Why the Mentals As Anything hit Live It Up is a shock contender for the UK Christmas No. 1 prize

Scottish football fans who have adopted an Aussie classic as their unofficial theme song are on a mission to beat Mariah Carey to the top of the UK charts.

Beloved Australian band Mental as Anything could end up Christmas chart kings in the UK with one of their biggest 80s hits.

The resurgence of their 1985 pop classic Live It Up began in October thanks to a group of diehard fans of Scottish football team Glasgow Rangers.

A video of Rangers fans plastering stickers celebrating their win over rivals Celtic all over town was soundtracked by Live It Up and subsequently went viral with more than 350,000 views on Twitter.

As the Mentals band members gathered last weekend to share memories in tribute of Greedy Smith on the first anniversary of his passing, the song was suddenly propelled to No. 1 on the UK iTunes chart.

They were in there for us. pic.twitter.com/Od99YdwuV5

— Union Bears (@UnionBears_07) October 19, 2020

And now the fans are on a mission to push the song even further.

The Rangers diehards are campaigning for Live It Up to beat Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas to claim the ultimate chart prize in the UK – No. 1 on the pop charts.

Mentals co-founder Pete O’Doherty said the song’s resurgence 35 years after its release was the “most unexpected, left-field, bizarre thing to happen.”

The song, which peaked at No. 2 in the Australian charts, reached No. 3 in the UK when it was first released there in the 1980s.

Could Mentals be the shock winner of the coveted Christmas No. 1 in the UK? Picture: News Corp Australia

“It did very well over there and also in parts of Europe like Germany and Norway and we did tour in the UK around 1986 and 1987,” O’Doherty said.

“When we put out the first single Nips Are Getting Bigger, it got good write-ups in the NME and Melody Maker which was no mean feat because those reviewers were not nice to Australian music most of the time.

“By the time we got there to tour, Live It Up was a big hit.”

The song enjoyed a huge boost on the charts around the world when it featured in the smash hit 1986 film Crocodile Dundee.

O’Doherty suspects it re-entered the consciousness of fans throughout the UK last year when it was used in the film Blinded By The Light.

The campaign by the Rangers diehard Union Bears fan group has spiked the song’s streams in the past week, with the Live It Up video closing in on 10 million views and 20 million streams on Spotify.

Live it up by Mental As Anything for Christmas number 1???

Where do I sign?

— Dave Jones (@disco_kkcc) December 9, 2020

The song has also entered the UK Spotify Viral chart.

“That may have jogged the memory of the Union Bear football fans who used it on the video,” he said.

O’Doherty said Greedy, who wrote Live It Up, “would have loved to have seen this happen.”

“We were just having a celebration to mark a year since his passing with his fiance Fiona when we got the news about Live It Up going to No. 1 on iTunes – it was ironic that it was almost a year to the day,” he said.

“Greedy would have been thrilled to see it go back on the charts.”