Last Christmas by Wham! is an ambiguous and confusing head fuck

Last Christmas by Wham! is an ambiguous and confusing head fuck

Like listening to your eight year old self making an enthusiastic but mostly inaccurate attempt at describing sexual intercourse, the lyrics to Last Christmas by Wham! make absolutely no god damn sense whatsoever.

“Last Christmas
I gave you my heart”

Clearly we are in metaphor territory, only apparently we're not:

“But the very next day you gave it away.”

So George Michael has given his heart away to someone who has in turn re-gifted it to somebody else. How does that work exactly?

Is George Michael no longer in control of his heart and compelled to love a stranger chosen by the very person who spurned his affections? What in the name of honey-glazed fuck is going on here?

The final lines only add to the confusion:

“This year
To save me from tears
I'll give it to someone special.”

At this point George Michael is one year older and wiser. He has regained possession of his heart; how, we do not know and George can or will not say. Possibly it has been returned to him by the recipient, perhaps out of pity or embarrassment, or in exchange for a small sum of money. Or it might be that legal ownership of the heart reverted back to George after a period of time had elapsed.

No further insight is provided in the remainder of the lyrics which are sketchy at best and would not hold up as testimony in court. Consider the following verse:

“I wrapped it up and sent it
With a note saying, "I love you,"
I meant it.”

What the shitting hell did you wrap up and send George?. If it was a heart then it clearly wasn't your own and was only yours in the sense that you momentarily possessed it. Before that it beat inside the chest of a terrified living thing.

For fuck's sake George who did you kill?

Jesus fucking Christ!