Month: December 2010

Advent song for December 14

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music2 Comments

I had forgotten, or else never seen, the spooky video for the Spice Girls’ 1998 Christmas hit, Goodbye. It was the first single to be released after Geri Halliwell’s abrupt departure, and in an interview (which I have no intention of referencing, because I have no idea where I read it, and after all this isn’t Wikipedia) the girls admitted that although the song was originally written before Geri left, some of the lyrics were rewritten afterwards so as to make it partly a eulogy to her. They didn’t say which lyrics they meant, but the lines in the bridge fit so perfectly that I have always imagined they were added just for Geri:

The times when we would play about,
The way we used to scream and shout
We never dreamt you’d go your own sweet way

It’s not my favourite Spice Girls single, nor even my favourite (spoiler!) Spice Girls Christmas single, but I still like it a lot. I like the way you can tell who sings which line without looking, because although they aren’t the best singers in the world, they all (with the possible exception of Victoria) have distinctive voices which actually sound like them. If you listen carefully you can even hear Mel B’s Yorkshire accent seeping through here and there.

I loved the Spice Girls. I loved the songs, the silliness, the sweetness, the way, when they were at the height of their fame, that the question “which is your favourite Spice Girl?” seemed worthy of an evening’s discussion (I was a student at the time). Most of all, I loved that they seemed like real people who actually liked one another, and who were as pretty as the prettiest girl you knew, without being intimidatingly beautiful.

These days, of course, they are all intimidatingly beautiful, because if you’re a famous woman you’re not allowed not to be. But I liked them best back then.

Advent song for December 13

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music1 Comment

This song is kind of dull, at least by Paul McCartney’s standards (no fireworks, no explosions), but the video is like something out of a dream. Not the David Lynch kind that makes some kind of glorious visual sense even if you’re not sure what it means; more the kind you start to tell someone about the next morning before realising as you’re describing it that none of it makes any sense even to you, and it was actually kind of dull.

I like the contrast between the choreographed pipers on the beach and the becardiganned Linda, who looks as though she doesn’t even know she’s on camera and is just out for a walk and a bit of a sing with her family. I assume some of the children in the later scenes are minor McCartneys, but it’s a bit too fuzzy for me to be able to be certain. This was UK Christmas number one in 1977, when those haircuts were considered acceptable.

Advent song for December 12

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

It’s funny how seeing a video for a song can give you a different impression of it. I had always thought of this as a pretty naff song, but now that I’ve seen this, I realise it’s even more overwhelmingly cheesy than I had ever imagined. I especially like the transparent cheapness of the set, and the casual way Johnny sits on a backwards chair like a delinquent child in class, or Joanne Whalley as Christine Keeler in the Scandal poster.

I have also just Googled him to see if there’s an explanation for why he’s that colour, but there doesn’t seem to be. This song was Christmas number one in 1976, when I was four months old, so once again I take none of the blame.

Advent song for December 11

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

This isn’t Christmassy AT ALL, but it’s the only Pink Floyd song I can name, and I like it a lot. Also, the video is really good and worth watching if you haven’t seen it before. It was Christmas number one in 1979, when I was three, so don’t blame me for its unChristmassiness.

Advent song for December 10

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

This is going to divide readers, partly because lots of people, especially people of discernment and taste like you, hate the X Factor and love Leonard Cohen, and were offended by the one’s appropriation of the other’s song for the winner’s single in 2008. To those people, I apologise.

Personally, I love the X Factor, but in the years I’ve been watching the only two singers it’s produced whose voices sent shivers down my spine are Leona Lewis and Alexandra Burke, who won two years ago and went straight to number one that Christmas with her version of Hallelujah. I think Leona has the better voice, but whereas she is very pure and bright and clear, there’s something velvety and sexy and womanly about Alexandra. I imagine she could do anguish better than Leona can. And I do like a bit of anguished female vocal.

Anyway, I’ve chosen the live performance from that year’s X Factor final rather than the recorded single, because it’s such a nice change to see someone singing live and not screwing up. It certainly seems to be beyond the powers of this year’s contestants, although they sometimes turn it up a notch for the final, so perhaps I should reserve judgement until tomorrow night.

Advent song for December 9

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music4 Comments

Sometimes, the 1980s seem completely alien, don’t they? Songs like this make me wish I was old enough to have heard them the first time round, so that I’d know whether people were enjoying them ironically, or just enjoying them. Either way, enough people enjoyed this to make it Christmas number one in 1982. Like I said, different times.

Advent song for December 8

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Really? The 8th already? How did that happen?

Today’s song is the 2001 Christmas number one, Robbie Williams and Nicole Kidman singing Somethin’ Stupid, a track originally made famous by Frank and Nancy Sinatra, who sang it better but ruined the effect by being father and daughter, which makes it less sweetly romantic and more weird. But what they got right in that version was the mix: Frank has the tune and Nancy has a harmony under it, so his voice is, as it should be, louder. In this rehash Nicole has Nancy’s tune and is much higher in the mix, so the actual tune, the one Robbie’s singing, gets lost slightly.

Also, the video has nothing to do with the song at all. If Robbie and Nicole are sufficiently intimate to share a winter holiday home, surely they should be past the point of being embarrassed to say “I love you” to one another. And why is Robbie the barman in the “quiet little place”?

However, I love it because I secretly love both of them, and because they make a cute couple (at least until Robbie takes off his pyjamas to reveal his tats), and, mostly, because of that short-sleeved Christmas jumper Nicole wears.

Advent song for December 7

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music1 Comment

Ah, Cliff. We had a sneaky peek of you yesterday, but here you are in your full glory with the 1990 Christmas number one, Saviour’s Day. One of the versions on YouTube comes accompanied with the warning: “Remember, listen to this while doing something else – it get’s incredibly boring!!”, which I think is unfair as well as illiterate, because this is a classic Cliffmas video, from the massed choir, which I like to imagine is made up of the entire population of whichever Cornish village this was filmed close to, to the unlikely set of dance moves (I use the term loosely) which begin around the 2:30 mark. Enjoy.

(YouTube have prefaced the video with an interminably dull ad, so rather than link to them I’m using a version from elsewhere: if you can’t see the video below just click on the link.)

http://www.muzu.tv/player/getPlayer/a/8BZ1ecfq1q/vidId=184616
Cliff Richard – Saviour’s Day

Advent song for December 6

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music3 Comments

Now, you could argue that musically this is the worst of all the versions of this song, and I don’t know that I would disagree. But I like it because there’s no Bono, and because it came out at the height of my period of interest in the charts, so I am intimately familiar with the oeuvre of everyone involved, although I had forgotten just how much Marti Pellow sounds like Vic Reeves singing in the club style.

Kylie looks literally exactly the same here as she does now, which is both cheering and mildly alarming. Speaking of which, this version is also better than the original because it has actual women in it, who are allowed to sing lines of their own rather than being relegated to the chorus. Go, Lisa Stansfield! Go, Sonia! Go, mid-period incarnation of Bananarama!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VgyF0i5EfM

Advent song for December 5

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music2 Comments

I didn’t know before I started researching this project that Jackie Wilson’s Reet Petite, originally written in 1957, was the Christmas number one in 1986. I assumed that it had been re-released following Jackie’s death, but since he died in January 1984 that doesn’t seem like an obvious leap of logic. But it’s a terrific song, so whatever the reason, I’m glad that it’s given me a chance to include it here.

Tomorrow, an actual Christmas song!