The new season of Twelve Songs starts with an interview with Thomas Mertz, one of the founders of the social media game Whamageddon. To win the game, you must go from December 1 to Christmas without hearing Wham!'s "Last Christmas." Hear it and you're out. People play on social media on the honor system, but for Mertz, the fun is in the way the game has created a community. Since he is in Denmark, he and his friends have a slightly different Christmas canon, and when they started playing almost 20 years ago, "Last Christmas" had the kind of ubiquity in Denmark that "All I Want for Christmas is You" now has in the United States. We talk about Wham!, "Last Christmas," social media and Christmas music among other things, and I have scattered versions of "Last Christmas" throughout the episode. Covers are acceptable, so I have saved Wham!'s version to the very end and given listeners fair warning so that if people hear this episode in December, it won't put them out. I don't stop to identify the versions in episode, but this episode's playlist is (in order): "Last Christmas" - Carly Rae Jepsen "Last Christmas" - Lucy Dacus "Last Christmas" - Cano Caoli "Last Christmas" - Sweet Crude "Last Christmas" - Leo Moracchioli "Last Christmas" - Aloe Blacc "Jus Det Cool" - MC Einar "Last Christmas" - Stardeath and the White Dwarfs "Last Christmas" - Wham!

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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