Unwrapping Your Favourite Christmas songs

Christmas songs – impossible to avoid, sometimes hard to love. We're taking a closer look at some of those Christmas classics that play a part of everyone's Christmas.

You've had thought that perhaps with the advent(!) of downloads and streaming, what tracks appear in our charts at Christmas would lose some impact. But considering what chart antics Ed Sheeran has pulled off this year, with multiple versions of the same track and recording a cover of Fairytale of New York, it still looks like who gets the Christmas Number One spot is important for many artists and music buyers.

One of those songs that feels like it's always been part of Christmas despite being written and released in 1994. The appeal of the song has often been attributed to the fact it's difficult to pin it down to a specific genre or era.

The song sounds like a mix of classic Christmas songs (Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas, Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!) stirred up with 60s Motown, or even The Jackson 5's 'Santa Clause Is Coming To Town.'

The song is also heavily influenced by the Phil Spector 'Wall of Sound' production from the 60s.  Phil Spector released one of the definitive Christmas albums in 1963, 'A Christmas Gift For You', so if you're looking for inspiration for a Christmas song, that's not a bad place to start.

Mix all that lot together, and you've got a veritable fruit cake of a track!

The track, and the album it came from, 'Merry Christmas', almost didn't happen as Carey's record label were concerned as Christmas albums were often seen as cash-ins released by artists as their career wanes. But determined to prove them wrong, Carey crammed her house with Christmas decorations in the summer of 1994 whilst penning the original tracks for the album. She, and co-writer Walter Afanasieff apparently got the chords, structure and melody down in fifteen minutes. Not bad going considering most of us take longer than that for a coffee break.

To date the song has sold over 16 million copies, and netted over $60 million in royalties with numerous cover versions released around the world.

In the UK in 1994, the song peaked at #2, (held off the top spot by East 17's Stay Another Day), but has regularly re-entered the charts since. By the end of January 2017 it had spent seventy-eight weeks in the UK charts.

The continuing success of the song over twenty years since its release date means you're out of luck if you're one of the people who can't stand it, it appears to be on every radio station and playing in every shop throughout December. Bah humbug indeed!

Famous for keeping Mariah Carey off the Xmas number one spot in 1994, 'Stay' is a notable Christmas track for a number of reasons. 

1) The word Christmas is never mentioned in the lyrics.

2) There's hardly any percussion in the track.

3) If you take the jingle bells off the song, it's not a Christmas song at all, except for the video!

East 17 were a boy band who surfaced in 1991, consisting of singer/songwriter Tony Mortimer, lead singer Brian Harvey, and two blokes who stood around at the back of the stage in silly hats doing sod all. They were seen as a 'rough' group of lads when compared to the much more neatly groomed Take That.

Whilst everyone thinks of 'Stay' as downbeat song about being dumped at the worst time of the year (now where could they have got that idea from??), the song was actually written about the suicide of songwriter Tony Mortimer's brother, Ollie. He tweaked the lyrics slightly, but the song never references Christmas at all. It was only the presence of bells that mark this out as a Christmas song. That, and the decision to release it in time to have a chance of getting it the Christmas number one spot. Also the fact that in the video they're all wearing huge winter coats and dancing about in fake snow. Apart from that, no, it's not a Christmas song.

Again, like Wham!'s Last Christmas, the song exploits the fact that everyone is meant to feel happy and joyous at Christmas. So, if anything hasn't quite worked out how you planned, this could be the song for you! A Song which reminds you of happier days, like before East 17's lead singer Brian Harvey ran over himself after eating three baked potatoes.

99% of the musical output of The Pogues has been a fusion of traditional Irish music and punk rock. But they will probably go down in the history books for their Christmas track 'Fairytale of New York.' A perennial favourite, it's now been covered by the closest person we have to Elvis in the UK, guitar-slinging troubadour Ed Sheeran, the ingredients for the song were unlikely to have given rise to such a regular fixture of the holiday season. No jingle bells, children's choir or talking of gifts. Instead we have a pisshead in a police cell, a couple arguing, thwarted ambition and ruined dreams. Happy f**king Christmas!!!

The song took two years to write by banjo player Jem Finer and Pogues frontman, the walking advert for seeing your dentist regularly, Shane MacGowan. One story has it that the band's producer at the time, Elvis Costello, bet the band they couldn't write a Christmas song. Whether that's true or not, the lengthy gestation of the track meant that by the time they'd got round to recording it, the band's bass player, Cait O'Riordan, who was to sing the female part of the song, had left the band. Whilst working on a demo version of the song, producer Steve Lillywhite then took the track home and got his wife Kirsty MacColl to record a guide vocal for the female part. The band were so impressed with voice that they agreed she should be the voice of the song. MacGowan then re-recorded his track alongside MacColl's tape – the two never sung the track together in the studio, and the rest is Christmas history.

On its original release in 1987, the track was kept from the number one spot at Christmas by the Pet Shop Boys cover of the Elvis classic 'Always On My Mind' – not a track you hear very often on Christmas compilations. But with it appearing on pretty much every Christmas compilation, and creeping up the Christmas charts every year in this era of downloads, it's easy to say which track has had the bigger impact on our Christmas listening.