Wham-ageddon: Can a new song really become Christmas number one?

It’s Christmas time and there’s a genuine reason to feel afraid.

For the next few weeks, it’ll be impossible to escape Wham and their story of giving people their internal organs; Noddy Holder’s foghorn declaration of festive joy; or Mariah Carey’s yuletide wishlist (principal item: You).

All of those songs have bounced back into this week’s Top 40; and with grim inevitability, one of them is almost guaranteed to be this year’s Christmas number one.

It’s a feature and a flaw of the way the charts are calculated.

Ever since streaming figures were incorporated into the countdown, golden oldies have trampled over contemporary hits every December.

How’s that for clanging chimes of doom?

There’s an argument that those songs should be siloed into a separate chart – in the same way that compilations are excluded from the album countdown.

But in our world of plenty, maybe I can spread a smile of joy (sorry, I promise I’ll drop this now). Because this year, to save you from tears, there’s some genuine competiton.

Here’s a look at who could become your new Christmas favourite.

Kylie is the biggest challenger for Christmas number one, with this sparkly bauble of pop frivolity.

It’s a brand new song, recorded for the 10th anniversary edition of her Kylie Christmas album.

“I had one song that I needed to exorcise,” she says. “It’s been 10 years in the making.”

Recorded during a break in her Tension World Tour, “when I should probably have been doing nothing”, she got into the Christmas spirit by hanging a stocking on the wall of the recording studio.

The track is exclusive to Amazon, giving it a significant chart boost. Every time someone asks their smart speaker to play Christmas songs, Kylie is played first – and every stream counts towards the Top 40.

“I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Christmas, and I’ve wanted to write a Christmas song since McFly began 23 years ago,” says Fletcher.

He gets there through an unusual route – after writing the score for the new Paddington musical, which opened in London last month.

One Of Us is the song that got him the gig, a sitting ballad written for the show’s emotional turning point, as the Brown family realise how important the Peruvian bear has become to their family.

“The ideas behind Christmas are very much in line with Paddington, who essentially represents kindness,” says Fletcher.

“That feels like a nice message to be spreading at this time of year.”

Forget your sleigh bells and your winter jumpers, Alison Limerick’s 1990 piano house classic is enjoying a renaissance, after soundtracking the John Lewis Christmas advert.

She couldn’t be happier about it.

“This whole whirlwind of excitement is all new because there was no launch, really, the first time round,” she says.

“It was so early in the life cycle of house music coming up from the underground. DJs loved it and all the gay clubs loved it – but there wasn’t the media attention.”

In the advert, Limerick’s thrilling delivery (“don’t reach out for me with an apology”) reignites cherished memories for a father who receives the 12-inch vinyl from his son.

But Limerick says she’s unlikely to be playing her own songs on Christmas Day.

“I will wake up, there’ll be a song in my head and to stop me singing it for the next four days, my boys will put on another piece of music.

“And that will be fine, because I will sing at the drop of a hat.”

If anyone can capture the cozy sounds of Christmas, it’s Laufey – whose timeless jazz songs are the sonic equivalent of snuggling up in a cosy blanket with a mug of cocoa.

Hot on the heels of her Grammy-nominated third album A Matter Of Time, she’s issued an expanded version of her Christmas EP, A Very Laufey Holiday.

It includes this beguiling take on Winter Wonderland, originally written in 1934, and covered more than 200 times.

“It’s a holiday staple that really captures the feeling of the early season excitement, when it starts getting colder, the snow starts falling, and everything is hidden by a white blanket of snow,” she says.

Already at number 18 in the UK, Winter Wonderland could earn the star her first ever Top 10 hit in the UK. Not far behind is her perky – and unusual – cover of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.

“I wanted to do a classic but with a twist [and] this recording includes lyrics from the original 1930s version that many people may not know.

“It was exciting to put my own spin on a classic and bring some old flare into a new recording.”

Fine Young Cannibals may only have released two albums in their lifespan, but songs like Johnny Come Home and She Drives Me Crazy still sound as fresh today as they did in the 80s.

Frontman Roland Gift has been marking the 40th anniversary of the band’s debut single with a massive UK tour – and a brand new Christmas song featuring that unmistakable voice.

But it could have been very different.

“It actually used to be called Pop Suicide,” he says, “and it was quite a sad, dark song about how kids get into pop thinking it’s going to be [glamorous] and they end up broke or worse.”

Thankfully, a rewrite and the addition of some tubular bells made it much more jolly.

“I like the sentiment of it,” says Gift. “Let’s forget our woes, let’s not fight any more. Just enjoy this period and we can put the gloves back on after New Year.”

Guernsey singer Emily Fern wrote her twinkly Christmas ballad “quite accidentally” in a church hall.

“We were performing at a concert hall in Guernsey, and we were one song short. We were pulling out all our songbooks when my pianist Adam asbent-mindedly did a little trill on the piano and I said, ‘Oh that sounds like a Christmas song’ and it all just happened.”

The first time it was performed, the audience demanded it again as an encore. Realising they had something special, a plan was hatched to record the song at Abbey Road Studios, with a full string section.

“It didn’t feel real until the musicians turned up in their big bus that said ‘London Symphony Orchestra’,” Fern laughs.

As an added bonus, Happy Mondays legend Bez turned up to join the session. His contribution? Playing the triangle.

“Christmas is my favourite, favourite holiday,” says Alya.

Born in Russia, before moving to Ukraine, she grew up in poverty. Her first memories of Christmas are as a child in the town of Lviv where she would have to mend her own shoes and go house to house singing Christmas carols to earn small change.

These days, she’s a Grammy winning singer, for her work on the album Mystic Mirror, by new age group White Sun.

Her glistening cover of Silent Night (“an everlasting song”) was recorded in the middle of a heatwave, but she somehow manages to convey the stillness of a snow-blanketed winter’s day.

“When you’re recording [a Christmas song] in the middle of the summer, you’re sort of putting yourself emotionally, intentionally, energetically into this magical state,” she says. And I feel it actually adds magic to the creation.

“I would like to feel Christmassy, bright and merry every single day of my life.”