I also wish 'Christmas Wrapping' was more of a staple, that's such a fun Christmas bop.

 

Yeah I agree, I also wish 2000 Miles by The Pretenders made the top 40 every Christmas.

Boney M - Mary's Boy Child

Harry Belafonte - Mary's Boy Child

 

Both sold over 1 million copies in the UK, and the former was at one point the top selling Christmas song in the UK.

Yeah I agree, I also wish 2000 Miles by The Pretenders made the top 40 every Christmas.

 

I agree alongside Stop The Calvary by Jona Lewie.

Boney M - Mary's Boy Child

Harry Belafonte - Mary's Boy Child

 

Both sold over 1 million copies in the UK, and the former was at one point the top selling Christmas song in the UK.

 

Is ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ or ‘Mull of Kintyre’ the biggest seller of the 70s?

From 2008 when it charted to the early to mid 10s, Warm This Winter by Gabriella Cilmi had a lot of airplay. Haven’t heard it anywhere for a few years now and not seen it on any playlists.

 

Edit: Just seen that apparently Heart still play it! But it’s certainly not widely played.

Edited December 10, 20204 yr by gooddelta

'Warm This Winter' is severely underrated :wub:

From 2008 when it charted to the early to mid 10s, Warm This Winter by Gabriella Cilmi had a lot of airplay. Haven’t heard it anywhere for a few years now and not seen it on any playlists.

 

Edit: Just seen that apparently Heart still play it! But it’s certainly not widely played.

 

Yeh it’s not but it’s radio airplay is good round Xmas week (top 50 usually) and heard it twice on radio 2 this week.

From 2008 when it charted to the early to mid 10s, Warm This Winter by Gabriella Cilmi had a lot of airplay. Haven’t heard it anywhere for a few years now and not seen it on any playlists.

 

Edit: Just seen that apparently Heart still play it! But it’s certainly not widely played.

 

Yeh it’s not but it’s radio airplay is good round Xmas week (top 50 usually) and heard it twice on radio 2 this week.

 

It is of course a cover!

I suppose another good barometer of this is to look at what was on the older Christmas compilations compared to the current ones. I have one called I Love Christmas from 2003 that opened with John & Yoko, so that really must have dived in popularity in the last 20 years.

 

Elton's song was Disc 1 track 4 so it must have been quite popular on radio even back then, even though it feels like it's come more to prominence in tthe last few years.

 

Another that seemed particularly popular on the radio when I was younger was Bing Crosby/David Bowie's Little Drummer Boy, which is still floating about but the original doesn't even seem to be available to stream!

Wasn’t 2003 the year that the Pop Idol finalists did a cover of the John & Yoko track? I’d imagine that’s why it would suddenly be track 1 material that year.

Yeh they reached number 5 that year which was a shock as everyone thought they’d be no1 easily!

Wasn’t 2003 the year that the Pop Idol finalists did a cover of the John & Yoko track? I’d imagine that’s why it would suddenly be track 1 material that year.

 

It was, although I'm not sure if the compilers would have known about that at the time that the album came out, I can't remember how far in advance that cover was announced.

 

I forgot Cliff had a Christmas song out that year too, Santa's List, which went top five and is on the album - that has never been heard since! Same with his 2006 effort 21st Century Christmas, which was at least curiously covered by Saint Etienne a few years later :lol:

This was one of the 1999 Christmas albums:

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Christmas-Album-Va...CVP9B1TNKVTFAK7

 

An interesting one as lots of the standards are on here but covered by acts popular in the preceding years (Whigfield, Hanson, Vanessa Williams). And Gary Glitter is here, so obviously hadn't been blacklisted by the compilers yet at this point for whatever reason. Also curious is Bon Jovi as Disc 1 Track 1, which is still on the music channels a bit I think, but doesn't do much in the charts.

I don't know if it has been mentioned but 'Driving Home For Christmas' by Chris Rea has become more successful in the streaming era than it ever managed when released as a physical single back in 1988 (#53) or when charting as a download (#33 in 2007 seems to have been its peak). I'm assuming its success is down to it being featured on a number of Christmas playlists. It's an awful song which is more Dire Rea than Chris Rea! As soon as I hear that piano intro I have to switch off... It does seem to have become more of a staple Christmas song on radio. I don't recall it getting played quite so often back in 1988 or in the decade or two after that to the same extent it has been played over the past decade. At some point in the next two weeks the track will become what the OCC now term a millionaire (a track that has a million combined sales from a combination of both paid for sales and streaming sales). It should be on about 960k - 970k by tomorrow (Friday).

I made this last year precisely to show which songs were gaining/losing popularity over the years. The second column in blue is the one we're more interested in - it basically shows the ranking of the song compared to all the other Christmas songs in the chart, for the last 10 years (2010-2019).

 

One flaw this compilation has is that it includes the rankings based on the OCC official charts irrespective of whether the songs were on ACR or not. If you want to accurately gauge the trends in popularity, the blue column should be the ranking among Christmas songs based on total units moved. For example AIWFCIY was the most popular Xmas song last year not River.

One flaw this compilation has is that it includes the rankings based on the OCC official charts irrespective of whether the songs were on ACR or not. If you want to accurately gauge the trends in popularity, the blue column should be the ranking among Christmas songs based on total units moved. For example AIWFCIY was the most popular Xmas song last year not River.

Yeah that's a very fair point actually, but I don't think I have the time to go back and revisit it. It was only meant to give a general idea of the trends of the different Christmas songs over the last few years so I think it still does that even if it's not 100% accurate due to ACR.

Edited December 10, 20204 yr by M4ngo Ho Ho

It was, although I'm not sure if the compilers would have known about that at the time that the album came out, I can't remember how far in advance that cover was announced.

 

I forgot Cliff had a Christmas song out that year too, Santa's List, which went top five and is on the album - that has never been heard since! Same with his 2006 effort 21st Century Christmas, which was at least curiously covered by Saint Etienne a few years later :lol:

 

 

According to this article by JM it was announced ‘weeks in advance’!

 

https://chart-watch.uk/archives/2003/week-e...ember-27th-2003