Hello again. The door for Day 6 of my Advent Calendar slowly creaks open and today it reveals a mega selection of songs. As I have said before, and you may have noticed, I tend to steer clear of songs which have been chart hits but I occasionally play a few, and it seemed a good idea to give you a whole bunch of them all in one go. I did this last year with a slightly different selection, and like then all of these were UK Singles chart hits too.

Here’s an absolute belter to get things going:

I love this one, as much for the slightly puzzled looks on some of the kids’ faces as for the song itself. You can almost hear the conversations now, can’t you: “It’s summer outside, so why do we have snow indoors” – this video was apparently made in July. There’s actually a lot I like about this one, which for us is a real Christmas classic. Wizzard were a glam rock band, started by Roy Wood after he left The Move and had a short spell with the earliest incarnation of ELO. This was released in 1973, and spent four weeks at a peak position of #4 over the Christmas/New Year period. It still sounds fresh to me today!

I usually start this series with this one, but decided to save it to be part of today’s megamix:

That was one of the big Christmas hits here in 1975, reaching #2 at a time when just about everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and releasing Christmas songs, though many of them were of dubious quality. The song was written by Greg Lake, of the prog rock bands King Crimson and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, with other lyrics by Peter Sinfield, who was with Lake in the first of those bands. Although it is thought of as a Christmas song, Lake said that he wrote it in protest at the commercialisation of Christmas. Sinfield, however, said that the words are about a loss of innocence and childhood belief: take your pick! Whatever it is about, I’ve always loved it and continue to play it every year

As far as I can tell, I’ve never played this next one before. That seems something of an oversight, as it is one of the most iconic, well-known, biggest selling Christmas hits of all time. You may have heard this song before:

What can I say about that, that hasn’t been said before? It was written by Bob Geldof (Boomtown Rats) and Midge Ure (Ultravox) after Geldof had been moved by a tv news report on the famine in Ethiopia. He assembled a collection of the UK’s biggest pop star names of the time, made the single, and the rest is history. It was released on 3 December 1984, entered the UK chart at #1 and stayed there for five weeks, was #1 in a further thirteen countries and also made #13 in the US, where it sold 2.5m of its worldwide 12m copies. Geldof had hoped to raise £70k for charity: within a year it had raised £8m. It led to the Live Aid concerts the following year, two further versions in later years, the American copy of the idea for their We Are The World (actually guys, you aren’t, but I know what you meant), countless other charity singles and events. And it is actually quite a good song, too, especially when you consider how quickly it was all put together.

I mentioned on Sunday that a study had identified the Christmas carols least well known to 18-29 year olds here. With a colossal 47% saying they didn’t know it, this is the one that topped that list, though I doubt if it would have been in this version:

Mike Oldfield released this as a single in 1975: an instrumental version of a traditional carol, played in his own unique fashion. It spent the two weeks before Christmas at #22, went up to #21 the week of the New Year, and then rocketed up to #4 in early January, a position it also held for two weeks. Weird, eh? It is a typically quirky take on the tune, and I’ve always liked it – I’m a big fan of his, which helps!

There’s a meme, which I won’t share, of Slade’s Noddy Holder saying “It isn’t Christmas until I say it is.” This is why:

Slade were another of our glam rock bands, and this song really has become very much a part of our Christmas listening. It blasted its way straight into the UK chart at #1 on 9 December 1973, the first in a five week run at the top. It sold over 1m copies that time round, and has since featured many times in the December charts. Since downloads were added to the charts in 2007 it has been on an unbroken annual run – it is at #63 currently. The song has now sold around 1.5m copies in the UK, and has done well in other countries, but didn’t make the US chart – too classy for you guys, maybe? Or maybe not.

That’s just about a wrap for this bumper edition of my Advent Calendar. All that remains is my image for today. Going downhill…:

See you again tomorrow 🎄