Staggering amount Noddy Holder earns in royalties for Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody
It's that time of year again. The mulled wine is out, the Christmas markets are overcrowded, and you're watching Home Alone for the umpteenth time.
You're also likely to be a few quid short, given how expensive festivities can be.
Well, not if you've written a Christmas banger at any point in your life. And Noddy Holder is no different.
Christmas and music go hand in hand; just look at Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'. Re-entering the charts every single year - and even more so since streaming was introduced into the official metric - the queen of Christmas earns an absolute bucketload from royalties, new purchases, and streams on the likes of Apple Music and Spotify.
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Obviously, Carey's hit is very much a US arrival on our British shores.
And while many love it, it has arguably got nothing on the likes of British acts Slade, Wizzard, and Shakin' Stevens and their own Christmas bangers.
Top of the pile for many is Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody', a number one record from way back in 1973 beating Wizzard's 'I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday'.
It remained in the charts for nine weeks, meaning that even after Christmas 1973 was done and dusted, people kept coming back for more in the bleak January and February months.
Written by Slade frontman Noddy Holder and bassist Jim Lea, the money made from this song continues to come in more than half a century later.
In fact, every decade since it was released, it has been put back out there to buy, with endless covers of it also recorded by other mainstream artists.
Combined with the introduction of monetised streaming, it's become an annual pay check for Holder and Lea.
In an interview with PRS Music's magazine, M, Holder recalled the night he wrote the famous lyrics we still all sing to this day.
"The idea for a Christmas song came from Jimmy Lea's auntie, who suggested we do a perennial-type song like 'Happy Birthday'," Noddy said.
"The song that eventually became 'Merry Xmas Everybody' was written in 1967. It was a hippy-trippy thing and the chorus went: 'So won't you buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by / Buy me a looking glass to look me in the eye-eye-eye...'.
"Anyway, one night in 1973 I was staying at my parents' in the Midlands after a few drinks down the local pub. The whisky bottle came out when I got in and I rewrote that earlier song in two hours, using the same music for the chorus but changing the words and adding the verses."
Holder said he wanted the song to paint a picture of a 'typical working-class Christmas', explaining: "You know, granny getting up and having a dance and worrying about how much room there is with all the relatives around."
According to the Performing Right Society in 2013, the success of 'Merry Xmas Everybody' sees Holder bring in more than £500,000 every single year from just that song alone.
However, Channel 5 estimates in 2016 put this at more than £1 million a year.
Now we're in 2024, all we can say is Holder is laughing all the way to the bank and back every time he hears the words 'IT'S CHRISTMAS'.
Tom Earnshaw