{"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. \u2018Blue Christmas\u2019, written in 1948 by Billy Hayes and Jay W. Johnson, is ostensibly a rejoinder to \u2018White Christmas\u2019, with its lines\u00a0\u2018You\u2019ll be doing all right, with your Christmas of white \/ But I\u2019ll have a blue, blue, blue, blue Christmas\u2019 \u2013 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 \u2018White Christmas\u2019 was met with hostility by Berlin, outraged at what he deemed a parody of his and Crosby\u2019s original. Instead, \u2018Blue Christmas\u2019 would become Elvis\u2019 standard Christmas tune. For the sake of this list, I\u2019ve picked a version of \u2018Blue Christmas\u2019 performed by Elvis during the black leather sit-down segments of his \u201968 Comeback Special.<\/p>\n

Looking towards Christmastimes\u2019 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. \u2018White Christmas\u2019 and \u2018The Christmas Song\u2019 remain classics, whose ubiquity is matched at this time of year only by the Pogues\u2019 \u2018Fairytale of New York\u2019. Once considered an alternative Christmas ballad for its tale of forlorn, drunken, gambling and drug addicted lovers, \u2018Fairytale of New York\u2019 retains its power whenever it is actually listened to \u2013 the song successfully captures one aspect of New York City; and the skip of Shane MacGowan\u2019s voice in the final verse, as he recollects the dreams the two lovers have shared, is profoundly moving \u2013 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\u2019s \u2018Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)\u2019. Love has performed the song on David Letterman\u2019s 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