Kate Winslet’s Christmas song from 2001 might be on its way to the top of the charts this festive season.
The Oscar winner isn’t known for her pipes, but in 2001, she lent her voice to the soundtrack of the film, Christmas Carol: The Movie and performed the song What If.
The song was an absolute bop and entered the UK Singles Chart at number six, its peak.
It also charted across the world, hitting the number one slot in Austria and in Ireland – while touching even the coldest hearts with her song.
Despite being released 24 years ago, the star may well be set to hit the charts once more as fans have begun campaigning on TikTok with videos of themselves miming along to the tune.
Fans have insisted that this could be the next big hit of the festive season, and the UK’s chance to get it to the top of the charts this Christmas, after fumbling it in 2001.
To be clear, Kate is not at all the one behind this campaign. In fact, the star has previously implied that she’s mortified by the song and tried to not sing it herself.
During an interview with Radio 1’s Greg James in 2017 about her film The Mountain Between Us, she revealed that the tune had haunted her for decades.
As Greg played the song, she said in an exasperated tone: ‘This is the kind of s**t my husband does to me, just for a laugh when we’re on family holidays, and I least want him to do it.’
She then asked him to turn it off multiple times and revealed how she was plagued by the song: ‘Sometimes I’ll go into restaurants and the restaurants will think “Surely she’d love it if we played either that or the Titanic song [Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On].
‘Or I’ll go into a hotel bar and there will be a pianist and they’ll literally give me a look like “Oh don’t worry, we’ll do that thing you really want us to do.”‘
She then explained how it came to be that she became a songstress: ‘I provided the voice for an animated version of A Christmas Carol, and the producers came to me, and they said, “Oh, we’d like to give your character a song.”‘
‘I said, “That’s a nice idea,” and they said, “Would you like to sing it?” I said, “Well, I can sing a bit, I’ll give it a go, and if you think it’s c**p, I really don’t mind, if you just ditch it and get a proper person to do it.”‘
This isn’t the first time there has been a campaign to make the song a Christmas classic.
In 2019, Shaun Kitchener for Metro began a campaign stating it needed more recognition: ‘Written by Steve Mac and Wayne Hector – whose respective CVs include everyone from Westlife to Little Mix, JLS to Nicki Minaj – it’s so endearingly “of its time”: plucked classical guitar strings under the first chorus, the gradual introduction of a string section, an almighty key change that would summon the nearest gospel choir if sung on an X Factor final…
‘Everything about it screams ‘camp classic’, and it must be given the recognition it deserves.
‘Heck, before the final chorus there’s even that iconic power ballad thing where it all drops to silence for a dramatic ‘BOM!’ – essentially the cue for pyrotechnics and, if it’s a Westlife track, the time to get the hell up off those stools.’
Will it make it to the charts? Only time will tell, but we will absolutely be streaming the hit this festive season!
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