Whigfield - Last Christmas
You have to be very careful when covering an established festive classic lest you succeed only in ruining it for the legions of fans who fell in love with the original. Wham's 'Last Christmas' is one of few records in this elite category (along with 'Fairytale of New York' and any non-humanitarian versions of 'Do they know it's Xmas?') which perhaps explains the predictably hostile reaction that greeted Whigfield's opportunistic rehash of the song when it was released for Xmas 1995. I personally feel that the backlash was unduly harsh - it's no more offensive to the ear than much of the mid 90s Europop that was doing the rounds at the time - but many fans took umbrage with a relic of their childhood innocence being put through the wringer by some Danish Euroslut over a tinny drum machine. Whiggy also timed her run badly as Wham's 'If you were there...' best of compilation would emerge soon afterwards as arguably the first acceptable slice of 80s nostalgia and go on to sell by the truckload which only exacerbated tensions surrounding her own version of the band's festive favourite. This obviously overlooked the not inconsiderable argument that any opportunity to film another promo video of the delectable Dane was a valid one regardless of the circumstances - George Michael and whathisface from Wham looked lovely in their festive knitwear but I know who I'd rather spend Xmas with. And this is coming from an established Wham fan - my mum informed me earlier today that my Monster Munch 'All About Me' book from the mid 1980s listed them as my favourite band. The original 'Last Christmas' obviously had a profound effect on me too, but did it prevent me from tolerating alternate versions of it further down the line? No sir, it did not.
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