'We're the UK's biggest boy band!' Michael Ball and Alfie Boe, the new kings of Christmas
“We’ve topped the charts more than Wham! or Chas & Dave? We’re a mixture of them both,” jokes Michael Ball. I have just informed Ball and Alfie Boe that their three UK album No 1s also outstrip Simon & Garfunkel and, indeed, any non-family singing duo in history (the Carpenters also scored a trio, but two were greatest hits). Equally impressively, Ball & Boe’s latest charttopper, the festive collection Together at Christmas, is outselling BTS, the world’s biggest pop group.
“So we’re the biggest boyband in the country!” explodes Ball, 58, like a child opening a present, although the duo’s armoury of skills has not extended to the technical demands of the Zoom interview. The first words Ball says to me are: “How do we turn the camera on, Alf?” But suddenly, here they are – two grinning mates in dinner suits, their album cover come to life.
Ball, a musical theatre colossus and multi-platinum recording artist, and Boe, Britain’s most popular tenor, with four Top 10 solo albums, are huge stars in their own right. This does not entirely explain why Together at Christmas – an album of familiar festive classics with heartfelt singing and orchestral bells and whistles – is also trouncing festive offerings by such big names as
Michael Bublé and Dolly Parton. Boe recognises his combo’s enormous fanbase, “who’ve come to see us in Les Misérables or on tour for years and are very loyal”.
Ball mentions “the energy between us” – the bonhomie and chemistry that works in songs and is obvious over Zoom. “We enjoy each other’s company,” he smiles. “There’s no side to this.” But the nub of it is that Together at Christmas’s unmistakable Christmassy warm, nostalgic glow seems to tap into a national mood for something familiar and comforting after a year of Covid, grief and social distancing.
“When you break down Christmas carols and songs, you realise that this year totally contradicts everything that’s normal about Christmas,” agrees Boe, 47, the quieter, more thoughtful yin to Ball’s talkative, jokey yang. While they were recording, Ball felt that, too, and argues that the likes of Meredith Wilson’s 1951 It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas and the traditional carol God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen suddenly have “an added poignancy, a wistfulness, a sadness to them”.
Although Together at Christmas includes a new song – the banter-rich My Christmas Will Be Better Than Yours – most of the songs are well-worn, countlessly covered staples that have become so ubiquitous that it is a miracle they are topping the charts again in 2020.
“But that’s the point,” contests Ball. “Because Christmas is always a reflection on the year we’ve had, what we were doing when we were kids, the people we’ve lost,” and what Boe calls “an element of hope for what Christmas is going to be like”. Unexpectedly, it is all rather personal. Ball and Boe had not planned to make a Christmas album, but after their arena tour in March everything else got cancelled and they both contracted the virus.