Year-round Yuletide oddities
Taking the time to rework ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen to meet your own comical needs is a consuming labor, but several have done it.
ApologetiX has a lively, clever version (or two), but it’s OT about David and Goliath. (Did they fight in Bethlehem? Or was that Elhanan and Goliath?)
Queen even did a Santa/gifts lark with their own parody.
I prefer the Mark Bradford attempt. Lots of churches use it (with awful costumes/puppetry), and it’s a super duper parody.
Vanessa Bell Armstrong funks up the soul for a wonderful testament to the time and place of the birth of the Light of the World, despite the over-tympanification. “The Inn Keeper” is a song to feel deep down into your faith organs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV3HtXyriwU
Sorry, but there’s a fine Mary in the nativity song that’s nasty as BLUE ALERT. For those of you (like me) who have heard, but never really got “The Most Offensive Song Ever” from Parker and Stone’s South Park songs, here are the lyrics and everything. No going back.
A couple more mother issues before we pick up a new subscription:
Aime Mann tangentially touches on the feminine of God with her “Calling on Mary.” Seems to be more about the price of love in the time of mercantilism and happiness despite a heartless world to me… maybe i don’t get her.
You want to dance to proud Mary, plug in to Nina Hagen swirling up a sirocco of Middle Eastern music with “Mary Christmas.” What should sound sacrilegious, pounds terpsichorean. Get on your feet!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwShcD04cEs
Aerosmith’s 1989 works may not lend themselves to Christmas parodies, but then you don’t know ApologetiX. This Christian parody rock band from Pittsburgh has been storming the States for nearly 25 years. Dozens of cool bandmen have enriched their ranks over the years… and they adapt modern stuff too. (They’re ‘Weird’ Al approved!)
So check out “Mary’s Got a Son (Parody of ‘Janie’s Got a Gun).” Mother of God!
Mary gets good hallelujah this time of the year. Heck we include her name in seasons’ greetings (misspelled). It’s a chore to create the Creator.
The Advent gets some diva note manipulation with Francesca Battistelli in “Be Born in Me (Mary).” It takes about two minutes of warm up to get to the singing, but the virtuoso is foretold.
Amy Grant labor coaches the old girl with “Almost There.” It’s a lilting uplifting appreciation of motherhood.
Hal Leonard and Shawnee Press Church Choral church “Almost There” up a notch and make a village out of the delivery process. I see the crown!
I’m not sure how long Mary was laid up with birthing biz. Did the wise men show up the next night? The next week?
Here Bah & the Humbugs (again!) feel the Google-Maps-less pain of the wandering sages with “Get Me to the Stable on Time.” That was a lot of desert after all. (And this is a lot of song.)
Sometime after the birth of the Only-Begotten, some bros rolled by. We say three, cause it’s easier to keep track. Herod sent ’em, a star led ’em, they knelt and smelt and felt the presence.
Their imagery inspires the likes of James Blunt to internalize his relationship with his girlfriend. “Wisemen” is light rock with a tinge of psychedelia. You might not hum it yuletide as appropriate.
Jim Nabors lays into the mysticism with “Three Wise Men, Wise Men Three.” This 1967 solemnity somnambulates sonorously. Bobby Vinton, however, swings just a bit with his 1964 cut of the same. Enjoy.
One of the more amusing retellings of the nativity comes from Bah & the Humbugs. “The One Minute Manger” may clock in a couple seconds long, and it may play off the Blanchard and Johnson 1982 business etiquette phenomenon, but it caters to our 21st Century short attention span. And it kinda rocks.
A newborn means new parents. Mary and Big Joe get some good screen time in the story of the Nativity, but few enough songs about them… just stable scenery for magi and drummers.
Tim McGraw has a gentle country ballad about “Mary and Joseph.” Don’t quote chapter and verse here, I think he takes some liberties (makes ’em sound kinda white if you ask me). Pretty song, though.