🎄 Holidays! Your Holiday Favorites (Albums or Singles)

I've been rotating between the TJB and the two Capitol Lounge Christmas CDs in the car, with the occaisinal spin of The Edge of Christmas (both the Payola$' "Christmas Is Coming" and The Waitress's "Christmas Wrapping" are faves) and I.R.S.'s Just In Time For Christmas. At home on the computer (when I fire it up) I've been keeping all 2000+ christmas songs on shuffle. With my bizarre sense of humor and love of the unusual, I always pause to listen to those tunes featuring cats, dogs, frogs and farm animals (as well as handtools). Bob Rivers' Twisted Christmas and Dr. Demento's Christmas cuts always put a smile on my face.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Kwazy Kwanzaa, Rocking Ramadan, Super Solstice (or whatever your faith holiday of choice may be)...
 
I actually hadn't played much of anything this year...didn't even have time to dig most of them out. :sigh:
 
Most of my listening this year was done on several streaming sites. This year, we had only one radio station in my market (Stevens Point- Wausau, Wisconsin) change to a Christmas format, and that wasn't much of a stretch, as it usually plays contemporary Christian music (CCM). I got to hear versions of the standards as performed by CCM artists not normally heard on pop radio (MercyMe, BarlowGirl, Stephen Curtis Chapman, Mandisa, Relient K, Jeremy Camp, et al., with some Amy Grant, who is heard on pop radio, for good measure). And they were kind enough to mix in some secular Christmas songs as well, such as "It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas," "White Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas."

I've decided that my favorite Christmas LP of all time is the first one I ever owned, when I was six years old: A Very Merry Christmas, which was sold at Grants department stores. For years it was something of a collector's item, too, because for 15 years, it was the only source for the rare Simon & Garfunkel recording of "The Star Carol." Grants did seven more volumes after that first one, but Vol. 1 resonates the most with me. It opens with Ray Conniff and the Singers doing "The Little Drummer Boy" and ends with the 1959 Philadelphia Orchestra/Mormon Tabernacle Choir recording of Handel's "Hallelujah" from Messiah.
 
That's more listening than I've done in awhile. The only chance I had this year was to spin one of the David Benoit CDs during dinner one night, and later on, spun the Ramsey Lewis Sound Of Christmas LP on Chess. Then when I was heading out for the day, I threw a few albums onto a 16GB USB chip and plugged that into the car player. Ended up skipping through most of them, and finally switched back to the hard disk (on the other USB port) to play Selling England By The Pound. Just could not get the mood going this year.
 
In our annual trek to Chicagoland for the Thanksgiving holidays, I've done the traditional (for me) thing of bringing along my yearly compilation of Christmas songs to start off the season, used by us as we tool around the Chicago highways and tollways. This year's version is a little different than prior years - not so much in song selection, but in arrangement on the disc.

Previously, my WMA discs would have been sorted by the tracks numbers and alphabetical song title, just because that's the way these file-discs are written and read. I usually just threw them on the disc and let the files fall where they may, often using a shuffle feature to randomize the tracks.

This year, I used my Nero program to rearrange the tracks into some sort of order. The songs remained mostly the same, but I discovered I'd left a few songs out that should be there, like my favored Mannheim Steamroller tracks. Also, my past discs included all Carpenters tracks from both albums, and some of the instrumental tracks just felt out of place, so I chopped a few tracks off from AN OLD FASHIONED CHRISTMAS. Furthermore, I went in and re-indexed the CHRISTMAS PORTRAIT tracks so they'd have more natural-sounding openings and closings. The track indexing on that West German disc is a little imprecise for this sort of thing.

And I wanted to bookend the whole 140-track thing with two Amy Grant songs, "Let The Season Take Wing" to start, and " "Til The Season Comes Round Again" to conclude. They just fit so nicely. For the rest, I just re-ordered them so as not to have too many Carpenters tracks bunching up at the conclusion because they had such high track numbers. In prior years that was a bit of a problem.

Through it all, I noticed yesterday that in my own randomizing, I ended up with two Bing Crosby tracks back-to-back - his classic "White Christmas" and that duet with David Bowie managed to bunch up together. Oh well - next year's just around te bend.

