Merry Xmas Everybody – Slade
As Christmas heroes go, Noddy Holder is a pretty unlikely one. A gurn-faced, sideburn-toting rocker from the Black Country, he’s hardly an angel you’d stick on top of a Christmas tree – switching on the Blackpool lights would be more his thing. But the lord works in mysterious ways, and so it is Holder’s fanfare that announces the annual coming of fairy lights and credit card debt.
‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ was, in fact, the first Christmas number one in the modern sense. Released on 7 December 1973, it beat Wizard’s ‘I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday’ to the top spot, ushering in the era of novelty pop songs vying for sales supremacy.
Slade’s Top of the Pops performance isn’t a music video as such, but it captures the carefree spirit of the song. The band play in a getup that could best be described as ‘clown-chic’ for a vaguely enthused audience of teens and children. A brave few attempt to pump their fists in time to the music (they fail). Noddy wiggles his hips in the manner of a sherry-soaked septuagenarian (he’s rubbish). Yes it’s naff, but this is honest, irony-free entertainment.