A local supergroup has been formed to spread some Christmas cheer, delivering a rocking version of Wham’s classic Last Christmas.

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Hannah Coakley and Clancy Davidson from local group smol fish have teamed up with Noah Dillon and Gia Como’s Jack Arbuckle to form the Jingleberries.

They got together for the final 2024 edition of RTRFM’s Slightly Odway. The Breakfast show segment usually features local musicians covering songs written by other Western Australian artists, but this week they loosened the rules for some Christmas flavour.

The Jingleberries aren’t the only local artists taking on the tune, drag performer Dean Misdale has also recently put out a version of the song.

Check out the latest take on the tune. 

The George Michael penned Last Christmas has been a Christmas favourite since it was first released in 1984.

Released at the height of Wham-mania, it appeared as a double A-side single alongside Everything She Wants, which was from the band’s second album Make It Big. 

The song was written by George Michael at his parent’s house, he sat in his teenage bedroom and wrote the song, while bandmate Andrew Ridgeley was reportedly downstairs watching TV.

The recording was a very simple one featuring only a drum machine, a keyboard, some sleigh bells, and George Michael’s vocals. Michael played all the instruments himself and is the only musician on the recording. Engineer Chris Porter has recalled that making the record was a tedious project.

After the song was released it was accused of being too similar to several other songs such as Kool and the Gang’s Joanna and Barry Manilow’s Can’t Smile Without You. The publisher of Manilow’s music took George Michael to court over copyright infringement, but the case was thrown out when a musicologist presented 60 songs that use a similar chord structure.

Over the years the song has been covered by Wigfield, Billie Piper, Cascada, Ashley Tisdale, Hilary Duff, Alcazar, Carly Rae Jepsen, Taylor Swift, Rita Ora, Gwen Stefani and many others.

It’s also the focus of the Whamageddon game, where people are challenged to make it all the way to Christmas Day without hearing the original version of the song being played.

Last week a British DJ was forced to issue an apology after playing the Christmas tune.  Matt Facer, aka DJ Matty, who provides music during football games slipped the tune on during a match between Northampton Town and Portsmouth, knocking 7,215 people out of the Whamageddon game.

“I never knew people took it so seriously,” he later told the BBC. “”I gave it a spin, thinking it would be quite funny to wipe out 7,000 people who couldn’t avoid it, but clearly it isn’t funny.”

Graeme Watson. 

Declaration: OUTinPerth Co-editor is a presenter at RTRFM 92.1 

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