Musical Thoughts From The Day Before

Published by Rick on Tagged Uncategorized

I’m currently listening to BBC Radio 2, which on December 24 at 3:30 in the afternoon is playing that Christmas Classic “Sweet Child Of Mine” by Guns N Roses, and the pangs of nostalgia for wrapping presents and placing them under the tree are exemplified by hearing that tune. Well, no, though it’s actually a bit amusing to be hearing that song at this time, not a fave of mine, but applause to Slash’s guitar work on it. And it’s certainly a break from hearing the usual suspects that after tomorrow night, I don’t have to hear again for another 11 months or so.

Actually, there’s only a few seasonal hits that I’m truly not fond of, but they’re ones that everybody else can’t seem to get tired of. I’ve been living in UK for 16 years now, and was always impressed by the country’s holiday musical menu. Great songs like Merry Xmas Everybody by Slade, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard, and Fairytale of New York by The Pogues are just three examples of songs that piss all over any of the US’s output of the last 40 years or so, and yet get no airplay on US radio. Then the one English hit apart from the Band Aid single (and only the original from 1984, none of the remakes) that gets US airplay is Wham’s Last Christmas.

A shame about that last one, very revered over here, which still does little for me. I think the whole gist of the song is expressed in the first 30-40 seconds, then the remaining nearly four minutes is for me just embellishment. I can see what the appeal is, though, and the fact that George Michael died on Christmas Day three years ago, gives it a certain bit of immortality. Certainly on my DJ sets the past few weeks, I had to put my skepticism aside and trot it out. Let it be clarified that I don’t dislike the song, just not bowled over by it.

One song I truly DON’T like is Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You, which by the way is not even an original title, as it was the exact title of a seasonal release by Carla Thomas in 1963.  Mariah may not have heard of Thomas’s song, fair enough, but she certainly heard the Phil Spector Christmas album, and her song so wishes it had come out in 1963 so it could have been on that album. It’s a fitting tribute to such an influential sound, but I can’t understand why it continues to gain further popularity each year, enough so that this year, it reached #1 on the US pop charts for the first time since its original release in 1994. It’s an odd legacy that it’s probably the most popular US seasonal song of the last 50 years, eclipsing Elmo & Patsy’s cornball novelty Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer from the early 80’s, so maybe it’s not that awful a thing. Elmo & Patsy were friends of mine in the pre-Grandma days (by the time the song hit, they had divorced), and just a few days ago I was looking through my old Christmas cards, and found I had actually gotten one from them!

Another song that annoys me no matter who sings it is Santa Baby. Surely when Eartha Kitt recorded it in 1953, it was considered pretty provocative, but I wasn’t aware of the song until about 25 years after its first release. Over the next decade or so, every pop diva gave it a go, including some really annoying renditions by Madonna and Kylie Minogue, taking the “wink wink” feel of Eartha Kitt’s version to the blatantly obvious “Ooo shag me, Santa” vibe. Not a turn on for me, and I look forward to not hearing it for another year.

One American Christmas song that I truly love and gets no UK airplay is a wonderful working of the perennial Sleigh Ride by the US instrumental group The Ventures. Recorded in 1965, it used some of the ideas first realised by their debut single Walk Don’t Run, along with a fantastic lead guitar solo on the melody. I actually like it better than The Ronettes version from the aforementioned Phil Spector album, and more than the original recording by the song’s composer, LeRoy Anderson & his Orchestra, which was not written as a Christmas song, and had no lyrics until about 10 years after it was recorded in 1946. It’s a clever song, but for me, The Ventures’ version is still the best.

One last musical comment has nothing to do with seasonal music, but in Britain the Christmas #1 has always been treated as some sort of Holy Grail that only a few select artists get to achieve. The Beatles had four over a five year period, and The Spice Girls had three in a row from 1996-98. Now joining that celebrated pair of acts having consecutive Christmas #1s is a husband-wife (I think) team called LadBaby, who have produced charity singles the past two years that pay homage to sausage rolls. Last year it was We Built This City (on Sausage Rolls), this year it’s I Love Sausage Rolls (to the tune of the Joan Jett hit). I do hope next year that It’s Still Sausage Rolls To Me or something equally abysmal doesn’t continue that legacy, but considering that nearly everything else I’ve been wishing for from the outside world this year has had results that disappointed, I wouldn’t be surprised.

Happy holidays to everyone on both sides of the pond!

December 24th, 2019



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