Christmas number one: Wham! when Christmas number one for the second year in a row – watch live

Paul Glynn
Entertainment and arts reporter

image source, PA Media

Then Wham! win again, but why and how exactly?

Firstly, the track has benefited from being heavily promoted by streaming services such as Spotify, Apple and Amazon on their top Christmas playlists – the ones you’ve been hearing in stores since mid-October in a thinly veiled attempt to prize precious pennies from your pockets .

For its 40th anniversary, the song was re-released on CD and 12-inch vinyl for the final week of its chart run, giving it a further boost as people bought presents.

Physical sales or download sales count much more than streams in the digital era chart.

Chart expert James Masterson recently told the BBC the last year Wham! “filled the void” left by newsgathering of hot dog enthusiast LadBaby – a five-time winner between 2018-22 – who did not release a number.

Last Christmas “won by default”, he said, because it appeared at the top of all Christmas playlists playing “the same old songs, every single year, in pretty much the same order”.

It was pushed harder this year at least by a new song by Gracie Abrams, as well as another perennial Christmas hit by Mariah Carey, but was still both the UK’s most streamed – 12.6 million times – and physically bought song of the week.

Last Christmas is so popular that it has spawned its own game, Whamageddon, where players try to go from December 1 to the end of Christmas Eve without hearing the song.

Anyone listening to today’s chart show is now out of the game. To anyone still in contention, all the best.