I liked Ariana Grande even before awful things kept happening to (or almost to) her, and I like her even more for her bold, honest, trip-up-and-try-again attitude to tragedy, which makes her infinitely more useful a role model to the millions of young people who adore her than is the icily perfect otherworldly veneer that most twentysomething superstars project. Also, she’s got a GREAT voice. This is a single from her 2013 EP Christmas Kisses and it’s a banger, so turn the volume up.
If you are young and hip like me you probably read today’s song title and thought aha! that Justin Bieber song! But although I like Justin Bieber and it is Christmassy, that song is also rubbish so I haven’t chosen it.
This song is an entirely different and much more delightful number by the Indigo Girls, whom I first encountered in my first term at university, which was also about the time I discovered that you could be gay and politically active and in a band and a GIRL. Heady days. In that first term we had a flatmate on a – secondment? Internship? What do you call it when you study somewhere else for a term? Anyway she was doing one of those – called Leanne, who was kooky and left-wing and a feminist and from somewhere like, but not actually, Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin (which, I’ve just discovered, is a real place and not just from Annie Hall) and she was super cool. And she used to play us the Indigo Girls, which meant they were super cool too. And twenty-something years later, they still are.
This song is from their 2010 Christmas album Holly Happy Days (all American musicians make Christmas albums, I have discovered, even the super cool ones) and it’s really a love song rather than an overtly Christmas-themed one, but it’s called “Mistletoe” and it’s on a Christmas album and more importantly it’s great, so we’re having it anyway.
Did you know that for years and years The Killers released a charity single every Christmas? When I was compiling this list I spent a happy hour comparing them all, and narrowing it down was a tough job, partly because the videos are at least as good as the songs (and sometimes better). What I like best about The Killers is that I never know how much of anything is a joke.
For today’s pick I’ve gone for Boots, from 2010, partly because it has a singalong chorus, excellent drums and East 17-esque bells, and rhymes “television” with “kitchen”, but mostly because I love the video, which is the most Vegas thing you’ll ever see, if you are looking for the Vegas beyond Elvis and wedding chapels. It looks like scenes from a film but it isn’t, and I have no idea what’s actually going on in it, although the fact that it stars Brad Prowly (aka Super Bad Brad), a much-loved New York City street performer, sort of gives us a vague nod at a plot, if you squint. But don’t squint too hard, otherwise you’ll miss Brandon Flowers singing on a roof overlooking the Strip at sunset, and that’s a sight we should all feast our eyes on as often as possible.
There’s an accidental symmetry about the songs I’ve picked for December 1 and 2 and those I’ve picked for December 23 and 24 this year, but you’ll have to wait three weeks to find out what it is. (Unless you are brilliant and can guess, in which case let me know and I’ll send you a prize.)
Anyway, here’s Kelly Clarkson, who won American Idol back when you had to be able to sing to win singing competitions, and who has gone on to become one of the most successful talent show winners ever, with 25 million album and 45 million single sales worldwide, three grammys and countless other accolades and through it all she seems to have remained basically normal, which is probably her greatest achievement of all.
Wrapped In Red is the title track from her 2013 Christmas album, although the hit single from it was Under The Tree (but I don’t like that as much as I like this). In the same year she had a TV Christmas special called Kelly Clarkson’s Cautionary Christmas Music Tale which sounds like it should be good, doesn’t it? But I haven’t watched it because who has forty minutes to watch a video in 2018? Not me. If you watch it, do let me know whether it’s as good as it sounds like it should be.
Hello and welcome to advent 2018! We start with a band with an exclamation mark in the name! No, not Wham! or the Go! Team or Panic! At The Disco but Cardiff’s own Los Campesinos! who have names like Neil and Gareth, had their tenth anniversary this year JUST LIKE US, and in 2014 released the EP A Los Campesinos! Christmas, featuring among others this song, which is properly good and makes me think of the guitar bands of my distant youth.
Today is also a good day to listen to a band from Cardiff, because I should be in Cardiff but I’m not, so <waves> to everyone in Cardiff, and I’ll see you next year FOR SURE.
Actually it wasn’t, because I only had the idea for a musical advent calendar on December 10th. But here we all are ten years and eleven musical advent calendars later, having enjoyed the highlights (Christmas songs from around the world, twenty-four versions of White Christmas, Christmas songs by Phenomenal Women) and, let’s be frank, lowlights (Christmas number ones from my lifetime, everything By Ringo Starr) together. So it’s only fitting, this year, to celebrate hitting double figures by enjoying twenty-four Christmas hits written (or in a couple of cases released) since December 2008: songs which I didn’t include first time round not because they weren’t any good, but because they didn’t exist yet. I made this list a month ago and I’ve been listening to it on rotation ever since so I can tell you with complete confidence that there are some crackers here.
In the meantime, to get you in the mood, here’s Cliff, whose last hit was in September 2008, meaning [spoilers] he WILL NOT FEATURE in this year’s line-up (except for now).
Happy Advent!
This had to be our final choice just for the video, although it is also a beautiful song. But there’s nearly nothing more Christmassy than Christmas Peanuts, and Snoopy is obviously the best character of all and Snoopy ice skating is just about the best thing there has ever been, and even though this is a poor-quality video it’s still lovely to watch. But not so lovely that you won’t also be struck by the purity of Joni’s voice or the simple perfection of the song and arrangement.
Before I leave you to your preparations I would like to note that this wasn’t, in the end, a list of songs by my favourite women singer-songwriters, because some of my favourite women singer-songwriters simply never went near a Christmas song, so with apologies for the lack of Nina Simone, Joans Baez and Armatrading, Billie Holiday, Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand, Laura Nyro, Sheryl Crow, Amy Winehouse and Taylor Swift, I will be posting a playlist later today of all the songs we’ve had that are on Spotify, and maybe some extras just for fun. Merry Christmas! I have high hopes for 2018, you guys.
Some singer-songwriters are celebrated for both skills, and others seem only to be known as singers. I can’t decide whether in the case of Aretha Franklin this is due to plain old discrimination, or whether it’s because her voice is so sensational that there isn’t time to appreciate her as a songwriter. But she is both (she wrote Think, which is also her actual best song), and an arranger to boot.
I have a burgeoning theory as to why women singer-songwriters in general, and women singer-songwriters of colour in particular, have written so few Christmas songs, but it’s not fully-formed yet so I’ll save it for another day. When you sing like this, though, you can sing anyone’s songs, even when they’re eighteenth-century hymns.
So here’s the thing. This was on the list from the start, but although I love Kirsty (and she has an extra connection with Christmas in my mind, because my parents once spent Christmas morning with Peggy Seeger and Ewan MacColl, although I was too teenagedly grumpy to join them), I never used to love this song. I don’t know why: probably for the same reason I don’t much like Withnail And I and am ambivalent about seeing Hamilton next week, which is that when other people like something too much, it puts me right off.
Anyway, somehow over the years I got to like it a bit, maybe enough to not press “skip” when it came on, and since this year is about amazing singer-songwriters and Kirsty absolutely was one, it was an obvious pick for a late-December slot. And then a couple of days ago I saw these tweets from Justin Myers, aka The Guyliner:
…and I thought, OH YEAH. You know when you realise something so blindingly obvious that you’re ashamed that it never occurred to you before? Well, THAT.
And it seems Kirsty felt the same way, because when she performed the song live in later years, she changed the words. So that’s the version we will listen to today, and I’m going back to hitting “skip” next time the original plays, because if 2017 has taught us anything it’s that the only way to combat inequality and injustice is to listen to the voices of those who are affected and change our behaviour accordingly. Also, look at Kirsty in her Christmas jumper and sunglasses and nineties hair! She’s so fricking awesome.
I’ve got a double-bill for you today, because I’ve run out space and I haven’t run out of Phenomenal Women. And there is something genuinely glorious about the fact that Deborah Harry (with Blondie) and Patti Smith have both recorded versions of We Three Kings, and that they are so completely different. Patti’s is much, much weirder, but showcases more of what is unique and thrilling about her, whereas the Blondie version is just a big rock’n’roll singalong, although I do like what they’ve done with the way the verses end, which is different but not in a jarring way.
All together, now!
♬ Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying/Sealed in a stone-cold tomb ♬
…Merry Christmas!
Glad All Over 