I Hate Christmas Music, or How to Survive the Material Plane

There are some notable exceptions, and I’ll get those out of the way immediately.  Otis Redding’s ‘Merry Christmas Baby’, William Bell’s ‘Every Day Will be Like a Holiday’, And let’s not forget ‘Fairytale of New York’, and Swamp Dogg’s ‘An Awful Christmas and a Lousy New Year’.  But, The Pogues aside, these guys could sing the phonebook and still have me hooked.  I’m also a big fan of Gaby Moreno’s ‘Posada’ album, a mix of traditional hymns and gospel.  Her voice is exquisite: ‘Mariachi, to swinging Gypsy jazz, to vintage R&B’, as iTunes describes it.

But for the most part I’m with Bill Nighy on this.  In ‘Love Actually’ he plays a washed-up rock star trying to resurrect his career, with a last resort Christmas song.  Of course, his heart’s not in it and halfway through the rehearsal he grinds to a halt saying, ‘This is shit, isn’t it?’  To which his manager responds, ‘Yep!  Solid gold shit!’ 

Solid gold bullshit, in my opinion.  And yet people buy it.  Play it proudly.  Sing along in department stores.  Bright, funny, intelligent people, who accuse me of having no Christmas spirit, of being a killjoy.  It’s true I don’t have an attic full of Christmas ornaments and I don’t decorate my front room the day after Thanksgiving, which is common practice in many American households.  But I love Christmas!  I watch holiday movies and I shop till I drop.  I just hate the awful music.

In the interests of fairness, however, I have to acknowledge the one-off participants in that: musicians who got talked into a single cut on a Christmas compilation.  Springsteen, Seger, Clapton and Sheryl Crow; forgivable if it’s for charity.  Or the Christmas album forced on you by your contract. Motown was one of the worst offenders for that, with Diana Ross faking a British accent on ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, and shaking a verbal finger at whether you’d been bad! Or good!

And then there’s The Jackson 5, who for all their talent and energy grew increasingly frustrated with Motown, and their lack of control over their recordings.  Their Christmas LP, stocked with the usual stinkers, is almost as horrible, and Stevie Wonder’s is worse if only because I hold him to a higher standard than the rest.  Smokey Robinson also succumbed, although Marvin Gaye, who was married to Berry Gordy’s sister, seems to have avoided this particular pitfall, perhaps for that reason. 

But, at the end of the day, I cringe for everyone involved in this deplorable waste of time and money.  In fact, I used to say that no one cool ever made a Christmas album: Nina Simone, the Stones, Aretha Franklin.  But come to find out that even the Queen of Soul churned one out in 2008.  This self-produced set hit the market with ‘a deafening thud’ as a fellow blogger put it.  Panned by reviewers, including Amazon purchasers, many felt she’d lost her magic and reduced herself to Bill Nighy level.  

In her defense, the same tracks, produced by Jerry Wexler when she was at her peak, would’ve been a different matter.  I’m a sucker for her version of ‘With Pen in Hand’ and Ray Charles’ version of ‘Take Me Home Country Roads’.  It’s that phonebook thing again, where the right voice supported by a great call and response can lift hokeyness to an art form.  And, with Wexler in charge, she might’ve had a winner and I might’ve bought it.

Bing Crosby, on the other hand, was never a favorite. His voice and the whole ‘crooner’ style leave me cold. If I’m honest, it makes me angry in the same way Rap and modern Country make me angry.  Combine it with a Christmas song, in a department store change room, and I’m in full-on music-rage mode.  Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Perry Como, Andy Williams. Johnny Mathis on the loud speakers?  I’m ready to run amok.  But the person who is guaranteed to push me over the edge is Karen Carpenter.  There, I said it!  America’s sweetheart!  And, if I land in Hell for that, so be it.  Pump up the heat, put me on hold with the IRS or some equally inaccessible government department, make Karen the background playlist, and write me off for eternity; but I hate her music.   

Sadly, my in-laws who are Christmas junkies, love Karen Carpenter.  When I arrived for my first Black Southern Christmas celebration, she was blasting from the stereo, and everyone was singing along.  I thought it was a joke.  Either that, or they were accommodating the lone white person in a crowd of 30.  I said as much to my brother-in-law, a mean son-of-a-bitch with a prison record and attitude out the ass, and he looked at me as if I was crazy.  “We love Karen,” he assured me.  “Karen is Christmas.’  At which point I laughed, because now I knew they were joking.  But no.  The problem was me. The killjoy.

And that brings me to ‘A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Spector’, which consistently makes Rolling Stone's list of Greatest Albums of all Time, and 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.  Thanks, but I’ll pass.  Spector, for the uninitiated, ‘is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in pop music history and one of the most successful producers of the 1960s.^’   This is the man who gave us, the Wall of Sound, 18 Top Ten hits, and in the ‘70’s produced The Beatles.  My personal favorites of his are ‘He’s a Rebel’ by the Crystals, ‘Black Pearl’ by Sonny Charles and the Checkmates, and ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling’ by the Righteous Brothers.

He also gave us The Ronettes, and The Ronettes were bad ass.  The Rolling Stones were their opening act in 1964, and they were the opening act for The Beatles American tour in ’66.  Plus, they were gorgeous!  Drop dead, big haired, knockouts.  I would kill to look that good. 

They were managed by Phil Spector, whom Ronnie later married, so it was a given they’d be on his Christmas compilation, which was revolutionary for the era and well received.  The Wall of Sound is front and center and everyone does a great job, but there's no denying that the Ronettes wound up with the worst songs: ‘Frosty the Snowman’, ‘I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus’, and ‘Sleigh Ride’.  The first two are virtually solo performances by Ronnie and, in my head, I see Nedra and Estelle demanding a higher profile during the recording of ‘Sleigh Ride’. ‘Okay, okay,’ Spector responds in my fantasy, ‘Ronnie will stay on lead and you girls can say, ‘Ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding’ every second line.  

I mean, really guys?  This is art?   This is who we are?  ‘Ring-a-ling-a-ling-a-ding-dong-ding’.  Bing Crosby?  Karen Carpenter?  Easy listening and trite lyrics; about as much soul as a vanilla pudding?  And yet, here I remain, the lone voice in the wilderness, lost among the blow-up Santas and plastic nativity scenes, railing against a world where this corny pre-packaged slop is the soundtrack of Christmas.