Christmas lists

Have you ever wondered which Christmas songs actually get the most airplay these days? Are the twin kings of Mariah and George'n'Andrew really that dominant? Is the stereotypical 70s Christmas still the dominant image of the season or have the TikTok generation wiped them out? Amid the Fairytale Of New York debate, did anybody ever point out that not only would Kirsty change the lyric in question when singing live as early as 1992, but her new lyric was the same as the one Ronan Keating was mercilessly mocked for substituting in for his own cover years later? (OK, maybe that one isn't strictly pertinent, but even so)

We've been doing this and posting the results on Twitter for the last couple of festive seasons, but what we've done is looked through the daytime playlists for Radios 1 and 2 from the 1st to 24th December and kept score on every Christmas (and Christmas-adjacent) record played, with the caveat that due to obvious bias we've skipped anything released this year.

So...

Radio 1

PROGRAMMES COUNTED: Greg James, Rickie Melvin & Charlie, Scott Mills, Vick & Jordan, Dean McCullough, Matt & Mollie, Adele Roberts, Life Hacks

19th= (7 plays)
Destiny's Child - 8 Days Of Christmas
The Waitresses - Christmas Wrapping
The Wombats - Is This Christmas?

14th= (8 plays)
Katy Perry - Cozy Little Christmas
Perry Como - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
The Pogues feat. Kirsty Maccoll - Fairytale Of New York
Sia - Santa's Coming For Us
Taylor Swift - Christmas Tree Farm

11th= (9 plays)
Elton John - Step Into Christmas
Leona Lewis - One More Sleep
Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

8th= (10 plays)
Ariana Grande - Santa Tell Me
Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree
The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)

7th (11 plays)
Coldplay - Christmas Lights

5th= (12 plays)
Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?
Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

4th (14 plays)
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

2nd (15 plays)
Kelly Clarkson - Underneath The Tree
Wham! - Last Christmas

1st (16 plays)
Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You


There was a thread on the Buzzjack forum a week or so ago that in apparent seriousness asked if All I Want For Christmas Is You was the most famous song of all time. One in the eye for you there, Ludwig. Anyway, YASSS KWEEN CHRISTMAS MUM or whatever it is we're supposed to communicate around Carey accompanied by thirteen dancing face emojis and several hundred gifs of her half-smiling, but that's not the interesting thing here. Neither is Fairytale, voted quite comfortably as the nation's favourite last year in a YouGov poll, being outside the top ten, because that wavers spectacularly from year to year (five in 2019, 12 in 2020). No, it's the remarkable performance of 2013's Underneath The Tree, a Greg Kurstin production and co-write from Clarkson's seasonal album Wrapped In Red that - no, really - employs a Wall Of Sound approach. Last year it took off spectacularly with fifteen plays during the survey period more than doubling its 2019 exposure, only The Most Famous Song In History getting more airtime. It's also among those that makes regular revisits to the business end of the Christmas chart, reaching 15 in 2020 and 17 this year. And yet... do you consider it a seasonal standard? It doesn't appear in any of the myraid Best Christmas Song Ever polls, it doesn't get TV play, nobody covers it, it's likely few could recite it, and it peakd at number 15 here and 12 on the Hot 100 at the time. It has a decent position on the current Now! Christmas album (CD 1 track 10, between Leona and the Ronettes) but that's reactive given it was number 87 on 2020's Now 100 Hits Christmas and back end of CD 1 filler in 2019. Maybe time will tell, but equally it feels like nothing bar Mariah from the Nineties onwards is going to be allowed any more, Ed'n'Elt pending. Speaking of whom, Step Into Christmas was the third most played song last year, while Taylor Swift has picked up almost as much play as her single did when it was released.


OK, but what about their older sibling, which usually plays this sort of thing far more often and with a wider range?

Radio 2

PROGRAMMES COUNTED: Zoe Ball, Ken Bruce, Jeremy Vine, Steve Wright, Sara Cox, Dermot O'Leary, Claudia Winkelman, Rylan, Good Morning Sunday, Michael Ball

20th= (9 plays)
Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year
The Crystals - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer
Darlene Love - All Alone On Christmas
Gwen Stefani feat. Blake Shelton - You Make It Feel Like Christmas
The Ronettes - Sleigh Ride
The Waitresss - Christmas Wrapping

18th= (10 plays)
George Michael - December Song (I Dreamed Of Christmas)
Kelly Clarkson - Underneath The Tree

17th (11 plays)
Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree

15th= (12 plays)
Gabriela Cilmi - Warm This Winter
The Pretenders - 2000 Miles

6th= (14 plays)
Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas?
East 17 - Stay Another Day
Elton John - Step Into Christmas
Greg Lake - I Believe In Father Christmas
John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band - Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
Leona Lewis - One More Sleep
Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime
Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone
Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday

6th (14 plays)
The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't Let The Bells End)

4th= (15 plays)
Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody

3rd (18 plays)
Wham! - Last Christmas

1st= (19 plays)
Chris Rea - Driving Home For Christmas
Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You


Rea has been two plays behind Carey in both of the last two years so it's about time he made that step up, and the single might well top number eleven - a peak it's reached on three separate occasions - next week too. A broader spread as well as the welter of Radio 2-friendly big names releasing Christmas songs - Elt'n'Ed, Abba, Kelly'n'Ari, Buble, Barlow, Leona, the Ingrid Michaelson/Zooey Deschanel dark horse - means the numbers are down on last year, so Lewie (who, by the way, has this year achieved his highest position since original release) has continued rising up the list despite three fewer daytime outings. Apart from Keith Urban's 2019 I'll Be Your Santa Tonight going from eleven plays to none the big surprise is the charge of Stay Another Day - apart from some added bells not a Christmas song in the slightest, but only ever played at this time of year and rocketing into our list while only getting five plays on Radio 1. Is this the Sara Cox influence? Fairytale Of New York, by the way, was played six times, the same as Jose Feliciano and Jools Holland collaborating on Feliz Navidad.


And while we have it here, these are the most played Christmas songs this week across the whole of UK radio for w/e 23rd December, with the number at the end being where it was placed in the airplay list for Christmas week 2018, those exiting being Lake, Perry and Queen:

20 Mariah Carey - Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town (-) (what? Not played at all on Radios 1 or 2)
19 Jona Lewie - Stop The Cavalry (-)
18 The Pogues feat. Kirsty Maccoll - Fairytale Of New York (5)
17 The Ronettes - Sleigh Ride (18)
16 Andy Williams - It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year (-)
15 The Pretenders - 2000 Miles (16)
14 Brenda Lee - Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree (13)
13 Elton John - Step Into Christmas (9)
12 East 17 - Stay Another Day (14)
11 Kelly Clarkson - Underneath The Tree (15)
10 Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday (10)
9 Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody (8)
8 John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band - Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (7)
7 Leona Lewis - One More Sleep (12)
6 Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas? (4)
5 Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You (2)
4 Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmastime (11)
3 Chris Rea - Driving Home For Christmas (3)
2 Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone (6)
1 Wham! - Last Christmas (1)