Whether you gave your heart or not to someone yesterday, it's time for us to give it away... on the very next day!
LAST CHRISTMAS| Version |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All | x4 (127) | x5 (249) | x5 (396) | x7 (517) |
Taiko Switch
107
none
lsxmasWhile for this year we already ran out of custom holiday song requests from users who still haven't issued one, we can squeeze in just a little bit of the festive mood for the year 2020's last Song of the Week feature, although this very tune acquired kind of a bitter taste as years went by...
Last Christmas is the 10th single release from the mid-80ies British pop duo act Wham!, starring Andrew Ridgeley and the late George Micheal. The act came to be in 1981, following up the disbanding of a school ska act in which the two performed and became close friends. The act's name came out to be due to the duo's will to better convey the "essence" of what their energy and friendship took them apart from the rest, and the snappy onomatopoeia "Wham!" precisely portrayed the boisterous fun behind their works, with George Micheal taking creative control of the act's songwriting halfaway through the creation of their first studio album. Wham! has been the most active for five consecutive years, during which time span they created 13 singles, 3 studio albums and performed 3 worldwide tours, the latter of which most notably remembered due to it being the first time a Western pop group managed to perform in China. Wham! was disbanded in 1986, with Ridgeley trying his talent in other fields and George Micheal pursuing a solo career straying away from the former act's teenager demographic, counting 30 million certified sales across all officially-released discography works. While revival events were held in the following years, George Micheal died on Christmas day in 2016, at age 53.
Released on December 3rd, 1984, Last Christmas is one of the latter-years Wham! songs where George Micheal was its sole songwriter/performer/producer, with its single sharing the Double-A side debut release with the song Everything She Wants. The song was written in Micheal's childhood bedroom and its recording took place since Summer of the same year, with Micheal performing on a LinnDrum drum machine, a Roland Juno-60 synth and sleigh bells. All the royalities of the songs in the Last Christmas single release were donated by the act to support the ongoing Ethiopian famine of the early 80ies, becoming the highest-selling piece in UK charting history that never topped any sales charts on its home soil with 1.90 million copies sold on all formats as of this year's end, while also becoming the UK's best-selling vinyl release last year. It also garnered a huge following overseas, climbing podium chart peaks across several countries in Europe as well as in foreign continents, while also garnering quite the huge cover following to this day, from Whigfield to Ashley Tisdale, from Crazy Frog to Carly Rae Jaspen and even foreign song translations, among which is a Japanese one released in 2008 by EXILE. The official Last Christmas music video nowadays sits at around 550 million views, with the additional release of the 'Pudding Mix' cut in late 2016 that came to be out of the original MV's restored version from a recovered original recording out of a movie-shot reel.
On Taiko grounds, the song's Oni setting lulls the laid-back festive tones with a backbeat-based chart filled with notes to the brim that mostly follow the instrumental lead. Be careful not to let the song's melancholic mood lose your focus on the more note-switch-focused clusters!
