This is just lovely.
Category: Christmas
Advent song for December 15
Check out how everyone in this video bar Shakey himself looks like there’s something a bit wrong about them.
Advent song for December 14
I knew this was the song I wanted for today, but I didn’t know which version I wanted, so this morning I engaged in a bit of research. Things I didn’t know before include that this song is from a film, that it was written in 1949 and that it won the best song Oscar the following year. There’s a very charming version from 1951 featuring Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Jordan, and there will always be a place in my heart for the Miss Piggy/Rudolf Nuryev cover, but because it’s the original and best, here are Ricardo Montalban and Esther Williams in Neptune’s Daughter (I’d never heard of it either) with Baby It’s Cold Outside.
Advent song for December 13
What I like about this is that it’s an attempt to emulate the glitz and pomp of the glam rock Christmas classics from the 1970s, and it more or less succeeds. That the song hasn’t passed into Christmas legend isn’t its fault: it’s genuinely good. It stopped being fashionable to like The Darkness, but for a few months there they were, in their own way, very good indeed. And this video has everything, including a children’s choir and a Christmas message at the end. What more could you want? A penis reference, you say? It’s got that too. Enjoy.
Advent song for December 12
All David Bowie’s duets are odd, but this is the oddest. (Not including that one from Labyrinth which he sings with a monster.) What makes this, of course, is the bizarrely stilted run-up, which is reminiscent of nothing so much as the early scenes of a 1970s porn film.
Hi, I’m David Bowie, I live down the road
…
What sort of music do you play?
Oh, mostly…contemporary stuff – do you like modern music?
Oh, I think it’s marvellous.
Genius.
Seasonal songs
I’ve realised, too late, that I should have created my own online advent calendar by embedding a video for a different Christmas song each day. Well, it’s too late to do it from the 1st, but it’s not too late to start now. So from now until Christmas, except on the 19th-22nd inclusive when I will be out of the country and may not have internet access, I will link to a new Christmas song each day from among my personal favourites. We will begin with an item which is neither an embedded video nor even a video at all, really, but it’s one of the happiest Christmas songs there is: Andy Williams singing Sleigh Ride. Make sure you listen all the way through; it gets better as it goes along. Just like advent.
Glad All Over 