When it comes to Christmas tunes, let’s admit it, we tend to stick to the old festive favourites and call it a day.
Noddy Holder shouting ‘It’s Christmas!’, Wham’s familiar music video playing in the background of present opening, and a glass of bubbly in hand as you sing along to Fairytale of New York a little too enthusiastically.
But it turns out, in the past 10 years, there’s been a newcomer to the festive hall of fame.
Leona Lewis’ One More Sleep has been crowned the most-streamed British Christmas tune of the 21st century by Official Charts Company.
Released in 2013, it peaked at number 3 – not even landing the Christmas number one – but now has over 190million streams across the UK.
Following up in the modern classic category, Coldplay’s Christmas Lights is second most-streamed with Lily Allen’s John Lewis cover of Keane’s Somewhere Only We Know in third.
Martin Talbot, chief executive of Official Charts, said: ‘The canon of Christmas classics is full to bursting with songs from the 60s, 70s and 80s.
‘So it is great to see modern classics joining the festive hall of fame – with Leona Lewis’s One More Sleep the runaway leader as the biggest new British Christmas cracker of them all. Congratulations Leona.’
Ed Sheeran and Sir Elton John’s collab Merry Christmas came fourth, with Alexandra Burke’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in fifth.
The 2008 X Factor winner’s single becomes the most popular when you include physical media too.
Festive charts were dominated by X Factor hits in the 00s, so much so that there was even a campaign in 2009 to topple its domination.
Rage Against The Machine’s Killing in the Name took the top spot that year, only for Matt Cardle’s When We Collide to claim the crown in 2010.
That’s not to say there haven’t been festive tracks released over the years, with The Darkness’ Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) landing at the sixth most-streamed.
Cover versions also prove popular with Sam Smith’s version of Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas at seven.
Modern hits like Jess Glynne’s This Christmas, George Ezra’s Come On Home For Christmas, and Sam Ryder’s You’re Christmas To Me rounded out the top 10.
However, they’ve not managed to make a dent in the public’s playlists like those familiar classics – or Leona’s festive countdown.
The Pogues actually told Metro last year that ‘no one can possibly ever make another classic Christmas song again’.
Although that was mainly because they ‘don’t want competition’, even if a recent YouGov survey named them the most cherished festive track with 19% of the vote.
Spider explained: ‘Actually, it’s very hard to write a really good Christmas song. You can write a kind of novelty hit that you release around Christmas time that goes to number one but to actually sit down and write, “Okay, this is actually a Christmas song that is going to be a Christmas song.”
‘I mean, it took us two years, at least, to get Fairytale to be in a recordable shape.’
That’s not to say people haven’t tried, though, with Sabrina Carpenter releasing a whole festive EP, Fruitcake, in 2023.
In the UK, we’ve seen Tom Grennan’s It Can’t Be Christmas narrowly miss out on the top spot despite his pre-emptive celebratory tattoo.
This year, we have some serious Christmas contenders, including newcomer Olivia Dean with The Christmas Song.
Icon Kylie Minogue is a popular choice for bookies with her track XMAS, while Denise Welch’s Slayyy Bells remains an underdog camp fave.
Christmas wouldn’t be complete without a charity single vying for the top spot, and this year that’s Lullaby from Together For Palestine, set to be released on December 12.
For the past two Christmasses, we’ve seen Wham’s Last Christmas take the top spot with bookies betting it will triumph again in 2025.
Only time will tell if we have a new classic in the making, until then, we’ll be dancing to One More Sleep.
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