Gracie Abrams holds on to the number one spot with That's So True. Taylor Swift is back at the top of the albums chart.

Gracie Abrams gets a fifth week at number one in the singles chart. Taylor Swift returns to the top of the albums chart.

Gracie Abrams is still at number one with That’s So True. With the Christmas onslaught well under way, its fifth week at the top is probably the last unless it returns in the new year.

Wham’s Last Christmas is up to number two. It looks like it will be back at number one next week. Bruno Mars and Rose remain at number three with Apt. It still threatens to be the first new number one of 2025. Gigi Perez finally leaves the number two spot, falling two places to number four. Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You begins its annual run in the top five at number five.

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the Boomtown Rats were one of the biggest bands around, in the UK at least. However, a flop album in 1984 meant that in the autumn of that year Bob Geldof was at a bit of a loose end. That meant that he was at home watching television when Michael Buerk’s report on the growing famine in parts of Africa was shown on the 6 o’clock news. So angered was he by the lack of international response up to that point (the first reports on the famine had come several months earlier) that he decided to release a single to try to raise money.

Bob Geldof was able to use his own contacts book and that of his then partner Paula Yates. Fortunately for the project that became Band Aid Yates was a co-host of Channel 4’s The Tube which meant that she knew many of the biggest music acts of the day. On Sunday 25 November 1984 Geldof and co-writer Midge Ure arrived at the studio to record the song, uncertain of who would turn up. Thankfully for him, a steady stream of musicians (plus Cliff Richard) made their way to the studio and recorded Do They Know It’s Christmas. It was released a week later and became, at the time, the biggest selling single of all time in the UK.

Some of the song’s lyrics have always been controversial. Some parts of Africa do get snow at Christmas. Ethiopia adopted Christianity in the second century AD. The song treats the whole continent of Africa as a homogenous mass. Bono’s line “Thank God it’s them instead of you” is, obviously, particularly dodgy. Bob Geldof responds to this criticism by pointing to the amount of money it has raised over the decades and the number of lives it has saved.

For each “significant” anniversary apart from the tenth,, a new version has been recorded. The increasingly negative responses to each remake made it unlikely that there would be another rerecording this year. However, the continuing desperate poverty in parts of the world also made it unlikely that this anniversary would be completely ignored.

This time, then, there is not a brand new recording. Instead, there is a mash-up of four of the previous versions. Band Aid 2, which was largely awful, has been ignored. The original version was recorded in a studio owned by Trevor Horn who, having produced three number one singles for Frankie Goes To Hollywood that year, was one of the biggest producers of the day. However, he was not chosen to produce it after he said it would take him six weeks. As that would mean the song couldn’t be released before Christmas, Midge Ure chose to produce it himself.

Forty years on, Trevor Horn has been to produce this version. As well as snippets from the four earlier versions, he has also included part of David Bowie’s introduction and some of Michael Buerk’s famous news report. The short version is a bit of a mess, but there is a longer version which is rather more coherent.

The chart position of this new version was always going to be dependent on the interpretation of chart rules. The previous versions have all been combined with the original, even though it was a different line-up each time. However, all songs over three years old are automatically on the Automatic Chart Ratio (ACR) which means that streams are counted at half the standard rate. Songs can be restored to the standard ratio, following the precedent of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill a few years ago, but Christmas songs are specifically excluded from that rule. There has been no official statement, but the song’s chart position, number eight, suggests that no exception has been made for Do They Know It’s Christmas.

The royalties from Last Christmas continue to be paid to the Band Aid Trust, so Wham are now making a bigger contribution to that cause than Band Aid most of the time.

Lola Young gets her first solo hit single with Messy at number 35. She reached number 33 earlier this year as a featured artist on Tyler The Creator’s Like Him. Annie Lennox’s daughter Lola has released music but none of it has made the chart. Lola Young is therefore the first Lola to have a top forty single although, of course, The Kinks had a big hit with the song Lola, cherry-cola and all.

Laufey seems to have decided that the best way of getting a new Christmas hit is to record something that sounds like many of the (old American) songs on Christmas playlists. It looks like it might actually work. She has a new entry at number 39. She was in the first post-Christmas chart (the one that includes streams on Christmas Day) with a version of Winter Wonderland. That song is at number 24 this week. For reasons best known to the producer, Radio 1’s chart show chose to play Michael Buble rather than one of these songs.

The other main way of getting a new Christmas hit is to link up with Amazon and get a place at the top of their festive playlists. That is the route chosen by Tom Grennan and it sees him enter at number 25 with It Can’t Be Christmas. In an amazing development, both of these songs are at least reasonably good.

And so we move on to the inevitable list of festive re-entries. Sia reached number 35 in 2021 with Snowman. For each of the next two years the song peaked at number 28. She looks like going even higher this year as Snowman is already at number 29. Also heading for a new peak is Kelly Clarkson’s Underneath The Tree which climbs to number twelve this week. She only needs to climb one more place to achieve a new peak.

Michael Buble has two re-entries. Holly Jolly Christmas is at number 34 and It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas is at 26. Dean Martin’s Let It Snow Let It Snow Let It Snow is at number 36. The number of people who make an active choice to hear this is probably very low, but it appears on lots of American-dominated Spotify playlists so it gets in the chart.

Elton John’s Step Into Christmas is back at number 26, The Ronettes’ wonderful Sleigh Ride is at 30 and Jose Feliciano is at number 40 with Feliz Navidad. There are now 21 Christmas songs in the top forty.

Oh, and there’s a non-festive re-entry as well. Chrystal’s The Days spent a week at number 39 last month. It is back this week at a new peak of number 38.

Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department spent eight weeks at number one in various runs between February and July this year. Now there is a new Anthology edition (makes a change from a deluxe edition I suppose) and it climbs fifteen places back to the top.

Sabrina Carpenter is at number two yet again with Short ‘n’ Sweet. Kendrick Lamar’s GNX falls two places to number three. Michael Buble’s Christmas album climbs into the top five at number four. It has reached the top five every year since 2019

Juice Wrld’s record company has peered into the barrel marked “unmarked material” once again and have managed to find some bits and pieces to scrape together for another posthumous album. The Party Never Ends (choose your own alternative title) enters at number five.

Potter Payper gets his third top forty album of 2024 with Nightmare Before Christmas at number 30. Fontaines DC climb fifteen places to number thirteen with their excellent album Romance. It reached number two earlier this year and is enjoying renewed success due to their current tour.