It's Number One, It's A Spanish Christmas

I'm wondering quite when a Christmas number one became a Christmas tradition. Do we have to go back to 1954 and Winifred Atwell with "Let's Have Another Party" or a year later and Dickie Valentine's "Christmas Alphabet"? Quite possibly we do, but these were number ones during the Dark Ages of popular music before popular music actually became popular, shortened its title to pop and created an industry of diverse and brilliant imagination but which has given us as its current-day descendant-in-chief, Simon Cowell. The Christmas number one, as in hyping up its significance, can possibly be blamed on "Top Of The Pops" and the aren't-we-whacky-wearing-Santa-hats excesses of DJs whose names we are now no longer allowed to mention (well, one in particular). It is an unfortunate coincidence that a record Margaret Thatcher once chose as a desert island disc made it to number one in 1969: "Two Little Boys" by he whose name we're also not allowed to mention. 

The Scaffold had got there in 1968, so the novelty number one was all their fault. Mike McGear's brother was perpetuating what by then had become the annual atrocity of the Christmas number one in 1977. "Mull of Kintyre" can't be described as the nadir of Christmas number ones because far greater depths had already been plumbed and were to be over the following years. Benny Hill, St. Winifred's School Choir, Mr. Blobby, the list is sadly all but endless.

This said, there were to be moments of light among the darkness of the novelty number one or the otherwise simply dreadful (Renée and Renato, for instance). Pink Floyd, The Human League, East 17 were able to prove that it wasn't always the case that the single that great aunts had bought nephews and nieces for Christmas had to be Shakin' Stevens. But since the emergence of Cowellism and of the counter-Cowell movement (Iron Maiden, Rage Against The Machine), the Christmas number one has acquired new and different levels of atrocity: marketing-is-everything hysteria versus the subversiveness of social media.

A strange thing about the Christmas number one is that, with the exception of Band Aid cropping up all too frequently, there haven't been Christmas-themed number ones since Cliff was on a roll at the end of the '80s and start of the '90s - two number ones interspersed, naturally enough, by Band Aid. Nowadays, the charts bear great similarity each year and so Christmas is the same each year. Slade, Wham, Wizzard and John Lennon will be with us at Christmas in perpetuity. They don't make new Christmas songs any more because it's much easier just to re-release them and market the download.

This British obsession with the Christmas number one is in sharp contrast with a Spanish indifference. This may all be a reflection, however, of what Christmas means in the two countries. Spain may have been caught up in greater Christmas fever than was once the case, but they're not looking to dust down The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl as soon as September starts. They don't really care who's number one at Christmas, but as Christmas can be said to start on 8 December, officially finish on 6 January but lurch on, as it does in Mallorca, for most of the rest of the month, then there is no great musical Christmassy climax to be had. Besides which, number one at Epiphany doesn't have the same ring about it.

There is typically an absence of Christmas songs, except for Mariah Carey. Yes, Mariah pops up almost as frequently as Band Aid does, only it's the same version of "All I Want For Christmas Is You" each year. The most recent Spanish chart had Mariah at number 12. Last year she was number 16 at Christmas. Hardly an epic sales performance, but then she was up against tough opposition: One Direction at number two, Miley Cyrus at number three; "Wrecking Ball" was most certainly not a Christmas song. And at number one was the distinctly ordinary Latin disco sound of Kiko Rivera, whose "Asi Soy Yo" is the subject of a claim for damages on account of plagiarism.

This year, the number one heading towards Christmas is David Guetta and Sam Martin with "Dangerous"; it would appear that David's habit of having to call off gigs in Spain hasn't harmed his chances of chart success. But there have been Christmas-themed number ones in Spain. Who can forget Rosana with "En Navidad" in 1997 or Crazy Frog's epic double A-side "Jingle Bells" and "Last Christmas" in 2005. (Everyone would prefer to forget Crazy Frog.) Then there was, of course, who else but Band Aid in 2004. Will they be number one again this year? No, they've been number one and gone. There are certain things for which we should be grateful.