17","slug":"kylie-beats-wham-to-uk-christmas-number-one-shell-do-a-jigsaw-to-celebrate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/325139\/","title":{"rendered":"Kylie beats Wham! to UK Christmas number one – she’ll do a jigsaw to celebrate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wham! had been hoping to become the first act to top the Christmas chart three times with the same song. <\/p>\n

Last Christmas was famously denied the top spot when it was first released in 1984, due to the phenomenal success of Band Aid’s charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas?<\/p>\n

It finally reached the summit in 2023, thanks to a wave of goodwill and strong streaming numbers. It topped the chart again last year with a massive 12.6 million streams in Christmas week alone.<\/p>\n

Although Wham! were beaten by Kylie in the UK, Last Christmas has just topped Billboard’s global 200 for the first time, external<\/a> – meaning it’s the number one song in the world.<\/p>\n

BBC Radio 1’s Jack Saunders, who presents the UK chart show, attributed the song’s enduring popularity to its message.<\/p>\n

“It’s a fantastic pop song,” he said, “but it also captures the true heart and soul of what Christmas means to people. It’s family coming together, it’s reigniting friendships, it’s community.<\/p>\n

“When you hear Wham! on the radio, you think, oh yeah we are all in this together, this is our song.”<\/p>\n

Other songs in the running for this year’s Christmas number one included Together For Palestine’s charity single, Lullaby, which is raising funds for aid for people in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Based on the traditional Palestinian folk song Yamma Mwel El Hawa (Mama, Sing to the Wind), it features new lyrics by Peter Gabriel and was recorded by a group of Palestinian artists alongside British stars like Neneh Cherry, Celeste and Dan from Bastille.<\/p>\n

“To me, the Lullaby will always be number one,” said Nai Barghouti, who features on the track.<\/p>\n

“I am beyond proud of and humbled by the overwhelming support that we have received globally. Thank you to each and every one of you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wham! had been hoping to become the first act to top the Christmas chart three times with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-325139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}