I don’t think I think about Alexander O’Neal often enough.
Author: Laura Morgan
Laura Morgan lives on the internet. She mostly likes Agatha Christie and the sea.
Advent song for December 16: Stop The Cavalry
This is a much jauntier seasonal “soldiers missing their loved ones” song than I’ll Be Home For Christmas (are there any other examples?). I think I’d probably listened to it about a hundred times before I noticed the lyrics are quite sad. But you can’t argue with that cymbal clash at 01.44, rivalled in its dramatic brilliance only (and barely) by Ringo’s boom, ba-doom, badoom-ba-doom-doom on He blew his mind out in a car (which is a weird lyric itself, now that I think about it).
Happy Thursday!
Advent Song for December 15: Little Drummer Boy
This is my favourite version of this song. The Bowie/Bing effort is a classic, of course, and Ringo Starr’s version is charming because it’s autobiographical and, unsurprisingly, has the best drums. But this is the one you’d put on at a Christmas party (if that was still a thing) and everyone would get up and dance.
Advent song for December 14: Thank God It’s Christmas
I’ve turned around on Queen over the years. I used to think their songs were dreary middle-of-the-road plodding, which I think is more to do with the kind of people who deliberately listen to Queen albums (sorry if that’s you) rather than their music. (Also, I wasn’t always sure, as a child, which was Queen and which was Status Quo.) After a while, having heard more of their songs, I used to say “I don’t like Queen except Bohemian Rhapsody and Don’t Stop Me Now“, and then the list of songs I liked got gradually longer until it was faster to list the songs I didn’t like and now I can just say “I like Queen except for We Will Rock You and Another One Bites The Dust.” Which is no quicker to say, but has the advantage of making me sound less of an asshole.
Anyway. Thank god it’s Christmas indeed. I have six working days left before Christmas and I’m feeling every single one of them.
Advent song for December 13: Christmas Wrapping
As fresh today as it sounded forty years ago (forty years ago!), this is a proper Christmas classic. If you’re listening alone, or with someone else, you should definitely dance to this.
Advent song for December 12: Christmas In Hollis
I love this video, and not only (but partly) because it features a dog dressed as a reindeer.
Advent song for December 11: Coventry Carol
A little spot of festive baby-murdering from the goddess that is Alison Moyet (like me, more of a tenor than an alto). This is from a 1987 compilation album, A Very Special Christmas, which was released to raise money for the Special Olympics and has a number of other treats on it; some, all or none of which may make it on to our list.
Advent song for December 10: 2000 Miles
We’ve got one of my favourite songs today, because December 10th is the birthday shared by three of my favourite people (one no longer with us, one who I’ve known since I was a baby and one who I’ve only known since May of this year), and because today instead of going to work I’m going for lunch with a group of friends, and between us we will have travelled quite a lot more than two thousand miles to be here. Here’s to the good times.
Advent song for December 9: Joys Of Christmas
I know you knew that Chris Rea had a Christmas single, but did you know that in fact, he had two? Released almost exactly a year before Driving Home For Christmas, and regarded by ol’ Christmas himself as the superior of the two songs, Joys Of Christmas is very probably the least joyful Christmas song I’ve ever heard, including everything we listened to the year the theme was Sad Christmas.
In the one minute and twenty four seconds of intro before we hear any vocals I wondered whether I’d accidentally pressed the “play a song by Dire Straits” button but no, this is Rearrangements himself sounding just like them, at least until he starts to speak-sing very much in the style that Jessica Williams and Phoebe Robinson on their much-missed 2 Dope Queens podcast once described as White Nonsense.
This song is weird, but I like it; it’s idiosyncratic and less ‘put bells on and people will buy it’-cynical than most Christmas songs. On the other hand I can absolutely understand why, halfway through it, YouTube suddenly suggests that you listen to Driving Home For Christmas instead.
Advent song for December 8: Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)
Ramones (I know from pub quizzing that there is no definite article) are one of those bands, like the Pixies, that I know I’m supposed to know about, but I absolutely just don’t. In fact watching this video recently was genuinely the first time I have knowingly listened to one of their songs. True fact! I also found out in the course of my research that none of them are brothers or even cousins, that all of the founder members are dead and that Brain Drain, the 1989 album from which this track is lifted, reached number 122 in the billboard charts that year and thus isn’t, perhaps, the finest example of their work. This is a rollicking old number, though, with an excellent piece of dramatic art sandwiching it each side of the main event.
Glad All Over 