Harry
 
I need to get out and see what I need in the way of vinyl. I probably have nearly 100 holiday CDs, yet I'd say I really only like maybe about a third of them. (That is how disappointing most holiday CDs are, especially recent ones.) Most of my favorites are older, so I'd like to get those on vinyl for the upcoming season.
 
I have been getting quite nostalgic for some holiday music of my childhood. So I have just gotten the Percy Faith Music of Christmas record (yellow with pointsettias) and a Ray Conniff record. Waiting on a Louis Armstrong compilation. Have been playing Jazz To The World, in no small measure to the fact that Mr Alpert leads it off with Winter Wonderland. Mary-Chapin Carpenter's holiday album of a few years ago is a favourite. Of course, there is a Christmas Portrait of The Carpenters.

I love a cd I have had for years called Blue Xmas: Christmas Blues Instrumentals. Can't go wrong with it - it's great. I have also like an old period piece, The Rod McKuen Christmas Album.

I've gotten to wondering, being a fan of South African jazz from love of Hugh Masekela, Caiphus Semenya, and Jonas Gwangwa, whether there is a Christmas music record from that area of the world. And thrilled I would be if Mr Masekela were to record one!

Holiday greetings to all! drs
 
I love Christmas music, but I can't stand listening to Christmas programming on most radio stations, 'cause they tend to mix in a lot of more modern stuff that doesn't put me in the holiday spirit in the least and just sounds more cold than cozy, for lack of a better expression. Thankfully, we do have some artists out there who still know how to do it well and approach it with a more old-fashioned sensibility, like Gloria Estefan, Michael Buble, Natalie Cole, Amy Grant, etc. I agree that Wham!'s "Last Christmas" is actually really, really good for a more modern-era Christmas song, but I think one of the biggest reasons it holds up for me is how holiday-sounding the production is, particularly during the instrumental breaks with the chiming synth notes and sleigh bells; all the cover versions I've heard, i.e. Taylor Swift's, aren't anywhere near as charming or as festive-sounding. I actually like Swift's non-seasonal material most of the time, but her Christmas records just don't cut it for me, and "Last Christmas" just seems like a particularly ill-conceived pick of Christmas songs for her to cover, if only because she already notoriously spends way too much time on her records singing about guys who broke her heart that you wish someone in the studio had told her, "You know, we ARE making a Christmas record here. It's okay to sing about something different ..." :laugh: Another Christmas single from the '80s that has held up for me over the years - probably in part because I rarely ever hear it in public (so I haven't been able to get sick of it the same way that I'm painfully sick of, say, Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You") is Ray Parker, Jr.'s "Christmas Time Is Here." I don't know what it is about that song, but it's just got a real charm to it, especially the cascading jingle bells in each chorus ("Can't you hear the jingle bells?"), that makes it a real cozy listen and puts me in a more festive mood than most other Christmas records from the '80s and '90s.

For me, personally, I don't think there's another Christmas album that better captures the sound of the season and puts me in the holiday spirit than Johnny Mathis' first Christmas album, Merry Christmas. That is just such an unbelievably cozy and relaxing Christmas record to play while sitting in the house on a snowy December evening with a glass of egg nog, wrapping Christmas presents, a crackling fire going in the fireplace, Christmas tree lights glimmering ... And the arrangements on that album are just perfect, too - absolutely first-rate.
Other stuff I play around the holidays? Definitely a lot of Nat King Cole (especially "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting ...)" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas") and Tony Bennett ("Winter Wonderland"), Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams (pretty much the only time of year I ever listen to him, but he does have a gift for making good Christmas music), and, of course, the two Carpenters Christmas albums, which you could make a very valid argument for being the last genuinely "classic" Christmas albums. I don't know that there's been any released since then that have proven to be nearly as timeless or iconic as those. Oh, and Bacharach's "The Bell That Couldn't Jingle" from Something Festive! is one I always have to play, too.

