Meantime Wham! earn Christmas Number One spot with ‘Last Christmas’ after 39 years
Last week, a list was published of the biggest Christmas songs released so far in the 21st century. It was alarming to note just how many of the highest entries were covers or uninspired reimaginings of traditional Christmas classics.
Michael Buble’s nauseating Rat Pack renditions, two retreads of Band Aid, Lily Allen providing her take on a Keane song for a John Lewis advert, Kylie Minogue wrapping herself around Santa Baby – there’s hardly anything new.
Tomas Mazetti, 50, and his wife, Hannah, 33, have reportedly raised more than $62,000 to buy the rights to Wham!’s “Last Christmas” — so they can take it off the air for good.
If their dream comes true, the master recording would be dumped in a Finnish nuclear waste site, “where it’ll rest for at least 2 million years.”
Hannah said her hatred of the 1984 tinsel tune began 13 years ago when she worked in a cafe in Oxford, England, where her boss allegedly played the cheer-worm on repeat.
“I was studying English and worked extra to pay the bills. The owner of the cafe had planned for a super cozy holiday season and had his own-made CD with a number of ‘hits’ on it,” Hannah, a painter who lives in Sweden, recalled to SWNS.
“He was only in now and then, so he didn’t fully appreciate the agony the rest of the staff felt when ‘Last Christmas’ played for the 111th time of the working day.”
“Quite a lot it turned out, and when the song started playing this November we were reminded,” Hannah noted.
“Then someone told us it was theoretically possible to buy the rights to the song — and then take it off all streaming platforms!”
As of earlier this week, 327 people had pledged a total of $62,100. The party-pooping partners have a ways to go to reach their goal of $15 million to approach Warner Chappell Music UK to negotiate for the rights. SWNS reached out to Warner Chappell for comment.
The New York Post
This year’s chart battle for the actual Christmas number one slot looks to be a straight fight between The Pogues’ 1987 hit Fairytale of New York, after the death of its writer and singer Shane MacGowan, and Creator Universe, a group of TikTok stars raising money for charity… by covering Wizzard – yet another Christmas song from half a century ago.
