In 2025 Amazon's own song was UK Christmas number one. Will Elton John's be next?
Elton John and Irish singer CMAT have a new version of Step Into Christmas. Among streaming services, only Amazon Music plays it.
What happened
Elton John and CMAT released a new version of Step Into Christmas, out now only on Amazon Music. Official Charts asks if it can give Amazon Music a second Christmas number one in a row.
Seven weeks before Christmas, Elton John and CMAT released a new Step Into Christmas. It mixes Elton John’s 1973 recording with new strings and the voice of CMAT, an Irish pop singer. Among streaming services, only Amazon Music has it. The old version first reached number 24 in , and it climbed to number 7 at Christmas 2025.
In 2025, for the first time, a song Amazon paid for was the UK Christmas number one. Kylie Minogue’s XMAS ended two years at the top for Wham!’s Last Christmas. It was not on Spotify or Apple Music, but people could play it on YouTube and buy it on CD and vinyl. Amazon says the new song follows “last year’s Christmas number one from Kylie Minogue”.
Two other songs aiming for Christmas number one came out the same week. Sam Fender sings the song for the 20th Christmas advert of the department store John Lewis. It is on every streaming service and will come out on vinyl and CD, with profits going to two charities. Olivia Rodrigo released her first Christmas song.
The chart has no public vote and no judges. It adds up UK sales, downloads and streams over one week, and the winner is announced on Christmas Day, Friday , on BBC Radio 1 and OfficialCharts.com.
The chart week runs from Friday December 18 until 11.59pm on Thursday December 24, with eligible UK sales and streams counting towards the result.
Official Charts, 4 November 2026, on the Christmas number one race
Sources: Official Charts (2, 3), Amazon, The Independent, The Guardian, BBC (2)
The Pattern
We looked for cases where a music streaming service put out a Christmas song of its own that was not on rival streaming apps, before the UK Christmas chart. We found eight Christmases from 2018 to 2025, all of them Amazon Music. Its song was number one once, in 2025. In the other seven years it reached between number 2 and number 56.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
In seven of the eight years a song anyone could stream took the top spot. LadBaby’s charity songs won from 2018 to 2022, and Wham!’s Last Christmas won in 2023 and 2024. Amazon’s song still came close: number 2, 4 and 1 in the last three years. The week after Christmas it climbed in six of the eight years, once to number one with Ellie Goulding’s River in 2019.
There are reasons for doubt. Each time it was the same company deciding, Amazon, and its only win came last year. The John Lewis advert song made the top 100 of the Christmas chart only twice in those eight years. This year Sam Fender sings it, and his duet with Olivia Dean, Rein Me In, spent 23 weeks at number one, longer than any other song in the UK chart. Kylie Minogue’s XMAS was announced with CD and vinyl from the first day, and Amazon has not announced either for Step Into Christmas.
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