From Julian Casablancas to Bob Dylan: Five overlooked Christmas songs
Festive lights, the smell of mulled wine, the prospect of snow, red-nosed flying reindeer, and the sounds of Christmas music fill the air throughout December. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
Singing Christmas songs is as much a part of the holiday tradition as writing a wishlist to Santa, embarrassing yourself at the work party or arguing about the cooking of a festive feast. Everyone from Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald to Elvis and Elton John, and from The Ronnettes to My Chemical Romance via Miley Cyrus, Macy Gray, and Paul McCartney—even Shane MacGowan—have either written or recorded iconic Christmas songs that everyone and their family knows.
Springsteen said that ‘Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town’ and he was. Stevie Wonder said that ‘Everyone’s a Kid at Christmas’, and they are. Dean Martin said that it was a yummy ‘Marshmallow World’ made for sweethearts, and whatever he meant, well, maybe he was right, as well. Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé look forward to the big day even more than Santa Claus himself does. The biggest-selling single of all time is a Christmas song – Bing Crosby’s timeless ‘White Christmas’ – and it’s not the only one that returns to the charts year after year, but with so many Christmas classics already assured their place in history, it’s hard for a new standard to break through and become part of the canon.
Not since Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas’ has a song been able to so firmly establish itself in the classic order of Christmas songs. Kelly Clarkson’s ‘Underneath the Tree’, Sia’s ‘Santa’s Coming for Us’, Leona Lewis’ ‘One More Sleep’ and Ariana Grande’s ‘Santa, Tell Me’ are all worthy efforts, but with so many songs competing for that special place in our hearts, some have simply gotten lost in the mix; hidden away behind the tree or else have dropped off the back of the sleigh and been buried under the snow. Let’s look at a few of those now that deserve to be unwrapped again on the big day.
Five overlooked Christmas songs:
‘I Wish It Was Christmas Today’ – Julian Casablancas
You’d think The Strokes were too cool for Christmas, but Julian Casablancas has actually come back to this song a few times over the years. ‘I Wish It Was Christmas Today’ started out life as a song written for a skit on SNL in 2000, which featured Jimmy Fallon, Chris Kattan and Tracy Morgan, but Casablancas wasn’t joking around when he released his raucous and rocking version nine years later.
Singing the song with more sincerity than he even sometimes saves for his own compositions, there is none of Casablancas’ ironic intoning or too-cool-for-school-drawl here. He sounds like he really, earnestly wishes that it was Christmas today. While his later version with The Voidz was less fun – as the group drenched the track in a swampy atmosphere and with a beat that bordered on trip-hop – it’s impossible to watch him blasting the track live on Fallon in 2009 without wishing it was Christmas, too.
Appropriately, Casablancas doesn’t only keep his live versions of the song to the holiday season when Christmas is right around the corner, performing it a few times on stage in April 2010.
‘Lonely This Christmas’ – The Growlers
The easiest way to get people to listen to your new Christmas recording in their regular rotation is to cover an old favourite. That’s what Sinatra and Dean Martin used to do, and it is what The Shins did with ‘Wonderful Christmas Time’, what Gwen Stefani did with ‘Last Christmas’, what Fiona Apple did with her gorgeous acoustic cover of ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and it’s what The Growlers did when they covered the Mud classic ‘Lonely This Christmas’.
While Mud front-man Les Gray sounds more than a little like Elvis on the original, The Growlers’ vocalist Brooks Nielsen makes the song his own by pitching it into his higher, more nasal register. On a bed of angelic backing singers, though, Nielsen makes a nod to the Presley presence in the song by updating the lyrics, and threatening Santa with one of The Kings trademark karate chops if he finds out that Father Christmas has kissed his girl.
‘A Christmas Duel’ – The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
Cyndi Lauper was one of the most fun, bombastic and explosive singers to break out in the 1980s, while The Hives were one of the most fun, bombastic and explosive groups to go tick-tick-boom in the 2000s. If, at first, a collaboration between the two seems surprising, the unlikely pairing makes a lot of sense on second thought.
Together, they make a lot of noise. On top of a traditional Phil Spector-esque Christmas Wall of Sound, complete with sleighbells, brass and carolling backing singers, the pair sing a less-than-traditional tale of separation, wrongdoing and pain which is far more in line with ‘Fairy Tale of New York’ than ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’, or, as Hives singer Pelle Almqvist put it, “really sweet music and nasty lyrics”.
‘Christmas Wrapping’ – Kylie Minogue (With Iggy Pop)
Christmas is a time for coming together and a time for connecting and reconnecting. Even if you don’t have time to see everyone through the year, you make time at Christmas. You get together with members of the family you don’t know that well; you meet with the colleagues at the company Christmas party who you wouldn’t ordinarily spend time with, and you connect with fellow revellers in shops or bars and just about anywhere else you can find people out celebrating. Singers are no different, and unlikely December duets are performed almost every year.
Most famous for her monster hits ‘Spinning Around’ and ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ – and more recently ‘Padam Padam’ – Kylie Minogue is not just a pop-princess but has duetted with not just one prince of punk, but two. As well as her 1995 recording of ‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’ with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Minogue has also covered The Waitress’ classic ‘Christmas Wrapping’ with Iggy Pop, of all people. While you can’t beat the original – and this cover remains fairly faithful to it – the novelty of this pairing is enough to win this recording an airing every December from now on.
‘Must Be Santa’ – Bob Dylan
When a story broke in the summer of 2009 that Bob Dylan had been in the studio recording a Christmas album, the news was greeted with bemused interest and plenty of scepticism. Surely someone was either misinformed or else having us on? Dylan is one of the last artists you’d expect a Christmas album from, but in 2009, he continued the habit of a lifetime by confounding expectations and releasing Christmas in the Heart.
A glorious curiosity, the record is entirely earnest and full of warmth, care, love and Christmas cheer. Utilising all the gravelliest scratches of his voice and backed by his excellent band, as well as an angelic choir of 1940’s style backing singers, Dylan commits whole-heartedly to classics like ‘Here Comes Santa Claus’, ‘Winter Wonderland’ and ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’; shines a light on forgotten gems like ‘Christmas Island’, as well as singing hymns like ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ or ‘The First Noel’. He even sings, wonderfully, in Latin on ‘Adeste Fideles’ (or, his version of Latin, anyway).
But the highlight must be ‘Must Be Santa’. Dylan turns the song, which was originally written by Hal Moore and Bill Fredericks in 1960, into an uptempo Christmas polka-klezmer hybrid. Dylan’s arrangement was likely based on the 1992 version by Brave Combo, which he had previously played on a Christmas episode of his Theme Time Radio Hour in 2006. The lead single from Christmas in the Heart, this rendition of ‘Must Be Santa’ was even accompanied by a music video in which a Dylan lets his hair down, dons a Christmas hat, dances a jig, pops up behind a bar offering a bottle or two and shares a bemused moment with Santa Claus himself at the end, as well. It seems that Dylan really does have Christmas in his Heart, and he has a charitable sense of giving in there, too, as all the proceeds from the album are donated each year to various homeless and hunger charities around the world.
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