Kylie Minogue has scored this year’s Christmas number one, deposing Wham!’s Last Christmas, which topped the chart in 2023 and 2024.
The pop star achieved the feat with her single XMAS, an irrepressibly jaunty anthem about “the presents underneath the tree” and kissing someone special “out in the snow”.
Arriving 37 years after her first UK number one hit, I Should Be So Lucky in 1988, it makes Kylie the first female artist to top the charts in four different decades.
“It’s hard to put into words how special this feels,” said the singer, adding that she’d be celebrating Christmas by “obsessing over a jigsaw” with her family in Australia.
XMAS is taken from a new, expanded edition of her 2015 album Kylie Christmas, and was available exclusively through Amazon.
You could argue that gave her a slight advantage because XMAS was prominently positioned on Amazon Music’s Christmas playlist. But it also meant her song was unavailable on rival streaming sites like Spotify and Apple Music.
But the combination of her plays on Amazon and YouTube, and the availability of limited edition vinyl and CD singles, ultimately gave her the Christmas crown.
“Kylie really, really targeted this particular race. Her record label pulled out all the stops,” said Martin Talbot, head of the Official Charts Company.
“When you have a superstar of her status really going for it, she’s always going to be in with a chance.”
According to chart data, Kylie’s Christmas charm offensive gave the star her biggest sales week in 23 years, since 2002’s Love At First Sight.
Despite that, Talbot said the competition for this year’s Christmas number one was “tight right the way through the week”.
At one point, only 10,000 copies separated the top five songs.
Mariah Carey and Brenda Lee were also in contention for the top spot as people pumped Christmas classics into their playlists.
It wasn’t Kylie’s first attempt to scale the festive summit.
Her duet with Jason Donovan, Especially For You, was a major contender for Christmas number one in 1988, but ultimately took the runners-up position behind Cliff Richard’s Mistletoe and Wine. Despite finally triumphing in the seasonal chart, she said she was planning a quiet Christmas after completing her massive, 66-date Tension World Tour.
That means settling down to watch the Boxing Day cricket Test match between Australia and England while chipping away at a jigsaw.
“We’re not long-term puzzlers, but somehow a jigsaw puzzle was on the end of the dining table in the family house last Christmas,” she explained.
“So all Christmas, you’d float past and, if someone else was working on it, you’d be like, ‘Is now the right time? Are we on the same page? Should we work on separate zones?’ (BBC)
