Can a new song really become Christmas number one?

It’s Christmas time and there’s real reason to be afraid.

For the next few weeks it will be impossible to escape Wham and her story of giving people her internal organs; Noddy Holder’s foghorn declaration of holiday joy; or Mariah Carey’s holiday wish list (main item: You).

All of these songs are back in this week’s Top 40; and inevitably one of them is almost guaranteed to be this year’s Christmas number one.

This is a feature and flaw of the way graphs are calculated.

Since streaming figures were included in the countdown, the golden oldies have trampled current hits every December.

How about ringing the doomsday bells?

There is an argument that these songs should be collected in a separate list; just like compilations are excluded from the album countdown.

But in our world of abundance, maybe I can spread a joyful smile (sorry, I’ll stop that now, I promise). Because this year there’s real competition to save you from tears.

Here’s a look at who might be your new Christmas favorite.

Kylie is the biggest rival for Christmas’ number one with this sparkly pop frivolity.

It’s a brand new song recorded for the 10th anniversary edition of the Kylie Christmas album.

“I had a song that I had to exorcise,” he says. “It took 10 years to build.”

During a break in the Tension World Tour, he got into the Christmas spirit by hanging a stocking on the wall of the recording studio where it was recorded “when I probably shouldn’t have been doing anything”.

The track is exclusive to Amazon and gives it a significant graphics boost. When someone asks their smart speaker to play Christmas songs, Kylie is played first, and each stream is included in the Top 40.

“I have a slightly unhealthy obsession with Christmas and have wanted to write a Christmas song since McFly started 23 years ago,” says Fletcher.

He gets there by an unusual route, having written the score for the new Paddington musical, which opened in London last month.

One Of Us is the song, a soothing ballad written for the emotional turning point of the show, as the Brown family realizes how important the Peruvian bear has become to their family.

“The ideas behind Christmas are very much in line with Paddington, who essentially represents kindness,” says Fletcher.

“This feels like a good message to spread this time of year.”

Forget your sleigh bells and winter jumpers, Alison Limerick’s 1990 piano house classic is enjoying a renaissance after soundtracking a John Lewis Christmas advert.

Couldn’t be happier about this.

“This whole whirlwind of excitement is completely new because it wasn’t actually launched the first time,” he says.

“It was very early in the life cycle of house music coming from the underground. The DJs loved it and all the gay clubs loved it – but there was no media attention.”

In the ad, Limerick’s stirring delivery (“don’t make me say sorry”) brings back precious memories of a father receiving the 12-inch vinyl from his son.

But Limerick says he is unlikely to play his own songs on Christmas Day.

“I’ll wake up, have a song in my head, and my kids will play another piece of music to keep me from singing it for the next four days.

“And that’ll be fine, ’cause I’ll be singing in the blink of an eye.”

If anyone can capture the warm sounds of Christmas, it’s Laufey; his timeless jazz songs are the sonic equivalent of snuggling up in a cozy blanket with a cup of cocoa.

On the heels of her Grammy-nominated third album, A Matter Of Time, she released an extended version of her Christmas EP, A Very Laufey Holiday.

Contains this enticing rendition of Winter Wonderland, originally written in 1934 and covered more than 200 times.

“This is a holiday staple that really captures that initial excitement of the season when the weather starts to cool down, the snow starts falling, and everything is hidden in a blanket of white snow,” he says.

Already charting at No.18 in the UK, Winter Wonderland could give the star his first UK Top 10 hit. The sassy and quirky cover of Santa Claus is Coming to Town is not far behind.

“I wanted to make a classic but with a different approach [and] This recording contains lyrics from the original 1930s version that many people don’t know about.

“It was exciting to put my own spin on a classic and bring an old vibe to a new record.”

Fine Young Cannibals may have only released two albums in their lifetime, but songs like Johnny Come Home and She Drives Me Crazy still sound as fresh today as they did in the ’80s.

Frontman Roland Gift celebrates the 40th anniversary of the band’s debut single with a massive UK tour and a brand new Christmas song featuring this unmistakable voice.

But it could have been very different.

“It used to be called Pop Suicide,” he says, “and it was a very sad, dark song about kids getting into pop thinking about how to get into pop. [glamorous] and they either end up broke or worse.”

Luckily, a rewrite and the addition of some tubular bells made it much more cheerful.

“I love the feeling of it,” Gift says. “Let’s forget our troubles, let’s not fight anymore. Enjoy this period, we can put on our gloves again after New Year’s.”

Guernsey singer Emily Fern wrote the sparkling Christmas ballad in a church hall “completely by accident”.

“We were performing in a concert hall in Guernsey and we were one song short. We were pulling out all our songbooks when my pianist Adam stubbornly made a little trill on the piano and I said, ‘Oh, that sounds like a Christmas carol’ and it all just happened.”

When it was first performed, audiences requested it again and again. Realizing they had something special, a plan was made to record the song with a full string section at Abbey Road Studios.

“It didn’t feel real to me until the musicians arrived in their big buses that said ‘London Symphony Orchestra’,” Fern laughs.

Additionally, Happy Mondays legend Bez also attended the session. His contribution? We are playing triangle.

“Christmas is my favorite, favorite holiday,” says Alya.

Born in Russia, he grew up in poverty before moving to Ukraine. His first memories of Christmas are from his childhood in the town of Lviv, when he had to mend his own shoes and go from house to house singing Christmas carols to earn a little money.

These days, she’s a Grammy-winning singer for her work on the upcoming album White Sun’s Mystic Mirror.

The sparkling cover of Silent Night (“an endless song”) was recorded in the middle of a heatwave, but somehow manages to convey the serenity of a snow-covered winter day.

“While recording [a Christmas song] “You kind of put yourself in this magical state, emotionally, deliberately, energetically, in the middle of summer,” he says. And I feel like that actually adds magic to the creation.

“I want to feel every day of my life like Christmas, bright and cheerful.”