Christmas Number One Odds 2024: Wham! tussle with Tom Grennan to top charts
The race for Christmas Number One is well and truly on as we enter the final week before BBC Radio 1 host their chart show on Friday night. It means the next few days are crucial for streaming, purchasing or listening to your favourite tunes. Below we’ve taken a look at the Christmas Number One Odds 2024, and assessed where the value could lie heading into this final week.
Wham! @ 2/9
Wham!’s 1984 smash hit - ‘Last Christmas’ is the favourite to take top spot 40 years after its initial release. Interestingly, it didn’t make it to number one in 1984 as Band Aid pulled out all the stops with ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. That was clearly a vintage year for classic Christmas songs, but Wham! did make it to number one on Christmas Day for the first time last year.
If they do hit number one again on Friday, it will be the first time in chart history that the same song by the same artist has been Christmas Number One for two consecutive years, although Queen managed it with Bohemian Rhapsody in 1975 and 1991.
Meanwhile LadBaby, Spice Girls and the Beatles have all enjoyed successive consecutive Christmas Numbers Ones, with different songs each year.
Odds correct at time of publishing.
Tom Grennan @ 8/1
British pop star Tom Grennan is a new contender to take the number one spot with his new track ‘It Can’t Be Christmas’. This song is an Amazon Original which means it can’t be found on Spotify, but Sam Ryder came a close second to Wham! last year having also released a song only on Amazon.
Whether Grennan can overhaul the classic remains to be seen, but this is a belting modern Christmas song that could top the charts. Whether Amazon has the ability to overhaul the other streaming sites on their own is another question, but Grennan will be right up there and is currently the second-favourite to be Christmas Number One. To make things more interesting, Grennan has got a tattoo on his thigh that reads ‘Christmas No.1 2024 is…’
That tattoo could be iconic this time next week, and the song is climbing. It first entered the Top 40 two weeks ago reaching number 25, before reaching number six last Friday. Now number two in the latest charts, could it take top spot?
Odds correct at time of publishing.
Mariah Carey @ 16/1
Back to the old classics now, and Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Chistmas Is You’, released in 1994, is in the running once again. This is a staple in the build-up to Christmas, and as a result often finds itself near the top of the charts.
In 2021 it was named as the most-streamed song in the United Kingdom while in 2020 it finally reached number one for the first time, 26 years after it first came out. Amazingly, this song has never secured the coveted Christmas Number One spot in the UK.
It has broken records all over the globe. In Austria it tied the record for Elton John’s 1997 version of ‘Candle in the Wind’ with 18 weeks at number one, while it had a record-breaking 70 weeks in the UK charts before reaching number one back in 2020. It is a must-have on your Christmas playlist and currently number three, but number one may just be beyond Mariah this year.
Odds correct at time of publishing.
Band Aid 40 @ 16/1
Band Aid are back, this time with a new release to commemorate the 40th anniversary of their initial release in 1984. However, they’ve put together a mix of all of their previous releases, featuring singers from Tony Hadley to Sam Smith - spanning the generations.
There’s been some fuss around this record as Ed Sheeran declined the use of his vocals on the track, feeling the message had changed. Spandau Ballet singer Hadley, who sang on the original 1984 single, hit back on BBC Radio 2: "I think they [critics like Sheeran] should shut up, to be honest."
Hadley added: "If you take that route, then nobody does anything to help anybody. So it's just nonsense...
"Everybody's doing their bit to try and support various charities and we were doing our bit, innocently, to support what was happening in Ethiopia... So what do we do? Do we sit back and do nothing?"
Either way, I think Band Aid 40 doesn’t have too much hope of sitting on top of the tree this Christmas.
Odds correct at time of publishing.
Check out our Specials Betting Tips here.
