One thing that I think has been really lacking in recent years has been the absence of a decent Christmas number 1 in the charts. Years ago in the 1970’s and 1980’s the Christmas number 1 was of paramount importance with many festive tracks from artists such as Slade, Wizzard, Mud, Boney M, Wham, Queen, Jona Lewie (he was an odd one!), Cliff Richard (the master of the Christmas number 1, he’s even released one this year with Brian May), The Pogues and many more.

All the songs by these artist and more are cheerful, uplifting and have sleigh bells and sound so, well, festive. These days no-one it seems wants to make a decent Christmas number one, whether through fear of upsetting the ever present PC brigade or because they just don’t celebrate Christmas, who knows. The last decent Christmas song that was released was “Christmas Time (Don’t’ Let The Bells End) by The Darkness and that was pipped to the post for the number one spot by the most awful cover version of “Mad World” by Tears for Fears. It was so dreary and so depressing it made me feel suicidal just by listening to it! Why on earth did it ever get to Number 1 over The Darkness’s cheery, festive, sleigh bells offering? I can only conclude that the nation as a whole must have been very depressed in Christmas 2003!

We need a good festive number 1 song again, something really cheerful and uplifting. Another thing with Christmas songs of today is that the words don’t seem to reflect the true meaning of Christmas; the last song I remember that focused on what the true meaning of Christmas is about was Boney M’s “Mary’s Boy Child”.

But for now I will continue to listen to my CD of Christmas songs from years gone by and remember the days when the Christmas number 1 reigned supreme and was almost as important as watching the Queen’s speech!