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Kylie Minogue has scored her first UK Christmas No 1, and eighth No 1 single overall, with the song Xmas.
She beat competition from Wham!’s mega-streaming Last Christmas, which has been Christmas No 1 for the past two years: it was last week’s chart-topper but drops to No 2. Also in the race was Lullaby from the charity campaign Together for Palestine, which reached No 5.
“It’s hard to put into words how special this feels,” Kylie told Official Charts. “Being Christmas No 1 really is the most wonderful gift.”
It’s Kylie’s first No 1 in 22 years, after Slow in 2003, and only her second solo Top 10 hit since 2010’s All the Lovers. Xmas makes her the first woman to secure UK No 1 singles in four different decades, and she’s a rare Australian Christmas chart-topper – Nicole Kidman was the previous one, with her Robbie Williams duet Somethin’ Stupid in 2001.
In a way, Kylie has been at Christmas No 1 once before, but only as a small part of the 1989 version of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?, performing alongside Cliff Richard, Bananarama and many more – the song doesn’t count as an official Kylie hit on the charts. She had nearly reached the top spot the previous year with her ultra-sappy Jason Donovan duet Especially for You, but Richard kept them off No 1 with his arguably even sappier Mistletoe and Wine.
Kylie’s Xmas was helped along by sales of CD and vinyl versions, but its success is all the more remarkable because it isn’t available on most streaming services: she recorded it as an exclusive track for Amazon Music.
The online retailer has identified Christmas music as a big draw for customers in recent years, using exclusive songs as a way to tempt them into signing up to its music streaming offering (the songs can also be heard on YouTube). These exclusives are also often played when Christmas music is requested on Amazon’s Alexa devices, helping to increase their chart success.
It’s the first time an Amazon-commissioned song has reached Christmas No 1, though previous efforts have nearly managed it. Last year Tom Grennan’s It Can’t Be Christmas reached No 3, and in 2023 Sam Ryder reached No 2 with It’s Christmas to Me. Ellie Goulding’s Amazon-exclusive cover of Joni Mitchell’s River, released in 2019, reached No 1 just after Christmas that year. Katy Perry, Olivia Dean, Laufey, Jorja Smith and George Ezra are among the other artists to have recorded Christmas songs for Amazon.
Speaking to Music Week as the Kylie campaign kicked off, Amazon Music’s Alex Nutton heralded “significant investment and promotional support in commissioning new Christmas tracks these past few years … A great Christmas track has the power to stand the test of time. When commissioning these songs, our goal is always to create a new holiday favourite that customers will return to year after year.”
In terms of pure sales, Together for Palestine came out on top, but Lullaby was relatively little streamed. The song is an adaptation of Palestinian lullaby Yamma Mwel El Hawa, featuring a mix of the original Arabic lyrics and new ones written by Peter Gabriel. It is performed by Palestinian artists such as Nai Barghouti alongside British ones including Neneh Cherry, Celeste, Leigh-Anne Pinnock and Together for Palestine co-creator Brian Eno.
Earlier this month, Eno told the Guardian he was “not gonna be completely disappointed” if the song didn’t reach No 1, because “Christmas singles are a thing unto themselves.” Proceeds from the song will be distributed to Palestinian causes via the Choose Love charity.
The rest of the chart is predictably stuffed with Christmas songs: 27 of them in all. Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You and Brenda Lee’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree are at No 3 and No 4, and the Pogues, Kelly Clarkson, Elton John and Bobby Helms’s Christmas songs all feature in the Top 10 (Dave and Tems’ Raindance is a non-Christmassy outlier at No 7).
In the album chart, Pink Floyd’s 50th anniversary reissue of Wish You Were Here is at No 1, ensuring they break an obscure record: the longest time between an album’s first No 1 appearance and its most recent. Previously this had been the Beatles’ Abbey Road, which topped the chart in 1969 and then again in 2019, a slightly shorter gap of 49 years and 252 days.
Wish You Were Here is Pink Floyd’s second UK No 1 album of the year, after the live album Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII. They have also scored a Christmas No 1 single in the past, with Another Brick in the Wall in 1979.
Kylie was last week’s album chart-topper with Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped), a reissue of her 2015 Christmas album.
