Re-Revisiting Last Christmas

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

This image is a beautifully gift-wrapped lie.

This one is a rich and more painfully accurate representation of the song yelled about below.

Way, way back in December 2016, scarcely two weeks before George Michael died (on Christmas Day, cripes, what a heart-and-gut-punch), I wrote a few paragraphs about how George Michael, Wham!, and their devastatingly sad, and incongruously jaunty modern holiday weepie, “Last Christmas” all deserve better than what they’d gotten.

I stand by every word of what I said then, and am here to add some more context gathered up in the seven years since I wrote them:

I’m here today to warm all our souls by making a case for redeeming George Michael from the cheesy, winking celebrity limbo he's been in for so long and elevating him to his well-deserved status as a truly great pop-soul singer.

I’m so glad that so many have done so much good work in the project of re-evaluating and properly appreciating George Michael — the Netflix documentary that’s still on my to-watch list; his very well-deserved induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this year, which had some extra emotional heft courtesy of his best friend and former Wham! bandmate, Andrew Ridgeley, who did the inducting honors (here’s a brief clip of Ridgeley’s speech, and the celebratory package the Hall put together for the occasion); and the episode of Hit Parade about George and Elton John.

Seven years on, I have even more appreciation for George Michael as a complete artist in the same category as Prince. Naima Cochrane’s Music Sermon on George’s work and status as a soul artist is an essential text on the subject, reminding us that George wrote, arranged, played, and produced all of his own material. Also, he sang those songs! He sang them right up into the Top 40, into our hearts, and directly to the heavens!

As Ridgeley pointed out in his induction speech, George himself counted his wide-ranging, supple, and instantly recognizable voice as the least of his gifts, but that’s the aspect of his artistry that’s the most immediately accessible and I want to get back to “Last Christmas.” Last time I wrote about it here, I said:

People, he sells the hell out of this song. Listen to his his whispers (“Happy Christmas”), thrill to his dejected swoops (“you toooooooore me apaaa-aart”), clasp your hands to your bosom over his tortured croons (“you gaaaa-aave me awaaaaay!”). He got his heart cruelly stomped on last Christmas, and he’s turned this heartbreak into a spiritual exercise. Oh yes, he’s walked through the fire, and he fully intends not to be made a fool of again, thank you very much, by giving his heart, this time, finally, to someone special. Probably. Maybe. He’s psyching himself up, and maybe it won’t work out? Ugh, the way the song ends with an echoey, maybe triumphant, maybe dejected “someooooone” reminds me of the emotional devastation that Queen’s “Somebody to Love” always leaves in its wake. I really hope the George of both the song and real life has indeed found a real love & hasn’t been fooled again. Give yourself the gift of listening to this song with fresh ears. I dare you not to be moved.

I wouldn’t change a single word, and will add a few more for further recontextualization and appreciation of this perfect song. It’s time to honor “Last Christmas” as every bit the equal of Mariah Carey’s iconic (and also perfect!) “All I Want for Christmas Is You.” They’re miles apart tonally — Carey’s is a joyful affirmation of love, while Michael’s is an electro-torch song about heartbreak — but consider: each song is representative of the artists’ respective bodies of work as songwriters and singers. They don’t stand outside of Carey’s and Michael’s catalogue at all; I think part of what makes both of them so timeless is their artistic consistency. Lest we forget, Mariah writes and produces her own music, too.

It helps that neither “All I Want For Christmas Is You” nor “Last Christmas” is delivered with anything approaching a wink. We are sitting right at the intersection of Earnest and Sincere with these songs. I would hate to choose between the last two truly great Christmas songs of the late 20th century, but if forced to do so, I’d give “Last Christmas” a slight edge, largely because it’s so melancholy. I love to be put in a happy, bouncy mood by the slightly excessive joy of “All I Want For Christmas Is You”, but George pulls off one of my all-time favorite delicate balancing acts of bittersweetness, combining perfect proportions of cheer (jingle bells throughout the song!) with romantic despair. The attempt to put on a happy face in spite of heartache, the stubborn declaration of hope that the future will be better, somehow — all of it reminds me of another melancholy Christmas favorite, “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”

If you already love “Last Christmas”, yay! This is a great little international club to be in! If you don’t, I hope you’ll take another listen, with the freshest ears you can manage, and that you find something to love nestled in those beautifully gift-wrapped lyrics. If not, we’ll just have to muddle through somehow.

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The Week In Karen’s Tabs

Amazing reporting, infuriating story — “Behind The Scenes At The Dismantling of Roe vs. Wade” by Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak for The New York Times

On the other hand, The New York Times is often a real asshole — Soraya Shockley writes on Twitter: “When I worked @nytimes, speaking up abt biased coverage of Palestine was always met w/ repression. So often, the call was coming from inside the 🏠”

I stubbornly remain on Twitter because it’s still good for things like Naima Cochrane’s thread paying tribute to Sammy Davis Jr. on the 98th anniversary of his birth. I freaking love Sammy Davis Jr. so much. See also the season of You Must Remember This devoted to him and Dean Martin and this extremely wild blog entry/podcast episode of The Rialto Report [NSFW] that discusses his relationship with Chuck Traynor and Linda Lovelace post-Deep Throat. [Insert charmed chuckling here about how we both chose to highlight Naima Cochrane threads this week. — Dame S.]

Screen Slates' First Viewings and Discoveries of 2023 is a total treat with lots of celebrity guests including my crush of several decades, Ileana Douglas. Earlier this year I interviewed the talented and lovely actor Alexandra Turshen for the Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Quarterly and she had just made a movie with I.D. and graciously allowed me to ask what she was like and told me all about it — she rules, of course!

Story of the year? Saw this via BlueSky, so there is hope post-Twitter: “The Virus Inside Your TV” by Isaac Butler for Slate:

“Watch enough episodes of Melrose Place and you’ll notice other very odd props and set design all over the show. A pool float in the shape of a sperm about to fertilize an egg. A golf trophy that appears to have testicles. Furniture designed to look like an endangered spotted owl. It turns out all of these objects, and more than 100 others, were designed by an artist collective called the GALA Committee. For three years, as the denizens of the Melrose Place apartment complex loved, lost, and betrayed one another, the GALA Committee smuggled subversive leftist art onto the set, experimenting with the relationship between art, artist, and spectator.”