Tag: advent

Advent song for December 21: Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Welcome to Wednesday 21 December 2022, the day I heard the actual worst Christmas cover version I’ve ever encountered: Kelly Clarkson (whom I normally like well enough)’s horrible jazz rendition of Last Christmas. I’m not linking to it; if you want to hear it you can seek it out for yourself. (You don’t want to hear it.)

Luckily I can bleach my ears of the memory with this: a fantastic cover of Darlene Love’s 1963 hit by Queen Christmas herself, Mariah Carey, which benefits from an authentic Wall Of Sound without the involvement of Phil Actual Murderer Spector, and should therefore be listened to in lieu of the original where possible, although I did discover today that one of the backing vocalists on the original is Cher, which sort of makes me want to go back and listen. I won’t, though. (I will.)

Advent song for December 20: A Holly Jolly Christmas

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Films, Music, TV and radio

This is a bit special: a recording of this standard from 1965 by Living Voices, the commercial name for the RCA studio singers. The Burl Ives version we all know had come out just a year earlier, and RCA clearly decided to take advantage of its popularity, and that of other Christmas classics, by putting out this album which, I am delighted to tell you, you can listen to in its entirety here, and I think you should; ideally immediately. If you are in need of comfort today, I’m pretty sure this will help.

Advent song for December 19: Merry Xmas Everybody

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

The answer to “Blur or Oasis?” is of course, “Pulp”, and of all the mid-nineties bands I grew up with Oasis are probably the ones I find least interesting (not counting Wonderwall, which is a masterpiece. In fact I insist you go and listen to it now, then come back).

Back? Good. This version of the Slade classic, though, is the only one anyone’s ever recorded that not only isn’t awful, but is actively good, which shouldn’t be possible and I don’t understand quite how Noel did it, but also if you’re going to cover a difficult Christmas song, being called ‘Noel’ is probably a good place to start.

Advent song for December 18: White Christmas

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Ten advents ago, in 2013, we had twenty-four versions of White Christmas but since there are [checks] around 2,000 versions, we had to skip a few. One which we shouldn’t have missed out, except that in having done so I have an excuse to include it today, is from the Godmother of Gospel, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Her Wikipedia page tells me that she’s also the Godmother of Rock’n’Roll, having directly influenced Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and, um, Eric Clapton.

Clapton aside that’s an impressive line-up and while I’m going to say that this isn’t necessarily among her best recordings (you can go here for those), what it lacks in badass rock’n’rollery it more than makes up for in charm.

Advent song for December 17: Do They Know It’s Christmas

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

Most cover versions of this song are pale imitations of the perfect original; this is the only one I found that did something interesting of its own. I hadn’t heard of Emily Hall, who is a British musician and composer who appears to be annoyingly talented and beautiful. This is almost a John Lewis ad version, but is saved from that worst of all musical fates by being a bit too up tempo to qualify.

Advent song for December 16: The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, London, Music

We hear from Pentatonix fairly regularly in these pages, I think, because they are interesting and don’t sound like anybody else (and have a lot of Christmas songs). I think this is completely a capella but someone with a better ear than me can say so for sure. This is today’s song of choice because it’s the most wonderful day of the year*; the day I go for Christmas Thai food with my ex BBC colleagues. We only manage it once a year, and we had to skip a year because of Covid (we somehow still pulled it off in 2021; I’m not sure how), and some people have to travel thousands of miles for it, but it’s always worth it. Happy Friday!

*My weekends away with university friends also fall into this category, but happily we usually manage those more often than once a year.

Advent song for December 15: Driving Home For Christmas

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music

I’m never sure how much I like the original of this song. You know when something is bound up with memories, and you’ve no way to tell whether you ever had an objective aesthetic judgement of its merits? So I can’t tell you whether this version is any good, either, but I can tell you that it will make a lot of straight men and gay women (and all variations therein) of my age very happy. YOU’RE WELCOME.

Advent song for December 12: River

On By Laura MorganIn Christmas, Music, TV and radio

Well, now. Joni Mitchell’s River is one of my very favourite Christmas songs and I was a bit sad that it’s never been a big enough hit anywhere for a version of it to sneak into my top twenty-four, but THEN I listened to every available version of Santa Baby (with the exception for obvious reasons of Eartha Kitt’s), and it turns out every single cover version is unbearable, with the closest to palatable being from an album called A Very Ally Christmas which seems to be a selection of songs “from, and inspired by” the Ally McBeal Christmas special(s). This version is better than the execrable efforts turned out by luminaries including, but not limited to, Kylie, Madonna, and Mae West – really – but on the same album I discovered this recording of River by Robert Downey Jr (of course), and I like it better than any version of Santa Baby (except the original), so we’re having this instead.