Last Christmas by Wham!

I hate this song. I hate it enough to blog about it.  It is, quite possibly, the worst song ever written on many levels.

Ok, so I'm not a composer, myself, so I cannot judge the quality of the composition, or the music, etc. blah, blah.  What I am, however, is a listener.  A consumer, if you will.  Therefore, I believe I am qualified to judge the quality of the song based on my opinions, my tastes, and - frankly - the crappiness of the song.

Let me give you the first verse/chorus:

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart

But the very next day, You gave it away

This year, to save me from tears

I'll give it to someone special

First line: Ok, ok... so far, so good.  Nothing terribly original, but nothing overly dumb, either.

Second line: "... the very next day you gave it away..."

What?

I gave you my heart and then you gave it away?  How exactly does that work?  My understanding of metaphor would suggest that to give away ones heart would mean to fall in love and commit oneself to another.  So, if I fall in love and commit myself to somebody - give them my heart - just how, exactly, do they "give it away"?  Even if that were possible, wouldn't it suggest that the recipient of said heart just transferred the "gift" to another, so now somebody else had the giver's love and commitment?   In which case, what does that person care?  They are still in love and committed, just to somebody else.

Ok, clearly transference of another person's love is not actually possible.  So the song just insulted me by saying something stupid and expecting me to think "wow... that's clever!"

Line three:  Nothing inherently wrong with this line, though it is verging on trite.

Line four: "...I'll give it to someone special..."

Huh... so last year you gave it to someone you didn't think was special? Why would you have done that?  Why would you still be all hurt and upset and grudge-bearing about it a whole year later if the person you gave your heart to wasn't special?

Later in the song it goes: "...I thought you were someone special..."  So clearly, you did think they were special last year.  Based on the quality of the lyrics so far, and the fact that you're clearly still pining for the person you're singing this to, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that your judgment hasn't really cleared up all that much, and whoever you give your heart to this year will be just as "special" as last year's recipient.

On top of that, didn't you already say that this person "gave it away"?  So in order for you to give it to "someone special," you're going to have to track down the person who has it now, and take it back from them.

Worst of all, and this is arguably a good thing about the song, it has a catchy tune.  It gets stuck in your head and you can't get it out.  In some ways this is exactly what a song should do, if it's a good song.  Unfortunately, far too often, songs that get stuck in your head are horrible, so it becomes a form of torture.

What I really don't get is why this song has been covered by at least a half-dozen artists since Wham! released it in 1984.  The song is terrible.

It's not even a Christmas song!  It's a song about lost love and heart-break.  It uses "Christmas" as a setting, not an event, or anything.  Christmas songs are about the Savior, the season, the weather, or even about Christmas parties. 

Also, I couldn't get it out of my head last night.  Fell asleep with the song still repeating on that chorus.  Woke up in the middle of the night from a... not a nightmare, per se, but a bad dream in which everything in the dream was dependent on these lyrics being lobbed back and forth across the sky from giant trebuchets playing an immense game of jai alai.

After waking up, I tried replacing the song by singing different Christmas songs to myself.  Turns out all the good ones were in hiding and I ended up getting other annoying songs stuck instead (Jingle Bell Rock and I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, for example).

Around 8:00 am Last Christmas returned and has been with me ever since.  Even with other music playing.  It's awful.  Anyway, I figured if I can't rid my brain of the pain, I might as well share it.