Wham!’s Andrew Ridgeley reflects on 40 years of ‘Last Christmas’: It’s ‘part of the fabric of Chrismas’

nypost.com:

George Michael give up his heart on “Last Christmas,” he knew the beloved yule tune was something special.The magic moment happened when the holiday spirit hit his late bandmate in his childhood bedroom in London.“We were killing time around his mom and dad’s house.

It was a Sunday afternoon, and the soccer was on TV,” Ridgeley, 61, told The Post. “And George disappeared upstairs [where] he had a little Fostex four-track recording studio, which used a cassette tape to record four tracks onto.

And [he] came back about an hour later and said, ‘Andy, Andy, you gotta come upstairs and listen to this!’”What Ridgley heard “written on the spot” was the beginning of the “Last Christmas” journey to 40 years of festive feels.“He’d written the bare-bones keyboard track, the basic drum track and a bit of the verse and the chorus,” he recalled. “And it was an amazing moment … I knew it was a hit record.

We’d had a few by then, so we were able to recognize them when we heard them.”Indeed, “Last Christmas” — released four decades ago on Dec.