Every Christmas, the airwaves are filled with the sounds of festive tunes. But not all of them are created equal.

For every Fairytale of New York, there’s a TOWIE version of Last Christmas. So to avoid any pitfalls we asked you, dear readers, to tell us your favourites through our Facebook and our Twitter.

And you can find them, along with some of our personal favourites, in the Spotify playlist below so you can listen to them when and where you want.

But before then, here’s nine south London, Kent and Surrey links to some iconic Christmas tunes…

  • Among the many, many musicians featured on Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? in 1984 were Bexley’s Boy George; Simon Le Bon, who lives near Richmond; and Status Quo’s Francis Rossi, who grew up in Forest Hill.
  • In 1989, Band Aid II topped the charts with the same song and their line-up includes Lewisham brothers Luke and Matt Goss of Bros.
  • Band Aid 20 featured Busted, whose member Matt Willis was born in Tooting and Band Aid 30 included Bastille, whose singer-songwriter Dan Smith grew up in Putney.

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  • John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who recorded the festive classic Happy Xmas (War is Over) lived for a while in a mansion in Weybridge.

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  • Blur’s The Waissailing Song is a cult favourite at this time of year. The band’s members Graham Coxon and Alex James met on their first day at Goldsmiths Uni in the late 1980s.
  • David Bowie famously recorded a version of Little Drummer Boy with Bing Crosby. Bowie was born in Brixton in 1947, his family moved to Bromley in 1953 and he attended Burnt Ash Junior School and Bromley Technical High School. He later moved to Beckenham for a while.

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  • Wimbledon’s Wombles released their own Christmas song Wombling Merry Christmas in 1974, charting at number two. They followed it with the clunkily titled quai/cover I Wish It Could Be a Wombling Merry Christmas Every Day with Roy Wood of Wizzard in 2000 (chart: 22) and Wombling Merry Christmas in 2011.

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  • This year, Big Brother contestant Simon ‘Showbiz’ Gross, from Beckenham, has released his own Christmas single titled Christmas Showbiz. The video was shot at Tesco in Homesdale Road. Read more about it here.
  • Last year, Sidcup airman Flight Lieutenant David Emeny-Smith was among the singers on the RAF Spitfire Choir Christmas single. Here’s the full story.