Music Video Relapse: "Last Christmas" (1984) by Wham!

Posted by Adam Fairholm on December 5, 2013 in Music Video Relapse

Staff Post

wham.jpg

Is it just me, or does a lot of Christmas nostalgia come from the 1950s and the 1980s. I'm not saying that Christmas wasn't awesome in the 1970s or any other decade, but when we collectively pull things together from the past that we want to in our modern Christmas, these two time periods seem to be our nostalgia mines of choice.

One thing that really hasn't survived to modern times is the Christmas music videos of the 1980s, so let's drag some out into the limelight and give them their place in the sun on Music Video Relapse. Today we're watching 1984's "Last Christmas" by Wham!

The video finds Wham! and friends enjoying the boom years of the 80s by going up to a ski lodge for some festive holiday fun. As is to be expected, everyone is sufficiently done up in only the bulkiest of the bulky coats.

There's a lot of Christmas bustle inside this lodge/cabin. People are walking in from outside with logs and stuff and plates are being set for a big dinner. At that dinner, we learn that one of the ladies at the ski lodge is George Michael's former gal pal. In a flashback we see he gave her a 1980s brooch thing and she's still wearing it because hey, free brooch.

Looks like Andrew Ridgeley is her new squeeze though. Always a cool guy, George doesn't get flustered. He's not going to flip out about his friend loving all up on his former woman at his ski lodge (can you prove it isn't his ski lodge?). He sips some more of that sweet 1980s white wine. Goes down smooth. Andrew Ridgeley has some balls to pull this one. However, George Michael knows Andrew Ridgeley is just a stepping stone to big and better things than Wham!, all he has to do is wait. Wait and sip.

After dinner people are spaced out. I mean, really spaced out - like they are all coming down off of some powerful 1980s Christmas drug and not the white/red wine we all clearly saw them drink at dinner. After a night of spacing out, they leave, and that's that.

Judging by the sheer number of covers of this song, this is definitely on the list of Christmas songs you are going to know no matter when you were born. The video doesn't really have anything that we could call iconic in music video terms, but it's a fun video that at the very least makes us wish we had a ski lodge that we could go hang out in with our goofy Christmas drug friends. In the same way that the song is about moving on and not being super broken up about love lost, the video is about moving on as well. I get the feeling that even though George Michael will play their little ski lodge friend game, he's over it. He's got a notebook at home that has the saxophone part for "Careless Whisper" all laid out. Soon, George, soon.

Adam Fairholm is the co-founder and lead developer of IMVDb. You can find him on twitter at @adamfairholm.



More Music Video Relapse:


Most of the time on Music Video Relapse I am writing about a music video that is a classic for a good reason - either being iconic or just fondly remembered. Sometimes I write about a music video that was release relatively recently but I think needs a second look… Read More

As we've covered on the blog before, ABBA has an interesting history with music videos, using the form back in the late 1970s to spread their music to overseas markets. The videos, while pretty primitive, are well-done for their time, and they are almost all on their ABBA Vevo account,… Read More

When a video gets pulled off of YouTube, they usually tell you who made them do it. Usually it's a record label, but sometimes it's a random name. For instance, Iggy Azalea used to have a video called "Pu$$y," but it now says "This video is no longer available because… Read More

People whose jobs revolve around throwaway "viral" stories hit pay dirt last week when someone noticed that a radio station in LA was playing Nelly's 2002 hit "Hot In Herre" over and over again. This is apparently relatively standard procedure for radio stations undergoing a format change (it has since… Read More

IMVDb Blog




Site Sponsors

Add Your Company




RSS Icon Subscribe with RSS


Search the Blog


Recent Posts


Archive


Categories


Content on the IMVDb blog is ©2012-2024 IMVDb and FilmedInsert, LLC. All Rights Reserved.