
Wham! – Last Christmas – Saas-Fee November 21, 1984
Introduction
40 Years ago Wham! had their best year yet. On December 3, 1984, their Christmas single was released: Last Christmas. All signs were green: this song would be the ultimate Christmas smash. A look back.
Wham!
In 1984 I viewed Wham! as cheap commercial crap for flappers and schoolgirls. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley and their Club Tropicana against New Order’s Blue Monday, Careless Whisper against David Sylvian & Ryuichi Samamoto’s Forbidden Colours, I’m Your Man against The Smiths’ How Soon Is Now? and Freedom against Prince’ When Doves Cry? Please! There was no competition at all, this was a slam-dunk for good taste. But, to be fair, Wham Rap! and Everything She Wants were actually great songs. And in hindsight, it’s all a bit different. But does that apply to the overly familiar and omnipresent Last Christmas as well?

Wham! – Last Christmas
Last Christmas
Early 1984 George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley watched football on televsion at George Michael’s parental home.
We were killing time on a Sunday. It was winter, early 1984. The Big Match was on, which was the only live football on TV in those days. Neither of us were really watching it. I was more interested in football than Yog was and his attention was clearly elsewhere.
He had a four-track tape recorder in his bedroom and suddenly jumped and ran upstairs. Not long afterwards, he came down and said, “You’ve got to have a listen to this.”
It was a remarkable moment. And it’s such a remarkable song. So perfect at evoking and conveying the atmosphere of Christmas.
Andrew Ridgeley, 2024

George Michael at the studio 1984
Recordings
In August 1984 George Michael stepped into the Advision Studios in London, England. Michael “plastered the studio in Christmas decorations to set the mood” and went to work, helped by an engineer and two assistents. Michael recorded the song all by himself. He programmed the Linn Drum drumcomputer, played the melodies on a Roland Juno-60 synthesizer and recorded the sleigh-bells. Michael wasn’t a musician, the music was minimalistic, the vocals were the song’s center-point.
The result was a simple, yet effective, Christmas song. The music was happy, carefree, full of optimism and comfort, but the lyricvs deal with unrequited love and even betrayal.
Last Christmas, I gave you my heart
But the very next day, you gave it away
This year, to save me from tears
I’ll give it to someone special© George Michael, 1984
Is the main character over the grief/her? Perhaps not entirely:
Now I know what a fool I’ve been
But if you kissed me now, I know you’d fool me again© George Michael, 1984

Wham! – Last Christmas – Video
Video
Last Christmas is world renowned for its accompanying video as well, which depitcs the song’s story line. In November 1984 the band was in desperate search of a place that had actual snow. It was found at a Swiss ski-resort: Saas-Fee. On November 21, 1984, the clip was filmed. Two chalets were rented and some footage was shot in and around the cable-carts.
The clip portrays a group of friends (which were actual friends of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley) who have rented a chalet together. Michael is there with his girlfriend (actress Debbie Killingback) as is Ridgeley (model Katy Hill). The story line goes back and forth to the previous year when Ridgeley’s girlfriend was still Michael’s girlfriend. The song is aimed at her.
Duting the filming wine was drunk. Katy Hill: “I wouldn’t normally drink on a shoot, but during that scene at the dinner table it was all getting a bit silly.” It was so “silly” that Ridgeley is nowhere to be found in the later scenes: he was too far gone to contribute anything at all.

George Michael at the Band Aid recordings
Band Aid
Immediately following the filming for the Last Christmas video, George Michael flew back to London where the recordings for the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas? would take place on November 25, 1984. Read all about that single and its success in the article In 1984 charity hit the charts: Do They Know It’s Christmas?.
The single was simultaneously released with the intended number 1 Last Christmas, but the Wham! single would lose out. Do They Know It’s Christmas? was a worldwide number 1 hitsingle at Christmas. George Michael didn’t receive his Christmas number 1.
By the way: George Michael was so involved with the Band Aid goals that he donated all the proceeds from Last Christmas to Band Aid and Live Aid.
December was also when we did the Band Aid single Do They Know It’s Christmas?. That was a very weird time in some ways. I mean, Band Aid was brilliant and I don’t have any bad feelings about it. But I’d written our Christmas single Last Christmas the previous February, and as far as I was concerned it was a number one. Then, as Christmas approached there weren’t any novelty records out or anything, and I was thinking “I can’t believe it. There’s no real competition around”. People were saying it’d be the Flying Pickets, and I knew there was a possibility that Culture Club might have released Mistake Number Three, but apart from that it looked like we had a clear run at the top. Nothing looked like it could keep us off number one! And then I heard about the Band Aid record and wanted to get involved. At the time, it didn’t seem a very big deal. I think most people that turned up that day were really surprised when they saw all the cameras and everything – I was. I thought it was like a few people getting together to do this record and it wasn’t until I actually got there that I realised what was really going on.
A Year in the Life of Wham! as Told by George Michael (Smash Hits Yearbook, 1986)

Wham – Last Christmas – Saas-Fee memorial
Aftermath
It would take another 39 years (7 years after George Michael’s premature demise) before Last Christmas actually reached the number 1 position in the UK charts at Christmas. In 2024 the inhabitants of Saas-Fee erected a monument as a tribute to the time that their village was visited by Wham! for the filming of the Last Christmas video.
In closing
What’s your take on Wham!’s Last Christmas? Let me know!
Video
This story contains an accompanying video. Click on the following link to see it: Video: Wham! – Last Christmas: the ultimate Christmas feeling?.