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Take a nostalgic journey through Britain’s cultural and social history told via twelve iconic Christmas number ones by one of the greatest pop historians of his generation.
The Twelve Songs Of Christmas will tell the whole story by covering a dozen Christmas number ones, stretching from Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in 1950 – a song that feels like it's been around forever – to Wham's Last Christmas, which finally made it to number one in 2023, thirty-nine years after it was first released.
Each chapter will talk about the background behind each song, the songwriter and the performer. Not all of them will be Christmas songs – the Beatles dominated the Christmas number one slot in the sixties, and the Spice Girls likewise in the late nineties, but none of them were Christmas songs. Pink Floyd's one and only number one single soundtracked a bleak Christmas at the end of the seventies, with the country, a few months into the Thatcher era, in a depressing state of flux.
The book will also dig into the Christmas records that didn't make it to number one, including lesser-known gems like Kate Bush's December Will Be Magic Again, denied in 1980 as the world mourned the death of John Lennon, and Mariah Carey's leviathan All I Want For Christmas Is You, which has still never made it to become the Christmas number one, even in the streaming era.
Bob Stanley said: ‘There are two big reasons why I wanted to write this book: firstly, my birthday falls on Christmas Day; and secondly I've been a chart obsessive for as long as I've been aware of pop music. Just about the only time people seem to take notice of the charts these days is at Christmas. The nation still lays plenty of money down at the bookies on what the Christmas number one will be. Over the years, the spot has been owned by the Beatles, the Spice Girls, and Simon Cowell – all eras which, at the time, looked like they might never end. But the Christmas number one has also belonged to many surprise packages over the years. So this is a playful look at a dozen of the most significant and some of the more unlikely Christmas chart toppers, which looks at the records they kept from the top as well as digging into each act's back story. I think it really does make a perfect stocking filler’.
Publisher Lee Brackstone said: ‘There could be no better writer for a book about the history of one of the great British festive institutions – the Christmas #1 – than Bob Stanley. It’s possible there is no one in Britain who knows more about pop songs and chart trivia than him and it is such a privilege to be reunited after our work together on his classic book, Yeah Yeah Yeah!’
BOB STANLEY is a writer, musician, DJ, and film producer. Since founding influential pop group Saint Etienne, Bob has enjoyed a parallel career as a music journalist, contributing to publications such as the Times, Smash Hits, NME, the Guardian and the Face. A former artist-in-residence at the Southbank Centre, his films have been shown at the ICA and Royal Festival Hall, and he has curated several seasons for the Barbican. He is the author of Yeah Yeah Yeah, which was the Sunday Times Pop Music Book of the Year and a Rough Trade Book of the Year, and Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop.
