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“If I was to spend time working out what the record company got – and those in that team of people around us – I would lose my mind,” she fumed, before going on to estimate that each member of the quartet has only been entitled to “maybe a seventh of one per cent” of ‘Mary’s Boy Child’’s million-plus sales. But, in an interview with The Guardian in 2011, Boney M singer Liz Mitchell revealed that they’d been screwed over by a nasty circle of Grinch-type figures in the music industry. The royalties generated from the UK’s biggest-selling non-charity Christmas single ( Wings’ cover of ‘Mull of Kintyre’ just isn’t a Yuletide song, sorry) should have ensured that its creators never needed to work again. And if you can get a track associated with Christmas, you get annual regurgitation, and potential for earning every year.” Boney M – ‘Mary’s Boy Child – Oh My Lord’ (1978) And because I’m a musician I can do all the backing track, so that’s all the recording royalty. I write the lyrics and the melody, so that’s all of the publishing. “The thing is, I do everything on the track. “‘Stop The Cavalry’ constitutes 50 per cent of my real income,” he once explained. According to the Mail, Lewie’s hit garners over £120,000 a year – which the 75-year-old rakes in all for himself, since he wrote the lyrics, melody and backing instrumentation. Slade – ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ (1973)Īn unlikely Christmas hit due to its anti-war theme – Lewie himself has expressed some bemusement with its festive appropriation – ‘Stop The Cavalry’ has gone on to become a staple sound of Christmas morning: think where we’d be without its triumphant brass section or that wistful “ wish I was at home for Christmas” line. The real questions we want to ask, though, are: how much dough is actually being earned by these artists at this most wonderful time of year? Who has to share the pot with songwriters, labels and hangers-on? And who got screwed over by the vampires of the music industry? Join us, won’t you, as we dash through the snow on a one-horse open sleigh to shine a light on music’s real-life Will Freemans. How else can the likes of Noddy Holder, Jona Lewie and Shakin’ Stevens be able to afford to add another extension onto their princely mansions without first receiving their annual festive pay packet? This backstory draws largely from reality, with many of the musicians whose hits soundtrack our Christmastime shenanigans every year being set for life off the back of one song.

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Remember Hugh Grant’s character Will Freeman in the 2002 film adaptation of Nick Hornby’s novel About A Boy? A wealthy and shallow bachelor in his late 30s, Freeman lives in a plush apartment, habitually dates women and browses the shelves of HMV (remember doing that?) in the daytime – free from the burden of having to go to work and actually earn a living every day.Īnd how does he afford to live such a life of luxury? It’s all because his dad penned a famous Christmas hit in the ‘50s, and its rolling snowball of royalties ensures that Hugh – sorry, Will – can live comfortably without ever having to lift a finger.