Wham! vs Mariah Carey: How maths and TikTok show the 'old ones are the best' Christmas songs

By Rachel Dixon, Multimedia Producer

"Does your granny always tell you that the old ones are the best," as Slade put it in their festive tune Merry Xmas Everybody. Well, for Christmas songs, that does seem to be the case.

Year on year classics such as Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' storm the charts, knocking new releases out of the top rankings.

On Friday Wham! made chart history after their song 'Last Christmas' secured the top spot, 39 years after it was first submitted, making it the longest-ever journey to number one on the festive charts.

For many people, however, Carey 'coming out of hibernation' on November 1 signals the start of the festive season.

But what is the most popular Christmas song? What gives the golden oldies longevity? And will anyone ever be able to challenge the classics to the top spot?

For the answer, it’s time for some Chrismaths

When he’s not bringing maths to the masses on YouTube or challenging high profile intellectuals to tricky conundrums, Oxford University Professor Tom Crawford is injecting numeracy into the festive season.

The mathematician, known online as Tom Rocks Maths, spent an afternoon deciphering the most popular Christmas song of all time.

Tom told ITV News: “Once you get to mid November you can’t not hear Christmas songs, I thought it would be interesting to answer from a mathematician’s perspective.

“I’m not claiming it is the correct answer, it was more about generating debate, but there is a methodology to it."

He took the number of sales, streams and YouTube views of top Christmas songs, past and present and divided them by the number of years since the song had been released, during his 2021 study.

The results were staggeringly in favour of Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You.

Tom said: "Mariah Carey has three times more single sales, nearly 20 million, than the next competitor and I think that’s an underestimate.

"That really jumped out at me, Mariah absolutely dominates, she’s actually top of all the categories, most sales, streams and video views, she is the undoubted Queen of Christmas."

But Tom did note some new releases were edging closer to Mariah's crown, including Ariana Grande's 'Santa Tell Me' and Justin Bieber's 'Mistletoe'.

He said: “Looking at YouTube specifically, I was surprised at how popular Justin Bieber was but interestingly Mariah Carey and Wham! were still the most popular, that’s maybe a fairer comparison as even though they’ve been around longer, they’ve only been on YouTube for 10 years.

"I think they’re the two that comes to everyone’s mind at Christmas for many reasons, I think they’re excellent Christmas songs, the Mariah one, you imagine singing it to your significant other, Wham! is also a love song but the Mariah one is very much ‘I am your present’.

"They've both invaded popular culture so much, I think the newer ones might not have been ingrained in popular culture in the same way."

Whamageddon - a modern phenomenon for a classic song

While Tom's methodology shows Carey coming up trumps, there is a strong argument that Last Christmas, which is currently in the UK Christmas number one spot, is actually the most popular.

On November, 8 the music video became the most viewed Christmas video on YouTube, according to Wham's official TikTok account. It has 852M views, surpassing Mariah Carey's 714m views.

This year, George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley's hit has also brought us the Whamageddon phenomenon.

For those not in the know, Whamageddon is a viral internet game of survival, which runs from December 1 to Christmas Eve, created by friends Rasmus Leth Bjerre, Oliver Nøglebæk, Søren Gelineck and Thomas Mertz, who jokingly call themselves the Whamfathers.

The rules are simple, players must avoid hearing 'Last Christmas', whether in a public place or online.

This year people have taken to social media to share stories of how they heard the song and got knocked out of the game, also known as getting "whammed".

It has led to videos using #whamageddon racking up a huge 12.6m views on TikTok.

How did the classics rank in this year's Christmas charts?

1 Last Christmas by Wham! - 1986

2 You're Christmas to Me by Sam Ryder - 2023

3 All I Want For Christmas is You by Mariah Carey - 1994

5 Merry Christmas by Ed Sheeran and Elton John - 2021

6 Fairytale of New York by The Pogues - 1988

7 Rocking Around The Christmas Tree, Brenda Lee - 1958

9 It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas, Michael Buble - 2011

10 Merry Christmas Everyone, Shakin Stevens - 1984

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