Pet Shop Boys, “ It Doesn’t Often Snow at Christmas” (1997) The violin solo is a delicious and unexpected flourish.ģ9.
How much innuendo can one superstar stuff into a 2-minute, 40-second-long song? Plenty, insists Ariana Grande, whose slinky ode to Christmas, um, relaxation puts to euphemistic use such holiday staples as milk and cookies, gingerbread and candy canes, and the Little Drummer Boy (“I’m the only drum that you gonna play”). Ariana Grande, “ Wit It This Christmas” (2015) “Christmas,” sings blues guitar great Albert King, “is for the children.” As for Christmas Eve: “Mama’s in the kitchen cookin’/And her children are fast asleep/It’s time for ol’ Santa Claus/To make his midnight creep.”Ĥ3. Albert King, “ Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’” (1974) Dolly Parton, “ Go Tell It on the Mountain” (1990)Ī hearty and wise rendition of the classic testimonial, which starts out contemplative before erupting, about halfway through, into a double-time gospel rave-up.Ĥ4. But scrutinize the lyric sheet and you find surprises: jokes and puns, images of Santa Claus getting drunk and bareback-riding reindeer, and a homely vision of a middle-class English Christmas (“Are you waiting for the family to arrive?/Are you sure you got the room to spare inside?”).Ĥ5. This revved-up Christmas perennial, a smash hit in the U.K., comes on like a party anthem, with a singalong glam-rock chorus.
The song is winningly sung by Vann’s 5-year-old daughter, Akim, who slips in a “Happy Kwanzaa” for good measure. Akim & Teddy Vann, “ Santa Claus Is a Black Man” (1973)Ī charming Afrocentric answer to “ I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus,” masterminded by songwriter-producer Teddy Vann. “Seems like everybody else is having fun / I wonder if I’m the only one,” Musgraves sings - but of course there are millions like her.Ĥ7. Kacey Musgraves teams with two frequent co-writers, Brandy Clark and Shane McAnally, to craft a ballad of quiet desolation, a Christmas bummer classic. Kacey Musgraves, “ Christmas Makes Me Cry” (2016) Lennon’s 1971 Christmas single came on the heels of “Imagine,” and it had a similar blend of protest and pomp: an antiwar message whisked together with Christmas utopianism, buoyed by a cresting melody and booming production by Phil Spector.Ĥ8. John Lennon was of course regarded as McCartney’s salty, skeptical counterpart, yet he was not averse to his own brand of kitsch. John Lennon and Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir, “ Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” (1971) Even a piece of pure Tin Pan Alley pap like “Frosty the Snowman” has the power to stir spiritual pangs and induce spasms of nostalgia.Ĥ9.
Yet their association with the holiday season has given these songs an aura similar to that of “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” “Good King Wenceslas” and other immemorial hymns. The songs are goofy, schmaltzy and nearly always crassly commercial, bald-faced in their eagerness to cash in on Christmas. Those midcentury Christmas hits range from chirpy novelties (“Holly Jolly Christmas”), to sentimental ballads (“I’ll Be Home for Christmas”) to story-songs aimed at kids (“Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”). But radio station and streaming platform playlists are dominated by Christmas pop songs, the vast majority of which were composed in the years during and immediately following World War II. The Christmas canon includes many traditional carols. In December, we long to hear songs, as Irving Berlin once put it, “just like the ones I used to know.”
Of course, nostalgia is built into the holiday season, when our secular religion of capitalist consumption gets stirred together with Christian traditions, ancient pagan rites and a vague longing for the old-fashioned comforts of home, hearth and the pastoral yesteryear. But once a year, a soundtrack that reaches back decades and centuries chimes into earshot once more. Generally speaking, pop music prizes novelty - fresh songs, surprising sounds, this week’s hit, the Next Big Thing.
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