Former Wham! manager Simon Napier-Bell is opening up about the duo’s iconic holiday track Last Christmas.
Napier-Bell, in a recent interview with The Telegraph, remarked on how “extraordinary” it is that the track holds up today before revealing how the late singer-songwriter George Michael viewed the song.
“He was always slightly upset by the fact [that] he naggingly knew it was the best thing he ever wrote,” Napier-Bell said. “George, above all, really wanted to be remembered as a great songwriter. And I think at the bottom of his mind... it was rather annoying that the song he got so perfect was a Christmas song.”
The former Wham! manager, elsewhere in the interview, referred to the song as a “magnificent piece of work.”
“How can you create a Christmas song that has bells in it, which says ‘Christmas’ every three seconds, and yet has nothing cheesy about it?” he said of the 1984 song.
Last Christmas has seen a resurgence in interest in recent years, peaking at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in January.
The track reached the top spot on the U.K. singles chart just in time for New Year’s Day 2021, over 36 years after the song’s release.
The holiday hit holds the No. 4 and No. 1 spots on the Billboard and U.K. charts, respectively, as of late Wednesday.
The song has led TikTok users to take part in the “Whamageddon” game, as well, which Forbes described as a “two-decade-old challenge” where people have to avoid hearing Last Christmas before 25 December.
Andrew Ridgeley, one half of Wham!, told People magazine that the song was “absolutely knockout” when he heard it for the first time.
“It sounded for all the world like a Christmas classic,” Ridgeley said.
“It’s Christmas distilled if you ask me,” he added. “It’s the essence of Christmas.”