Did LCD Soundsystem write indie’s saddest Christmas song?
Christmas songs often veer in one of two directions: saccharine-sweet joy and celebration of the wintry holiday, or melancholic odes to the bittersweet reminders of family, loss and yearning.
While we may be inclined to soundtrack December to the more spirited classics, the sad ones always creep in, masked by hopeful melodies and the promise of celebration and reunion. The Beatles arguably juxtapose this best: listening to Paul McCartney’s ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ against John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’ is the ultimate whiplash (in either listening order), Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’ fuses the energy of both, soundtracked by the perfect slow-tempo synthesisers so catchy that we nearly forget the sadness hidden in its lyrics, sung in George Michaels’ heartbreaking tone. But, like the best Christmas songs, all of them capture the full spectrum of feelings that arise during the holidays.
The classics mentioned above are some of the few original Christmas classics that stand the test of time. The originals of the holiday season are difficult to beat, resulting in countless covers and reinterpretations of familiar favourites. ‘Silent Night’, ‘White Christmas’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ are the three most-covered seasonal songs that continually fuel our nostalgia, and, in the rock ‘n’ roll canon, nearly every legend has tried their hand at rendering their versions, from Stevie Nicks to the Rolling Stones, to Korn and the Foo Fighters. But sometimes, a songwriter will achieve the near-impossible: penning a new classic.
In 2015, LCD Soundsystem had been dormant for half a decade. A farewell concert had been held for the dance-punk pioneers at New York’s Madison Square Garden, immortalised in the documentary film Shut Up and Play the Hits and a live recording boxset, The Long Goodbye, and they were subjected to the rumour mill of a reunion just as soon as they stepped off the stage.
Then, as clichéd as it is true, a Christmas miracle occurred: on Christmas Eve, 2015, LCD Soundsystem returned with ‘christmas will break your heart’, their first single in five years. Though something of a surprise for fans, the song did not simply materialise.
“There’s been this depressing Christmas song I’d been singing to myself for the past 8 years, and every year I wouldn’t remember that I wanted to make it until December, which is just too late to actually record and release a Christmas song,” bandleader James Murphy reasoned in a note shared upon ‘christmas will break your heart’s release. He explains that his bandmates happened to be in the right place, at the right time: Al Doyle was in between tours with Hot Chip, Pat Mahoney and Nancy Whang “were home”, and Tyler Pope flew from Berlin to New York to join the sessions.
Murphy describes his Christmas offering with a warning, calling the song “another one of those songs which had about 75 lines of lyrics, though we’ve knocked down to eight to keep the suicide rate in check. Have fun!” The resulting four-and-a-half-minute song is a cautionary tale of the hope and subsequent loneliness that lurk during the season.
In Murphy’s words, “Christmas will break your heart / If your world is feeling small / And there’s no one on your phone / You feel close enough to call”. Murphy sings from this depressive state of being too tired, too old, too cold to fight the gloom that overtakes the joy, finding himself unaccompanied and left to spiral in his own thoughts. Christmas, he cautions, will “crush your soul / Like that laid back rock ‘n’ roll,” a state where not even music can revive the comfort he once felt. “And Christmas will drown your love,” he drones, “Like a storm down from above / On your fading memories of / A normal life.”
Despite the all-consuming grief that Murphy is entrapped in, there is a glint of hope. “But still I’m coming home to you,” he declares, “Can you see me?”, sung in a euphoric belt that surfaces from beneath the ice, returning the spirit to one of rock’s saddest Christmas songs.
