Do We Know It's Christmas…? Just Turn on the Radio!

A good Christmas album? That I actually like? You heard right. And ignore the twee cover, this one is honestly worth your while.

Christmas music; whatever you think of it, you can always guarantee it will still be there next year, like the pine needles under the sofa. In some cases, we actually expect it... who, these days, (in the UK at any rate) can imagine Christmas without hearing Noddy Holder bawling it at the top of his voice. You’ve probably seen the internet meme that has a picture of Nod with the caption: ‘Tay Christmas till oi say.’ Which just about hits the nail on the head.

Last time, I looked back at the history of the Christmas single as a phenomenon of the British pop charts, and wondered at the dearth of such efforts prior to Slade’s festive breakthrough. As we’ve seen, Christmas records weren’t unknown before the lads from Wolverhampton, but the buying public seemed strangely resistant to the idea, and I think I’m right in saying that Slade’s Merry Xmas Everyone was the first Christmas-themed single to reach number one in the UK charts since Harry Belafonte got there with Mary's Boy Child back in 1957 (the first Christmas single we ever had in our house). It’s that number one placing that is significant here: the goal that spurred on so many others to have a bash at making a record for what the Beatles called Chrimble.

Although UK-based artists took their time to climb on board the festive gravy train, across the pond, the Bisto Express, if you will, had been getting up a good head of steam for many years, even though a cursory glance at some festive charts suggests that in America as in Britain, the idea of the Christmas single in the 1960s was like driving on black ice – it had no traction whatsoever.

This is interesting, given that the most famous Christmas song of all time originated in America and had spent a staggering eleven weeks atop the Billboard chart in its first year of release alone. The song, of course, is Irving Berlin’s White Christmas in its definitive reading by Bing Crosby (the record was released ludicrously early for the Christmas market, even by modern day standards, on July 30^th 1942 as part of a box set of songs from the film Holiday Inn). So far so good, and the festive hit formula was still working for Harry Belafonte fifteen years later. So why is that by the time we reach the 1960s, and the era of modern pop music, Christmas songs get harder to find? Was it simply that the thrusting new artists of the day were too cool, too hip to pay lip service to a genre associated with the pork-pie-hatted golf fanatic of a previous decade? Not so Chuck Berry, who had his fair share of festive waxings, such as Run Rudolph Run. But not everyone was after a piece of the festive action. Not yet, anyway...

A notable landmark arrived in 1963 in the form of Phil Spector’s A Christmas Gift For You. Now regarded as a classic, at the time of its original release the album was considered a relative failure, and a glance at the Hot 100 for the week of December 28^th 1963 reveals the hollow promise of the festive wall of sound: not a single track from the album is to be found anywhere. In fact, the only entry in the whole chart that might even remotely be connected with Christmas was Dominique by The Singing Nun, standing at number one. Some of the chart looks almost perversely un-festive: The Trashmen’s garage classic Surfin’ Bird for one and Wonderful Summer by Robin Ward for another (nope, me neither).

Nevertheless, Spector’s efforts would later be seen as hugely influential: Wizzard’s I Wish it Could Be Christmas Every Day tips its Santa hat firmly in the direction of the Wall-of-Sound-Meister, and just a year after the Spector release, Brian Wilson, ever attentive to the musical machinations of his rival, tipped not just his metaphorical hat, but the whole Santa outfit, sleigh, bags and baggage in the form of The Beach Boys’ Christmas Album. The musical formula here echoed what Spector had done with his roster of artists: basically, standard production, drenched in sleighbells (Wilson had auditioned unsuccessfully to play piano on the Spector record). Surf and snow seems somewhat counter-intuitive, yet Wilson’s sneaky gambit payed off... on first release, the album reached No. 6 in the Billboard 200 chart, against the Spector album’s unlucky thirteen. Spector had indeed been the victim of bad luck, or bad timing at any rate: his album had been released on the day of the Kennedy assassination, an event that left America stunned, in mourning, and in no mood for an LP record of upbeat festivities. Brian Wilson’s sober In My Room did well on the singles chart in the coming weeks, and it’s surely a reflection of the mood of a nation when an acoustic guitar-weilding nun can get to number one.

These two records tell us something about the beginnings of Christmas pop music in the modern era: that in these early stages, the festive season was seen as an opportunity to sell not singles, but albums. Perry Como had got in on the act as early as 1956, and Andy Williams was another early uptaker, releasing the first of eight Christmas albums in the same year as Phil Spector’s Christmas Gift. There have been many more. Some might say, far too many.

Let’s leave the crooners to their festive jumpers and television spectaculars and fast-forward to the 1980s, by which time the Christmas single had become firmly established as an inevitable part of the festive season, although, as ever, some efforts struggled – Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas, now an expected entry in any Christmas playlist, could manage no more than a peak position of 53 on first release in 1988. Viewed in the cold light of a non-Christmas winter day, it’s no great shakes as a song, certainly well down the pecking order in any list of the growler’s greatest hits. I’ve always taken issue with one particular lyric: ‘top to toe in tailbacks.’ That’s a vertical metaphor, Chris, and driving has always struck me as kind of, uh, horizontal. But we’ll let that pass.

