So there you have it… Merry Xmas Everybody is most popular in its home country of the UK, with listeners in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark trailing close behind. Everyone is having fun in Japan, Brazil, Iceland and the Bahamas too.
Based on data provided by PRS for Music, the organization that represents the rights of more than 165,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers, the song has been streamed, downloaded, streamed and performed in countries as wide-ranging as Peru and Djibouti.
Winning the UK Christmas Number 1 slot in December 1973, Merry Xmas Everybody, which was co-written by Noddy Holder and Jimmy Lea, was the rock band's sixth Number 1 hit, surpassing I Wish It Could Wizzard's Be Christmas Everyday tops the charts. . Since its release 50 years ago, the track has regularly returned to the chart every December and spent a total of 114 weeks on the Official UK Singles Chart.
Last year, over the festive period, Merry Xmas Everybody received over 3,376,507 seconds, or 5.5 consecutive weeks, of airtime in the UK. Proving to be an enduring favorite with British audiences, the song received more airplay in Lincolnshire, Leicester, Stoke and Cornwall.
Over the past five decades, Merry Xmas Everybody has been covered many times, including a special performance by the British rock band Oasis, who recorded an acoustic version in 2000 for the Christmas special of the British sitcom The Royle Family, the same year as the dance of the decade 90's – Pop group Steps released a version and featured it on the children's TV series Live & Kicking.
German alternative rock punk band Beatsteaks did it in 2010. With Robbie Williams including it on his 2019 album The Christmas Present, he enlisted the vocals of jazz aficionado Jamie Cullum to perform.
More recently, Girls Aloud's performance features in online retailer Very Let's Make It Sparkle's Christmas 2023 campaign.
Speaking to PRS for Music's M Magazine in 2011 about the Christmas hit, Noddy Holder said: “We cut [Merry Xmas Everybody] in the USA in the late hot summer of 1973. The studio was in an office block and we sang the chorus in the stairwell next to the studio to get that echo effect. Four English blokes singing about Christmas… the office workers must have thought we were crazy!
Then we took it back to England and played it at Polydor, and flipped it. It went straight to number one and sold a million copies in the first week. It was up to that point the fastest selling single ever in the UK. We knew we had a big hit when we wrote it, but for it to still be going strong all these years later… well, we never imagined it.”
