Last Christmas peak chart position

American chicken production climbing as Wham's 1984 Christmas single climbs the December chart each year. Two completely unrelated annual phenomena that both, in this window, kept beating their previous best. The decade was good to legacy assets of either kind.

Last Christmas finally hit Number One on the UK chart in 2021, 36 years after release, with American Hot 100 movement also accelerating in the streaming era. US broiler chicken production grew from about 41 to over 44 billion pounds across this window as poultry continued displacing beef on per-capita protein and export markets expanded. Both lines reflect the same kind of compounding business: legacy products that found new annual demand whether through algorithms or through commodity-export growth. Different products, same kind of multi-year accumulation.

Old hits and old industries both compounded. The decade was generous to durable supply.