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A couple hates “Last Christmas” by Wham! so much they’re trying to buy the song rights so they can take it off the air forever.
Tomas and Hannah Mazetti of Gothenburg, Sweden, hate “Last Christmas” by Wham! so much that they’re raising money to buy the song rights to take it off the air forever. The couple has already raised over $62,000, but they have an uphill battle ahead of them: the song is owned by Warner Chappell Music UK, and the rights are valued between $15 million and $25 million.
Hannah Mazetti, a 33-year-old painter, said her hatred for the song began 13 years ago when she worked in a cafe in Oxford where she heard the song on repeat during the holiday season. Last Christmas, she was discussing with her friends how much she despised the song and how much she would pay never to hear it again, which sparked further discussion and this year’s fundraiser.
“I was studying English and worked extra to pay the bills, and the owner of the cafe had planned for a super cozy holiday season and had his own made CD with a number of ‘hits’ on it,” says Hannah, a mother of three. “He was only in now and then, so he didn’t fully appreciate the agony the rest of the staff felt when ‘Last Christmas’ played for the 111th time of the working day.”
“It started last Christmas — pun not intended — when we asked friends how much they would be willing to pay never to hear the song again,” she continued. “Quite a lot, it turned out, and when the song started playing this November, we were reminded. Then someone told us it was theoretically possible to buy the rights to the song and then take it off all streaming platforms.”
“We asked around among our friends, and word spread. It’s fun because people either love or hate the idea! Maybe next Christmas will be the last Christmas!”
The Mazettis have set a goal of $15 million, which they say will take them to the next stage of negotiating with Warner Chappell Music UK. If they are successful, they intend to dump the master recording in a Finnish nuclear waste site “where it’ll rest for at least two million years.”
The couple clarifies that they don’t hate Wham!, but they do hate the song. However, their mission has received a hefty amount of backlash.
“Some people seem to love to hear the song 500 times a day. And those people are our enemies,” says Hannah. “They say that there are even worse songs that should be taken off before this — like Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas‘ — and that if we don’t like it, we could wear headphones, and that it is strange to want to remove something beautiful for the rest of humanity just because we don’t like it.”