It's not a Christmas song per se, but one song I always find myself breaking out at some point during the holidays is "Does She Love That Man?" by A&M's (horribly underrated) late-'80s roster act Breathe, just because the song takes place during the holidays ("Aimlessly walking through a winter that's so bitterly cold / Christmas is coming / all the stores are wrapped in the neon glow ..."). A terribly sad song, but a beautiful one, and easily one of the best lost A&M hits of the '90s.
 
jfiedler17 said:
I love Christmas music, but I can't stand listening to Christmas programming on most radio stations, 'cause they tend to mix in a lot of more modern stuff that doesn't put me in the holiday spirit in the least and just sounds more cold than cozy, for lack of a better expression.
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Most of the modern Top 40 related stuff the stations play is by talentless hacks who can't carry a tune without Autotune, singing to synths and drum machines. It's no wonder it sounds cold: there is no life in them.

Aside from the Brian Setzer Orchestra (real horns--who'da thought it would ever work??) and a tiny handful of somewhat recent jazz recordings, I've been greatly disappointed by just about all holiday music released in the past 20-25 years. I'd dump about 60 or 70 of my holiday CDs but they are worthless--the stores don't want them.

I keep going back to the same favorites every year. It's pretty sad that I only find a new favorite maybe once every six or seven years. Seems the ones I heard early in life have been the ones that have stuck with me the most.
 
It seems that radio stations are NOT playing The Partridge Family "My Christmas Card To You" or Bobby Sherman "Love's What You're Gettin' For Christmas" & a song I haven't heard in a long time, Bobby Goldsboro "A Christmas Wish" (which was also done by Bobby Sherman in 1970). Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
I pretty much frown on Christmas albums anymore. They all seem to sound like a funeral to me. Where's the fun? Where's the spirit? They all sound like Debbie Downer albums. Since Christmas commercials have been on TV since Halloween, I'm ready for the holidays to be over with already.


Capt. Bacardi
 
If I stay out of stores and keep the radio off, I'm good.
 
I think what really annoys a lot of us is how the holiday is pushed at us unrelentingly. Radio blasts the music at us from Nov. 1st onward. And given how small the canon of Xmas music actually is, it gets tiring really fast. I grew up playing the music two weeks away from the holidays, and no sooner--that is why I never grew tired of my favorites. As it stands now, we are tired about everything to do with the holidays by about Nov. 15th--the frenzied panic to shop at 8pm on Thanksgiving, the doorbusters, you name it.

Take me back 40 years when the holiday was something to look forward to. Modern society has turned Dec. 25th into the end point of almost two months of panicked anxiety for many. Yay, capitalism.
 
For me, it's Pat Boone Christmas! There's White Christmas, Pat's 1st Xmas LP on Dot reissued on Pickwick, w/ different song order, a deleted track or two & at least one new song...

And a long-awaited, his 2nd Dot Xmas LP, Christmas Is A'Comin'... (I ordered it from a seller on eBay just to get the thing split in two & had to put both pieces of what was probably a mint copy in the wastebasket, which was still in an OK cover, but luckily got a fairly-decent playing copy in a better cover, that did arrive safely!)...

There's also one w/ his wife & daughters, A Boone Family Christmas which I have on both LP and CD, as well as I'll Be Home For Christmas, also issued as Christmas Songs, on CD, both of which I have which also goes under other titles w/ the same songs, and includes at least three from Christmas Is A'Comin', while otherwise retains all the songs from both incarnations of White Christmas...

And there's also a 2 Disc Christmas CD set w/ new Boone's Christmas songs (that could all easily fit on just ONE disc & I'm thinking of burning them together, as well as condensing my 4-disc Readers Digest set, to 2, in order to make more space in my growing collection), which has a newer version of "Little Green Tree", from ...A'Comin'...

Then there are multitudes of Various Artists collections, of which one is a Capitol Records set that of all things has not a Christmas song, but "The Sweetest Song", actually from one of Pat's Gospel LP's on Word... And seeing "Record 2" made me get the 1st LP in the series (which only goes up to '2') w/ no Pat...

I also some other set which has two songs from Boone Family Christmas as well as other artists such as Pete Fountain, Bing Crosby & Nat King Cole--and The Brady Bunch! --They contribute "Jingle Bells" that is miraculously quite good...!

So those are really all I have, since I have Pat's stuff on his original albums, as well on his Complete '50's boxed set...

And a few more CD's w/ a few more songs Pat also did, out there that I don't have, that hopefully someday I will...! :santawave:

As for "Man Up!"? Pat is not only a singer, actor & author, but a spectacular athlete as well! He was recently in some basketball tournament in Cleveland, too!


