“Wonderful Christmastime” - Paul McCartney (1979) #10 (1984 Christmas chart re-issue)

McCartney’s song enjoys significant Christmastime popularity in the UK, US, and Canada. The notable synthesizer riff was played on a Sequential Circuits Prophet-5. The song was later added as a bonus track on the CD reissue of Wings’ Back to the Egg (along with its original B-side, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae.”) Although the song did not chart on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, it reached #6 in the UK Singles chart.

Fellow ex-Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison had already released such numbers (with 1971’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and 1974’s “Ding Dong, Ding Dong,” repectively), and Ringo Starr made a Christmas album decades later (1999’s I Wanna Be Santa Claus.) Of all of the former Beatle seasonal offerings, Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” have become two of a large number of popular Christmas songs played year after year.Last year, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) ranked the song #25 of the “Top 25 most performed ASCAP holiday songs of the past five years.” Several artists…including Jars of Clay, S.K.Y., Jump5, Earthsuit, Hilary Duff, Tom Mcrae, and Demi Lovato…have all covered the song through the years.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 20th, 2008 at 4:22 pm and is filed under The Chart Guy, Billboard, Christmas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.