White Christmas (song) John's and Crosby's songs to be "winners" by stating that John's recording is the "best-selling single since UK and US singles charts began in the 1950s," while maintaining that "the best-selling single of all time was released before the first pop charts," and that this distinction belongs to "White Christmas," which it says "was listed as the world's best-selling single in the first-ever "Guinness Book of Records" (published in 1955) and—remarkably—still retains the title more than 50 years later." In 1999, National Public Radio included it in the "NPR 100", which sought to compile the one hundred most important American
Do They Know It's Christmas? Best Music Video, Short Form award, eventually losing out to its US counterpart song "We Are the World". The reception in December 1984 to the original single from the UK music press was mixed. Under a caption of "TURKEY" (a double meaning referring both to the traditional British Christmas meal and an artistic failure), the biggest selling music paper "NME" dismissed the song with the single line, "Millions of Dead Stars write and perform rotten record for the right reasons". The other two major music papers looked upon the record more favourably, recognising that while musically the song was flawed,