Kylie Minogue's XMAS makes the Official Christmas Number One in the UK

Kylie Minogue's XMAS makes the Official Christmas Number One in the UK - 2025

Kylie Minogue's single XMAS is now the official Christmas Number 1 in the UK. Yes, yes, yes – we don’t really “do” Christmas at Kuriositas (I seem to be saying that a lot recently) but this is quite the toe-tapper. Plus there’s a blissfully silly dance routine that is fairly straightforward to learn (think YMCA but… camper) to go with. I have to say, of course, that having grown up with Kylie (not literally but I did meet her briefly at a party once) that this isn’t what I would consider her best work. Yet it has certainly hit a nerve in the UK. It's her first Number 1 since Slow in 2003. No one puts Kylie in a corner for long. Well, what's a decade or two between friends?

It comes from her Kylie Christmas (Fully Wrapped) album, originally made specifically for the Christmas market (didn’t that used to be a sign of a career on the wane?) in 2015. XMAS has been added as a new bonus track for the reissued album, which is faring far better in 2025 than it did in 2015. Then it reached Number 12 in the UK chart, whereas in 2025 it has reached the top spot. Now she has the double whammy of a single and an album at the top of the charts. The album received average reviews on its initial release with most praise going to Kylie’s cover of The Pretenders’ 1983 hit 2000 Miles. XMAS is now its natural successor.

The video for XMAS features Kylie in a variety of Christmas outfits, but starts with her surrounded by numerous little helpers, who she proceeds to teach the moves to go with the letters X, M, A and S. They’re pretty quick learners and soon her whole yuletide entourage are splaying their arms about like there’s no tomorrow. Soon, the song and dance routine spreads around the world. Well it would, wouldn’t it?

The video concludes with Kylie in full on sexy Santa mode (those candy stripe trousers must have been sprayed on, frankly) with boundless energy and fake snow. The outro is a simple X-M-A-S repeated with little oh yeah we’re going asides and so horribly catchy that for the next week or so the nighttime streets of the UK are bound to be full of very drunk people reproducing the lyrics at the top of their voices as tunelessly as possible before doing the same in the local kebab shop. Before violently puking everything up on the way home. A country must have its traditions, after all.

So will it join the pantheon of great Christmas Number Ones? Lyrically, it’s fluffy. Musically it’s as close to simple as simple can get. And the dance moves are silly to say the very least. But it worms its way into your head like a great big giant wormy thing. So yes – absolutely.

Watch XMAS below.