Merry Xmas Everybody - Release

Release

Before its release, "Merry Xmas Everybody" received about half a million advance orders. 350,000 copies were bought upon its release on 7 December 1973. On 15 December it became the third song by Slade to enter the UK Singles Chart at number one (all in 1973) and the sixth number one of their career, and became the fastest selling single in the UK. Polydor, Slade's record label, were forced to use their French pressing plant to keep up with the demand, and the song eventually went on to sell over one million copies, becoming the Christmas number one of 1973, beating another Christmas-themed song, "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday" by Wizzard. "Merry Xmas Everybody" remained number one until mid-January, and stayed in the charts for a total of nine weeks. That it remained in the charts after Christmas caused confusion for Holder, who wondered why people continued to buy it.

For the fan club newsletter in 1979, Jim Lea spoke of the b-side "Don't Blame Me", "Don't Blame Me was a time-filler, I think that it was created as that. When it was used as a b-side, we didn't even know it was being used, it was chosen by the offices. We were in America recording the Christmas single, there was a rush to choose what to put on the back of it, and that track happened to be used."

In the September–December 1986 Slade fan club magazine, the poll results were announced for the 1986 opinion poll based on Slade’s material. For the best single of the 70s, 'Merry Xmas' Everybody placed at #2.

The song was sampled in the 1989 track "Let's Party" from Novelty pop music act Jive Bunny and the Mastermixers, where The Sun newspaper stated Slade received £20,000 for the featuring of the track. A Slade spokesman at the time said this was exaggerated. The "Let's Party" track would peak at #1 on the UK chart, whilst becoming successful all across Europe.

For the song's first CD single release in the late 1980s, the Slade fan club of early 1990 had confirmed the CD single had sold 15,000 copies within the UK.

In a December 1984 interview with Record Mirror, the magazine tested Lea's memory by asking him to recall the story behind certain hits. For Merry Xmas Everybody, Lea stated "Nod had written the chorus of it in 1967. In those days it was all flower power and Sgt. Pepper and Nod had written this tune. The verse was naff but then he came to the chorus and went 'Buy me a rocking chair to watch the world go by, buy me a looking glass, I'll look you in the eye' - very Sgt. Pepper. I don't use tape recorders, I just remember everything and if something's been written 10 or 15 years ago, it stays up there in my head. I never forgot that chorus, and I was in the shower in America somewhere thinking - Boy Dylan, Boy Dylan - and suddenly out came 'are you hanging up the stocking on the wall' and I thought that'll go with that chorus Nod did in '67. So I rang Nod and said what about doing a Christmas song and he said alright, so I played it to him and that was it. We recorded it in the Record Plant in New York which is on top of a skyscraper. We said we needed an echoey room but in those days nobody went for this big, big sound that they're all into now. These engineers thought we were mad, they're going 'no man, you know the Eagles, a very tight sound, 'Hotel California and all that pinging out of the speakers at you. I said what about the hallway downstairs and they went 'we can't use the hallway, there's all these businessmen walking through for the other offices'. Anyway we ran lines down to the hallway and there we were in September singing 'so here it is merry Xmas' and we were totally unknown over there and people thought we were mad. Of course it was a monster hit and now we have to keep competing with it every Christmas. Polydor send us crates of champagne every year and we keep telling them, we don't drink the stuff, we don't like it - give us beer."