-- Dave
 
Careful, guys. Some of you are in serious danger of turning into your dad. ("You call that $#!+ music?! Now this is music!"...and plays a Vaughn Monroe or Robert Goulet record.) For years the Christmas music selection looked like the "Book of the Dead." Then, suddenly, starting mostly in the 90's I guess, contemporary artists started recording new holiday albums. It isn't necessary to like everything, but you have to appreciate the fact they're doing them.

Actually, just from a strictly-business POV, I don't know why more current performers don't make them; it's like having an annuity, a product that will sell year after year...

PS to AM Matt: The all-Christmas station here does have the Partridge Family song in its rotation, and one Bobby Sherman track, though unfortunately for some reason it's the spoken "Yesterday's Christmas." They also have Phil Spector's spoken "Silent Night" in the mix; why I don't know. But I guess it's better than that hideous little girl who wants a hippopotamus for Christmas. (The song itself is awful enough, her singing like a "mini-me" version of Ethel Merman just makes it worse.)

Of course, being a serious fan of David Seville and the Chipmunks, maybe I better shut up too...
 
To me, when a lot of current popular artists spit out an Xmas album, it's a pure money grab. There's nothing artistic they needed to say, and nothing unique (other than their "product") they bring to the table. It's just impulse buy fodder for the masses. This has happened in the past of course (each generation has had its throwaway music I guess), but it seems so much more prevalent now, especially when you can't tell most Top 40 artists apart by sound. Even in the jazz CDs I'd received (in my ancient reviewing days), it got so that one disc sounded no different from the other--they really had nothing to say other than the need to make a holiday music album. Telarc, especially, seemed to churn them out; even my favorite artists sounded boring and bland.

Usually among all the crap and repetitiveness, though, there end up being one or two that do bring something new, and those are the ones people talk about the next year, and in the years that follow.
 
Agree; SAME SONGS, DIFFERENT INSTRUMENT(S) or VOICE!!!! :yawn:

(Yes, yelled out at you too...)


-- Dave
 
Rudy said:
To me, when a lot of current popular artists spit out an Xmas album, it's a pure money grab. There's nothing artistic they needed to say, and nothing unique (other than their "product") they bring to the table.
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I'd have to agree with that, actually. The problem, to me, is that too few artists these days actually ever approach their Christmas recordings with any different a nuance in sound or style than their usual product, other than to maybe throw some sleigh bells onto the mix.
There's a certain kind of sound that I think defines all the best Christmas records and instantly sets them apart from an artist's non-holiday records, something that makes them easily identifiable as Christmas records even before the lyrics or familiar melodies ever kick in, something that helps to create an aural soundscape of all the best things about this time of year and conjure visual images of the season. That may actually be the biggest reason why Christmas albums by the likes of Johnny Mathis, Carpenters, Andy Williams, etc., have held up so well over the years - it all ultimately boils down to the arrangements. Put any of those records on, and even if you've never heard them before, you'll be able to correctly identify them as Christmas albums within the first five or ten seconds. That's why so many of the most common holiday records you hear on FM radio these days just don't quite do it for me. Just one example: I love the Eagles. Got all their albums. Listen to them regularly. "Please Come Home for Christmas" just does not work for me as a Christmas record. At all. Take Henley's vocal off of it, and you'd never be able to guess you were listening to a Christmas record. If you're not gonna approach your Christmas output any differently than your normal output, then what's the point, other than to make a couple extra bucks?
A truly amazing Christmas album is one that would be no less identifiable as a Christmas album if it were purely instrumental. Christmas-themed lyrics alone do not a good Christmas album make. That's lacking in far too many Christmas albums these days. Just look, as just one perfect example of what I'm talking about, at Christina Aguilera's version of "The Christmas Song" that became typical holidaytime fodder in malls and Top 40 radio in the '00s. Take her vocal off of it, and it just sounds like a generic dance track. There's nothing remotely "Christmasy" about the instrumentation or arrangement of it. I like Christmas records that actually put in the effort to try to arrange them in a way that make you instantly call to mind, to borrow a line from "Sleigh Ride," "a picture print by Currier & Ives" and visualize a winter wonderland in your head. That is Christmas music at its best, if you ask me!
 
