Single, Biggest

It’s the biggest-selling physical single record of all time.

Despite its name, this song was written by a Jewish immigrant to the US and was either written at the La Quinta Hotel in California or the Arizona Biltmore.

And when you hear the title, you’ll know why this is a 𝘛𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤 𝘛𝘢𝘭𝘦.

Its initial first wide release was in a movie, and it was a man/woman duet. The script’s original draft called for this song to be solo…by a woman. As it turned out, the song’s singer would later go on to record the song - solo - before the movie came out, and surprisingly - to us now - it didn’t sell well. The male singer stated that he “…didn’t even see anything special about it… “ Amazingly, it was recorded in all 18 minutes, in a time when there were no multi-track tape machines - everything was sung or played in the same take.

The song was recorded many years ago, in 1942, and his nephew, many years later, asked his uncle what the most challenging thing he ever had to do during his entertainment career… “He said in December 1944, he was in a USO show with Bob Hope and the Andrews Sisters. They did an outdoor show in northern France… he had to stand there and sing (this song) with 100,000 G.I.s in tears without breaking down himself. Of course, a lot of those boys were killed in the Battle of the Bulge a few days later.” The song was, and is, 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 moving.

The song we know and love today isn’t the first version, but a 1947 re-recording, done with the intent of matching the original recorded in 1942, save the introduction with flutes and celesta. The tape for the first one had been worn out.

And the 50 million sales I cited earlier were just for the original singer’s version; recorded by other artists, the total number of sales for this one song exceeds 100 million, both physical and digital.

The recording was even used as a secret, pre-arranged signal precipitating the U.S. evacuation from Saigon, when it was broadcast on Armed Forces Radio on April 30, 1975.

For, you see, the biggest-selling physical single record of all time is NOT by the Beatles… Elvis… or Sinatra. 

It was composed by the master composer Irving Berlin and sung by the hugely successful Bing Crosby.

“White Christmas”.