"Last Christmas, I gave you my heart" — and honestly, so did George Michael's four chords, because he never once asked for them back. This is the holiday earworm that has been legally required to play in every supermarket since 1984, and now you can inflict it on your own living room with a single guitar.
This clip is a MelodyChords fingerstyle arrangement of Wham!'s "Last Christmas" — melody and chords stacked onto one instrument, no band, no synth, no reindeer. Tabs are included, so you can learn every phrase instead of humming and hoping.
How this Last Christmas fingerstyle arrangement works
Here is the beautiful, slightly embarrassing secret of "Last Christmas": the entire song is one four-chord loop that never changes. In D major it's D – Bm – Em – A7, which is a textbook I – vi – ii – V turnaround. Verse, chorus, that endless outro — the same four chords, over and over, like a snow globe you can't stop shaking. Learn the loop once and you have basically learned the whole tune.
The fingerstyle part is where MelodyChords earns its name: your thumb keeps the bass note ticking on the lower strings, your fingers hold the chord shape, and the highest note of each shape carries George's vocal melody. The practical trick is to keep that top voice as the loudest, clearest note every time — re-voice each of the four chords so the melody note sits on top, and the arrangement almost plays itself. If you've never stacked a tune onto chords before, Twinkle Twinkle is a gentler place to start.
Give it your heart this year, and if the very next day someone gives it away, at least you'll have a party trick ready for next December. The full Guitar Pro files and the original videos live on my Patreon.