To me, when a lot of current popular artists spit out an Xmas album, it's a pure money grab. There's nothing artistic they needed to say, and nothing unique (other than their "product") they bring to the table.
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And this is different in exactly what way from the old days of interchangeable Christmas LPS by interchangeable schmaltz baritones (Jimnaborsrobertgouletjackjonesjohngaryedamesalmartinorogerwhittaker)?

Each new generation of listeners is going to want holiday songs performed "their way" by their favorite stars. It may be a standard now, but Elvis's Christmas album was considered absolutely scandalous when it first came out in the 50's. And no one was more ridiculed in his early career than Sinatra. (Watch a few Warner Bros. cartoons from the mid-40's or listen to radio comedians' monologues of that era.)

Even Bob Dylan got creamed by the critics when he released his Xmas disc a few years ago. What the hell did they expect him to do, re-invent the form?? It is what it is. The traditional carols are hundreds of years old; most of the more "modern" holiday songs date back half a century or more. All any performer, be it Dylan or Aguilera, can "bring to the table" is their own personal take on these songs. Good enough.
 
jfiedler17 said:
I'd have to agree with that, actually. The problem, to me, is that too few artists these days actually ever approach their Christmas recordings with any different a nuance in sound or style than their usual product, other than to maybe throw some sleigh bells onto the mix.
........
That may actually be the biggest reason why Christmas albums by the likes of Johnny Mathis, Carpenters, Andy Williams, etc., have held up so well over the years - it all ultimately boils down to the arrangements. Put any of those records on, and even if you've never heard them before, you'll be able to correctly identify them as Christmas albums within the first five or ten seconds. That's why so many of the most common holiday records you hear on FM radio these days just don't quite do it for me.
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I think it is a difficult task to pull off correctly. The albums should have the artist's signature sound stamped on them. Otherwise, why would we buy it? Yet the album also cannot just be Artist X singing holiday songs with a few sleigh bells added into the mix--what do they bring to the table beside a change in repertoire?

It is a novelty to hear, say, Chicago do some Xmas songs, yet the novelty wore off for me after a couple of listens, and the album collects dust. I imagine the Eagles disc is the same, from what you've described. I could rattle off a list of selections sitting in my box of rejects in the basement, all of them by favorite artists of mine, but terrible Xmas album concepts. I have maybe a dozen Al Jarreau albums, yet that holiday album got one play here. Don't even get me started on most jazz Xmas albums I've heard.

The interview that @Chris May posted today with Janis Siegel is a reminder of one of my favorite holiday albums by The Manhattan Transfer--smooth classic holiday arrangements, with their signature sound all over it. And it is a newer recording. Ella Fitzgerald's Xmas album on Verve is another good one--the tunes are nice and short, to the point, Ella her usual impeccable self, and upbeat arrangements with that "feel good" holiday spirit to them.

Even Henry Mancini's Xmas album has a different feel from his other albums, which ranged from swinging jazz to sometimes dark and moody film soundtracks: the upbeat arrangements, his chorus front and center (which was usually more in a role of coloration), gives it that spirit, yet the style is still Mancini's. While I can't stand most $#!^-kickin' Nashville redneck pop, "new country" artist Lorrie Morgan put out a really nice holiday album with the London Symphony Orchestra, showing that she had more talent (and brains) than most of her contemporaries and can step outside the Nashville production mill.

@JeffM also raises an excellent point too--what we complain about today is no different than in years past. For a lot of what have turned into enduring classics from the 50s, 60s and 70s, there are probably several times as many "also-rans" that were released by then-popular artists that have fallen by the wayside, long (and wisely) forgotten. And even back then, I can think of some old Xmas albums that were done by popular singers, instrumentalists or bands, awash in a soup of sappy violins and icky chorus that were embarrassing to hear. One great example of this was an Xmas compilation LP we had in the 70s on the Capitol label. I finally landed a CD version of it several years ago, and it certainly did not play well with me anymore. Out of perhaps 20 tracks, there are maybe only five or six I really care for. The rest just sound awkward. Even if they do sound like the "holiday spirit," any magic they tried to create was weighed down under the production.
 
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