Christmas FM brings you continuous Christmas classics on the airwaves, and here, we reveal some fun facts about our favourites.
‘Last Christmas’ by Wham
In the song, Wham were ‘once bitten, and twice shy’. In real life, they also fell shy, with this song becoming the biggest-selling single in UK chart history to not reach number one!
‘White Christmas’ by Bing Crosbie
Bing Crosbie was dreaming of a ‘White Christmas’, but he couldn’t possibly have dreamt of the success this single would enjoy after he recorded it in 1942. As of 2012, the song has held the Guinness World Record for best-selling single, with 50,000,000 units sold.
‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town’ by Bruce Springsteen
The Boss is well known for this cover version of the classic, which was penned by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1933. Despite the fact that he recorded the song in December 1975, at CW Post College, Greenvale, New York, Springsteen didn’t officially release the song until 1981, as a B-side to ‘My Hometown’.
A man after our own hearts, Springsteen obligingly performed this song in June 2009 when it was requested by a fan at the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee.
‘Silent Night’ (Traditional)
‘Silent Night’, ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ are amongst the most widely covered Christmas songs of all time. If you didn’t want a ‘Silent Night’ however, this song has more than 26,000 cover versions, which means that you can listen to a different version every night for the next seventy years or so!
‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ by Band Aid
When he wrote the song in 1984 with Midge Ure, Bob Geldof had intended to raise £70,000 for Ethiopia. The song was such a massive success, however, that they raised £8 million in the space of twelve months!