Ignore, for a second, the fact that Bing Crosby’s voice is actually kind of spectacular (It really is, though; I don’t know why its greatness always surprises me, but it does. It’s so individual and musical, in a way that most voices aren’t), and just luxuriate in the arrangement of his version of this song. It’s a thing of beauty, delicately balanced and just a joy to listen to. Other people have done this song (very often, it seems), but none of them sound as good as this version.
366 Songs 346: Step Into Christmas
Besides the fact that, like all the best Christmas songs, Elton John’s “Step Into Christmas” is ridiculously sing-along-able, probably my favorite thing about this song is that fact that it makes little attempt to hide its cynical origins as a seasonal cash-in, opening with the line “Welcome to my Christmas song/I’d like to thank you for the year.” It’s another song that, like yesterday’s “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day,” is trying to sound like Phil Spector’s A Xmas Gift To You” in many ways, too; listen to the compression and the overkill of various instruments.
Of course, because it’s a good Christmas song, there are covers…
Hop on board the turntable.
366 Songs 345: I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
This is one of those songs that, without fail, makes me know that it’s getting near Christmas on some primal level. If you’re British and of my generation, this song was released every single holiday season, and made it onto Top of The Pops every single time, and to be fair, it deserved it each and every time, too. Roy Wood – who had been in The Move prior to this, of course, back when the band was worth listening to – has a ridiculously catchy way with a pop song, and there are all manner of fake-subversive additions that make the song even more fun (Starting it off with a cash register!) than the mix of doo-wop, the Beach Boys and kids choir already was. “When the snow man brings the snow… When the snow man brings the snow…”
Okay, you lot. Prove how great the original is with lesser cover versions. Take it!
366 Songs 344: Winter Wonderland
It is, of course, a classic, but for my money, Harry Connick Jr.’s piano-only version is easily the only version that counts of Winter Wonderland. Just listening to this makes me wish for snow, and the magical ability to play the piano as well as this.
Obvious runner-up in the “worthwhile version” stakes…
366 Songs 343: The Man With All The Toys
Well done, Beach Boys: There’s something simultaneously sweet and appalling about this song, which somehow even further makes Christmas about the idea of “What do I get?” Santa is supposed to be about jolliness and the whole “joy of giving” thing, not “the man with all the toys,” after all. Seriously, Beach Boys. Try again.
That’s better.
366 Songs 342: Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas
I want to say I heard this for the first time in a Christmas season that I needed this kind of a message, but that almost sounds too cute to be true. Nonetheless, it is; it’s not that that Christmas was especially cruel or difficult, but it was one where there was a lack of optimism for various reasons, work- and relationship-related, and just the sound of someone saying something as simple (Ridiculously so) as “Everything’s gonna be cool” with such excitement and glee was so… surprising, and welcome, that it felt like the best gift I could’ve gotten.
366 Songs 341: Just Like Christmas
In many ways, this song isn’t about Christmas at all, but about the idea of Christmas, and what Christmas means to different people (“And you said it was just like Christmas/But you were wrong”). And yet, even as Christmas as idea and feeling (as opposed to weather and visuals) is pushed forward, the music does the same thing; there’s a ramshackle attempt to rebuild the aural quality of Phil Spector’s A Xmas Gift To You album in this song, in a weird but entirely welcome way that I love, here. I’d suggest that it sounded like Christmas, but I’d worry that singer Mimi Parker would find me to say “But you were wrong” afterwards. It sounds like my idea of Christmas, perhaps; maybe that’s what I mean.
366 Songs 340: The Man in The Santa Suit
It’s been a long day, in a good way; lots of things being accomplished and a tiredness that feels earned as opposed to heavy and guilty. To celebrate, then, here’s a happy song that demystifies the worlds of the men who dress up as Old Saint Nick at this time of year from the simultaneously over- and underrated Fountains of Wayne (Songwriting is always interesting, although something you can’t tell by their performances).
Me, I vastly prefer the Neil Halstead version:
366 Songs 339: O Come, O Come Emmanuel
I don’t think I’d ever heard this (“trad,” as the music books would call it) song before this version by Belle & Sebastian, but I adore it for its gentleness and the harmonies that appear in the latter “Rejoice/Rejoice” refrains. A quiet moment of holiday cheer for a day that’s been far, far too busy for my own good (I still have work to do; this is me taking something approaching a break).
Here’s Sufjan Stevens doing another version: