Pogues Xmas Song Hits One Million Sales Mark In UK

For the past eight years The Pogues' collaboration with the late Kirsty MacColl, Fairytale Of New York, has jumped back into the UK charts annually in the lead up to Christmas.

This year, on the 25th anniversary of the track's original release, its annual sales bump pushed it into the record books.

The song has never reached the number one position but with this holiday season's sales it became the latest single to sell a million copies in the UK - the 126th track to do so. It was one of nine singles to push past the million-selling mark in the UK in 2012 (only two of those tracks were actual 2012 releases - Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know and Carly Rae Jepsen's Call Me Maybe).

However it remains only the eighth highest-selling Christmas single in British music history. The biggest seller is 1984's Band Aid epic Do They Know It's Christmas. The rest of the top ten sellers are: #2 Mary's Boy Child - Boney M (originally released in 1978); #3 Last Christmas - Wham! (1984); #4 Merry Xmas Everybody - Slade (1973); #5 Mary's Boy Child - Harry Belafonte (1957); #6 Do They Know It's Christmas - Band Aid 20 (2004); #7 White Christmas - Bing Crosby (1942); #9 The Millennium Prayer - Cliff Richard (1999); #10 When A Child Is Born - Johnny Mathis (1976).

The Pogues have a long way to go to catch up to Band Aid as Do They Know It's Christmas is the UK's second biggest selling single in its chart history (Elton John holds down the biggest seller with his Candle In the Wind 97 release).

The current list of the UK's top sellers includes a few Australian artists as well:
#5 You're The One That I Want - Olivia Newton-John (& John Travolta)
#20 Summer Nights - Olivia Newton-John (& John Travolta)
#36 The Carnival Is Over - The Seekers
#52 Somebody That I Used To Know - Gotye (featuring Kimbra)
#73 Can't Get You Out Of My Head - Kylie Minogue
#88 I Remember You - Frank Ifield

Read the full UK top selling singles of all time chart here.