For the past five holiday seasons or so, a group of my friends and I have been (somewhat reluctantly at this point) playing the LDB game.

"LDB" stands for "Little Drummer Boy."

To win, you must survive the holiday season without hearing any version of "Little Drummer Boy." There are no prizes, just bragging rights that you successfully dodged another year of "Pa rum pum pum pum."

Now I've learned there's a new game in town. It's called Whamageddon.

To play this game, you just have to avoid hearing Wham!'s 1984 Christmas hit "Last Christmas" from December 1 to midnight on December 24. If you hear it, you're out. Grab the hashtag #whamageddon and enter "Whamhalla" by admitting your defeat on social media.

Want to win? Do NOT watch this video:

The good news? It's finally ok to watch Pee-wee's 1988 Christmas special during the holiday season. Go ahead, click on Grace Jones' "Little Drummer Boy":

(Lifehacker)

Thanks, Timmmii! Read the rest

This is Wham's "Careless Whisper" (1984) before George Michael took matters into his own hands. (The visuals are from the music video we know and love.) From Wikipedia:

The song went through at least two rounds of production. The first was during a trip Michael made to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he went to work with producer Jerry Wexler at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. Michael was unhappy with the version that was originally produced and decided to re-record and produce the song himself, this time coming up with the version that was finally released. The version Wexler produced did, was released later in the year, as a (4:41) B-side "Special Version" on 12" in the UK and Japan.

Read the rest

“Somebody told me.”

This is my Friday jam. "Everything She Wants," from 1984 by British pop duo Wham!. This is a perfect pop song, and you can buy it on vinyl.

It gives me wiggly dance-chills every time I hear it, and I was around when it first became a solid gold hit in 1984. Read the rest