Wham-geddon: Can a new song really become a Christmas number one?

It’s Christmas and there’s a real reason to feel scared.

For the next few weeks, it will be impossible to escape Wham and his story of giving people his internal organs; Noddy Holder’s foghorn declaration of festive cheer; or Mariah Carey’s Christmas wish list (main item: You).

All of those songs have returned to this week’s Top 40; and with grim inevitability, one of them is almost certain to be this year’s Christmas number one.

It is a feature and flaw of the way graphs are calculated.

Since streaming numbers were added to the countdown, golden classics have trampled contemporary hits every December.

What do you think about the chimes of doom?

There’s an argument that those songs should be grouped into a separate list, in the same way that compilations are excluded from the album countdown.

But in our world of abundance, maybe I can spread a smile of joy (sorry, I promise to stop this now). Because this year, to avoid tears, there is a real competition.

Here’s a look at who could become your new Christmas favorite.

Kylie is the biggest challenger for the Christmas number one, with this brilliant bauble of pop frivolity.

It’s a new song, recorded for the 10th anniversary edition of her Kylie Christmas album.

“I had a song I needed to exorcise,” he says. “They’ve spent 10 years preparing it.”

Recorded during a break from his Tension World Tour, “when I probably shouldn’t have done anything,” he got into the Christmas spirit by hanging a stocking on the recording studio wall.

The track is exclusive to Amazon, giving it a significant boost on the charts. Every time someone asks their smart speaker to play Christmas songs, Kylie plays first and each stream counts towards the Top 40.

“I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Christmas and I’ve wanted to write a Christmas song since McFly started 23 years ago,” Fletcher says.

He gets there by an unusual route: after writing the score for the new Paddington musical, which premiered in London last month.

One Of Us is the song that got him the gig, a sit-down ballad written for the show’s emotional turning point, when the Brown family realizes how important the Peruvian bear has become to their family.

“The ideas behind Christmas are very much in line with Paddington, who essentially represents goodness,” Fletcher says.

“It seems like a nice message to spread this time of year.”

Forget your sleigh bells and winter jumpers, Alison Limerick’s 1990 piano house classic is enjoying a revival, after soundtracking the John Lewis Christmas advert.

She couldn’t be happier about that.

“This whole whirlwind of excitement is completely new because there was actually no launch the first time,” he says.

“It was very early in the life cycle of house music coming out of the underground. The DJs loved it and all the gay clubs loved it, but there was no media attention.”

In the advert, Limerick’s emotional delivery (“don’t apologize to me”) rekindles cherished memories for a father who receives the 12-inch vinyl from his son.

But Limerick says he is unlikely to play his own songs on Christmas Day.

“I’ll wake up, there will be a song in my head and to stop singing it for the next four days, my kids will play another piece of music.

“And that’ll be fine, because I’ll be singing in a heartbeat.”

If anyone can capture the cozy sounds of Christmas, it’s Laufey, whose timeless jazz songs are the sonic equivalent of snuggling up in a cozy blanket with a cup of cocoa.

Hot on the heels of her Grammy-nominated third album, A Matter Of Time, she has released an expanded version of her Christmas EP, A Very Laufey Holiday.

Includes this seductive version of Winter Wonderland, originally written in 1934 and covered more than 200 times.

“It’s a holiday staple that really captures the feeling of excitement of the beginning of the season, when it starts to get colder, the snow starts to fall and everything is hidden under a blanket of white snow,” he says.

Already at No. 18 in the UK, Winter Wonderland could give the star his first Top 10 hit in the UK. His cheerful and unusual version of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town is not far behind.

“I wanted to make a classic but with a twist [and] This recording includes lyrics from the original 1930s version that many people may not know.

“It was exciting to put my own spin on a classic and put a vintage feel to a new recording.”

Fine Young Cannibals may have only released two albums in their lifetime, but songs like Johnny Come Home and She Drives Me Crazy still sound as fresh today as they did in the ’80s.

Frontman Roland Gift has been marking the 40th anniversary of the band’s debut single with a massive UK tour and a new Christmas song in that unmistakable voice.

But it could have been very different.

“Actually, it used to be called Pop Suicide,” he says, “and it was a pretty sad, dark song about how kids approach pop thinking it’s going to be [glamorous] and end up broke or worse.

Fortunately, a rewrite and the addition of some tubular bells made it much more cheerful.

“I like the feeling of it,” says Gift. “Let’s forget about our problems, let’s not fight anymore. Let’s just enjoy this period and we can put our gloves back on after New Year.”

Guernsey singer Emily Fern wrote her brilliant Christmas ballad “quite accidentally” in a church hall.

“We were performing in a concert hall in Guernsey and we were missing a song. We were getting out all our songbooks when my pianist Adam stubbornly made a little trill on the piano and I said, ‘Oh, that sounds like a Christmas song’ and it all just happened.”

The first time it was performed, the public again demanded it as an encore. Realizing they had something special, a plan was hatched to record the song at Abbey Road studios, with a full string section.

“It didn’t seem real until the musicians turned up on their big bus that said ‘London Symphony Orchestra’,” laughs Fern.

As a bonus, Happy Mondays legend Bez turned up to join the session. Your contribution? Playing triangle.

“Christmas is my favorite holiday,” says Alya.

Born in Russia, before moving to Ukraine, she grew up in poverty. Her first memories of Christmas are when she was a child in the city of Lviv, where she had to mend her own shoes and go from house to house singing Christmas carols to earn small coins.

Currently, she is a Grammy-winning singer for her work on the new age group White Sun’s album Mystic Mirror.

Their shimmering version of Silent Night (“a timeless song”) was recorded in the middle of a heat wave, but somehow manages to convey the stillness of a snow-covered winter day.

“When you’re recording [a Christmas song] “In the middle of summer, you put yourself emotionally, intentionally, and energetically in this magical state,” he says. And I feel like it actually adds magic to the creation.

“I would like to feel Christmassy, ​​bright and happy every day of my life.”