Marcel Winatschek

The xx: Last Christmas

The xx’s Last Christmas is just the sadness. They stripped away everything—the pop sheen, the production, most of the arrangement. What’s left is the actual song underneath, the part about something ending right when everything’s supposed to be joyful.

Two voices, some sparse electronics, all that space the band’s known for. The original Wham! song had melancholy in it from the start, just buried under the production. This version doesn’t apologize for that sadness. It leans into it.

I listened to it on repeat one December, after something ended in November. It wasn’t cathartic or anything. Just the right amount of quiet for the season, the right amount of sadness for that particular kind of loneliness you feel when everyone else is celebrating.

The band understands restraint. They know that sometimes the less you hear, the more you feel. Silence matters as much as sound. In Last Christmas, the space between the voices is where all the hurt lives.

It’s been a tradition since then. Whenever December comes around, I put this on instead of the version I knew growing up. Once you hear it this way, you can’t un-hear it. Can’t go back to the original. It solves something I didn’t know was broken.