George Michael has been nominated for an Ivor Novello Award in the Most Performed Work category for writing Wham!’s 1984 hit “Last Christmas.” The award, which honors songwriters and screen composers in Britain annually, also features nominees Charli XCX and her 2024 album Brat, Lola Young with single “Messy,” Dua Lipa’s “Houdini,” and Harry Styles’ 2022 “As It Was,” among others.
In 1985, Michael won his first Ivor for Songwriter of the Year when he was 21 years old, making him the youngest recipient of the award at the time. He won his second for “Faith” in 1989 and a third in 1997. Now nominated 13 times, Michael won six Ivor Awards total and remains the only artist in history to win three times for Songwriter of the Year.
Shortly after George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley formed Wham! in 1981 and released their debut Fantastic in 1983, the duo had their biggest breakthrough with their second album Make It Big a year later and two back-to-back No. 1s with “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” and “Careless Whisper.”
Then, Michael gave himself a songwriting challenge: to write a Christmas song that would top the charts.
“He wanted a definitive Wham! Christmas offering,” Ridgeley told American Songwriter in 2024. “A Christmas number one was what George wanted. It was such an amazing, extraordinary songwriting feat because it was an exercise—and he did it.”
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“Last Christmas” was released several weeks before the holiday on December 3, 1984, and has since topped the charts internationally, including the UK, while consecutively climbing the Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at No. 3 in 2024.
In 2023, “Last Christmas” also became the Official Christmas Number 1 single in the UK. Today, it remains one of the most-streamed songs in the UK. “George would be beside himself [that] after all of these years, [we’ve] finally obtained Christmas number one,” Ridgeley told the Official Charts in the UK at the time. “[George] said that he wrote Last Christmas with the intention of writing a Christmas number one. It’s mission accomplished.”
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the song in 2024, a Last Christmas 40th Anniversary EP was released, featuring the previously unreleased performance of the song by George Michael during his 2006 concert at Wembley Arena in London.
“Not many people have written an enduring, resonant, and evocative Christmas song as that,” said Ridgeley. “There are some. It’s a jewel in a multi-jeweled, bedecked crown, but it’s one of the bigger jewels.”
Photo: Ian Dickson/Redferns
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