The xx - Last Christmas (Wham! cover)
It doesn’t happen too often that one of your favourite bands does a Christmas song. At least, except if you were a fan of Wham! or something before. In 2012 though it has been quite different than the years before. This year Sufjan Stevens released a very large -58 track- Christmas album, Cee-Lo Green decided to do a Christmas album and there was a compilation with among others Fruit Bats, The Shins and Sharon van Etten playing Christmas song. 2012 is loving in Christmas. Another sign of the change of game in 2012 is this cover of Wham!’s Last Christmas by the xx, a band that you wouldn’t really imagine playing Christmas songs, for BBC Radio 1’s Live Lounge.
With the xx’s melancholy and good sense of drama it probably is the only Christmas song they could have covered, being about heartbreak and everything. Their cover shows the band’s signature style; reverb-y guitars, simple but cool drums, and the boy/girl vocals accompanying each other beautifully. The band also played a somewhat stripped down version of their song Chained brilliantly, which is also worth checking out. Perhaps 2013 will be the year of new Easter music.
