The one Christmas song Paul McCartney couldn’t live without
The Christmas song is a dying art. Ever since Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ was released, countless pop artists have churned out heartless replicas coated in bell chimes and all originality has been lost. For Paul McCartney, when it comes to soundtracking the festive season, the golden oldies are impossible to beat.
The lack of quality in modern Christmas songs has been underlined by the most recent publishing of the Official Charts in 2024 ahead of December 25th. For the second year running, Wham topped the charts with ‘Last Christmas‘ from 1984. However, upon initial release, when the festive chart still had substance, it didn’t reach number one due to Band-Aid.
McCartney is intrinsically linked to the festive season because he has eight Christmas number one singles to his name. Most of these tracks were coincidental rather than overtly holiday-themed, but McCartney is an unapologetic defender of traditional Christmas songs. Despite producing a string of best-selling classics with The Beatles, such as ‘Hey Jude’ and ‘Let It Be’, McCartney’s highest-selling single of his career is the accidentally festive ‘Mull Of Kintyre’. In 1977, Wings enjoyed an unlikely Christmas hit, an ode to the Scottish area that rescued McCartney during a difficult spell in his personal life following the demise of the Fab Four.
While the song wasn’t set out to be a Christmas song, unlike ‘Wonderful Christmastime’, similar to The Pogues’ beloved ‘Fairytale of New York’, it took on that meaning and is now firmly implanted into the festive musical lexicon. “I wrote the song when I realised there were no new Scottish songs being written,” McCartney told The Big Issue in 2017. “It was a great experience recording it with the local pipe band and really exciting to see the amazing success it had in the charts at the time, so those memories mean I still love it and it’s a very special song for me.”
McCartney has never released a full-blown Christmas album but has recorded one. He made a conscious decision to keep the collection of songs as a cherished secret among his family members rather than make it available for public consumption. “Years ago I thought, there’s not very good Christmas records,” he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One programme in 2019. “So I actually went into my studio over a couple of years and I made one. The kids like it. It’s something they’ve heard through the years, you know, and now it’s the grandkids getting indoctrinated with my carols record.”
During a Christmas Q+A on his website, McCartney elaborated on his love of festive songs, which led him to make the secret album: “I made a record when the kids were little because I realised it was very hard to buy a record that just had the Christmas songs. You would either get Nat King Cole sings Christmas or Phil Spector’s Christmas record – which I’ve got, and we use – but I just wanted straightforward Christmas songs [sings ‘Jingle Bells’ to us].”
The album’s sentimental value far outweighs McCartney’s desire to share it with the masses. Since The Beatles rose to fame, almost every aspect of his life has been in the public eye. Therefore, he’s earned the right to keep this emotionally cherished body of work behind closed doors.
While the entire contents of the record are unknown, it does include a cover of McCartney’s all-time favourite Christmas song; he revealed, “Nat King Cole’s. So that is called ‘The Christmas Song’, but known by a lot of people as ‘Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire’. I think that’s my favourite. Nat King Cole’s version is so atmospheric. Not a bad singer, and I used his microphone at Capital Studios in LA for ‘Kisses On The Bottom’. And the guy came up to me and said, ‘Did you know that this is the microphone that Nat used?’ [Inhales heavily] ‘Ah, so no pressure!'”
‘Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire’ has been recorded by a host of musical figures, including Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Perry Como. Meanwhile, in recent years, it has been covered by Christina Aguilera, Ariana Grande and John Legend. McCartney may never release his Christmas album, but in 2012, he did share his version of ‘Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire’ with the world, which featured on the Holidays Rule compilation album.