A personal favourite of mine, XTC – who I thought would have known better – released their own festive effort, Thanks for Christmas, in 1983. I first heard it on the Steve Wright show one dark afternoon in the office, without knowing who was responsible for what struck me as a disposable piece of jingle-bell junk. ‘That sounds a bit like XTC to me’, remarked Wright, who was clearly in on the joke. The single had come out under the epiphanic pseudonym The Three Wise Men (there being but three regular members of XTC at this point in time), although songwriter Andy Partridge’s original master plan had been to record the ditty with vocals supplied by a choir made up of Virgin Records’ female staff members, to be known collectively as The Virgin Marys. Luckily, and not unsurprisingly, this notion was left unplucked on Partridge’s conceptual pear tree, but the record was made anyway, with the band members augmented by a trumpet player who may or may not have been a former schoolmate of mine: the putative horn man, one Pete Smalley, told me later that he had certainly played on the session, though couldn’t tell if his take was the one selected for the final mix.

Thanks for Christmas is a rarity amongst Christmas records – a near total failure. Most festive chart misses of yore eventually find their way onto some or other compilation, but The Three Wise Men’s effort remains overlooked. It is, perhaps, the exception that proves the rule, for in most cases, a Christmas song is, literally, the gift that keeps on giving. Some we might well describe as the unwanted sweater from the well-meaning relative that turns up year on year. Take Shakin’ Stevens (please! And as far away as possible...) Only this morning I was subjected to the background sound of his own waxing, the imaginatively-titled Merry Christmas Everyone, while wandering through our local mall. Is there anything of merit in this soulless seasonal cash-in? It has all the integrity of Max Bygraves’ Jingle Bell Rock, and might almost be taken for an artefact from the same late-50s era were it not for the drab, vibe-free 80s studio production. You can actually hear the carpeting on the wall if you listen hard enough – not that I’d recommend doing that without medical supervision.

Sadly, tat and the Christmas song go hand in hand, while imagination generally goes out of the window (or should that be up the chimney?) Gene Autry (not the bloke from the Carry On Films) was responsible for the inspiration-free Here Comes Santa Claus, which has been around for nearly as long as the son of God himself, born almost literally in a stable in 1946 (Autry is reputed to have had the idea for the song after riding his horse in a Christmas parade). Being rubbish, however, is no handicap to a Christmas toon, and Here Comes... has been covered by everyone from Bing Crosby to Bob Dylan, from Elvis Presley to Alvin and the Chipmunks. As I say, it’s the gift that keeps on giving... but only to those on the other side of the cash register.

The phenomenon was given a new slant and a veneer of integrity with the arrival, in 1984, of the charity Christmas single in the form of Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas. Given the altruistic motives behind the song, it’s hard to dislike DTKIC. But somehow, I managed it. I didn’t hold it in the same contempt as, say, Shakey and his festive knitwear, but, when it first climbed the charts, I quickly grew tired of hearing it. Anyone can do their bit for charity, and thumbs-up to all who do, but personally, I’d rather they didn’t shout it from the rooftops; and in the case of Do They Know... I rather suspected certain participants of getting involved solely for the kudos of being seen to be doing the right thing. (I really should put cynicism away for the festive season, but I can’t help it...) My intial antipathy was helped along by the fact that, for all its chiming Yamaha DX7 samples, the single didn’t sound like part of Christmas. Now, of course, it comes over all tinsel and turkey and trimmings, but at the time, I’d rather have seen Slade or Greg Lake back in the charts if the proceeds were going to charity.

As I’ve been reminded, there are plenty of half decent (and even some completely decent) efforts hiding on the huge, over-decorated Norway Spruce that we call Christmas music... The Pretenders, The Waitresses (it’s a bit of a rubbish rap, but it grows on you), Jethro Tull’s Ring Out Solstice Bells , Steeleye Span’s Gaudete (though I prefer Haitian Divorce myself... apologies for that bad cracker joke). It’s not all bad, and if we wait long enough there might just... just... be another good Christmas single waiting to happen.

These days, the festive album has seen something of a resurgence, with the likes of Sting, Annie Lennox and countless others recognising the potential of not necessarily Christmas, but winter as a conceptual hook with which to haul in unwary music fans (I know, I used ‘Sting’ and ‘music’ in the same sentence there, but it’s Christmas...) I discovered a new personal favourite in 2004 in the shape of The Pearlfishers’ A Sunflower at Christmas. You may well ask. The Pearlfishers are not so much a band as Glasgow-based solo artist David Scott, and they/ he have been responsible for some sublime and almost totally overlooked albums in a career spanning twenty years. The aforementioned Christmas effort originally appeared in mini-album format on the German Marina label, offering a mere seven tracks and proving, as ever, that less can be much, much more. If there is a more sublime Christmas song than Scott’s composition The Snow Lamb, I’ve yet to hear it.

I'm sure there's still much more to be said on this subject, and that I have overlooked dozens of worthwhile efforts, but for the time being, we'll leave the last words to that spirit of Christmas past in the mirrored top hat: IT'S CHRIIIISSSTMAAASSS!

Merry Christmas, everyone…