{"id":4056,"date":"2014-12-22T23:30:47","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T22:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.culturedallroundman.com\/?p=4056"},"modified":"2015-12-26T05:38:01","modified_gmt":"2015-12-26T08:38:01","slug":"christmas-music-five-popular-songs-five-alternative-albums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/culturedarm.com\/staging\/5793\/christmas-music-five-popular-songs-five-alternative-albums\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Music: Five Popular Songs & Five Alternative Albums"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ChristmasMusic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elvis Presley leers atop my list of the five best\u00a0popular Christmas recordings. ‘Blue Christmas’, written in 1948 by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson, is ostensibly a rejoinder to ‘White Christmas’, with its lines\u00a0‘You’ll be doing all right, with your Christmas of white \/ But I’ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas’ – even though the Irving Berlin-penned song,\u00a0first performed by Bing Crosby on Christmas Day, 1941, and becoming a hit by the following winter, is itself melancholic. When Elvis released his first Christmas album in October 1958, his version of ‘White Christmas’ was met with hostility by Berlin, outraged at what he deemed a parody of his and Crosby’s original. Instead, ‘Blue Christmas’ would become Elvis’ standard Christmas tune. For the sake of this list, I’ve picked a version of ‘Blue Christmas’ performed by Elvis during the black leather sit-down segments of his ’68 Comeback Special.<\/p>\n

Looking towards Christmastimes’ old\u00a0masters, I prefer the catalogue of Nat King Cole to that of Crosby,\u00a0who is sometimes a little too ornate, especially when performing\u00a0traditional carols. ‘White Christmas’ and ‘The Christmas Song’ remain classics, whose ubiquity is matched at this time of year only by the Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’. Once considered an alternative Christmas ballad for its tale of forlorn, drunken, gambling and drug addicted lovers, ‘Fairytale of New York’ retains its power whenever it is actually listened to – the song successfully captures one aspect of New York City; and the skip of Shane MacGowan’s voice in the final verse, as he recollects the dreams the two lovers have shared, is profoundly moving – but it is so grossly overexposed that it is easily heard instead as background music, and just misses out on my list.<\/p>\n

One Christmas song which tradition has not diminished is Darlene Love’s ‘Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)’. Love has performed the song on David Letterman’s show each Christmas since 1986: age never withering her, nor custom staling until, with Letterman due to retire in the new year, she completed her final rendition on the show\u00a0last Friday night.<\/p>\n