Year-round Yuletide oddities
Although from Adele’s 2015 album 25, the single was released in 2016… peaked at number five in the UK, number eight in the US and number 10 in Canada… the video received a nomination for Best Visual Effects at the 2016 MTV Video Music Awards.
The girl sings so lovely everyone wants to imitate it. Can they make jokes in her range?
Aubrey Howell and friends add spirit to the humor with “Can’t It Wait ’til December?”
Blackstreet’s hot hit reached number one on the BillboardHot 100… also in New Zealand… number nine in the United Kingdom… ended ‘Macarena”s 14-week reign atop the Billboard Hot 100… ranked at number 91 on Rolling Stone and MTV: 100 Greatest Pop Songs… ranked at #32 on VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs of the ’90s… sold 1.6 million copies in 1996… won the 1998 Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals… nominated for Grammy Award for Best R&B Song.
The positivism lifted up Axiom to one of these rare Christmas parodies that preaches gospel rather than sasses secular. “So Christmassy” is classy and talented. Testify to the ‘eve.
Michael Jackson peaked at number 1 in the United States with the fourth single from his seventh solo album, Bad (1987)… nominated for Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards… topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 2 weeks… peaked at number 21 in the UK Singles Charts (in 2009, following the news of Jackson’s death, the song peaked at number 2)… became the number 1 single in iTunes downloads in the US and the UK (over 1.3 million digital copies).
The Mistletones worry about your celebrational culinary decisions around this time of the year with “Fat in the Mirror.” Quit eating out of the bottom of the barrel.
This Bob Dylan reinvention for the soundtrack of the 1973 film Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid reached No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart… one of Dylan’s most popular post-1960s compositions… the Western Writers of America chose it as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.
Buzhard Dakota leans into the grace and soul of it with “Knockin’ on Santa’s Door.” More pretty than funny.
That unhappy refractory period after Christmas drinking is a badge of honor for the young. Jack hurt me, they boast. I can’t function as a human being since I awoke, they quip.
John French Bray soft rocks his “Christmas Hangover” every year to new video making sfx, though he can’t quite figure the lip syncing–which makes me nauseated and headachy. It’s just another season, he seems to say. Routine.
Sounding like the ’60s Gentlemen Jesse and His Men also pledge their morning after pain to the Christ birth in “Christmas Hangover.” It was an honor to be over served.
Announcing that they have the inside of their mouths like an Arab’s underpants (as one might say), Arrogant Worms delivers us unto “Christmas Hangover,” a show tune worthy of church choir-ing. The scenario is horrifying, but the musification merry. It’s irony for the kids ‘cuz–see–they think hangovers are funny.
Not much lyricism over pressed old apples, hardly fermented by late December. We’ll settle over up with a bouncy, jazzy gospel piece from Carmela Estella Ross. Her “Apple Cider and Fruit Cake” is one of those token spreads to entice you to her hard driving sermon about Our Lord. You know like stale cookies and burnt coffee at AA meetings.
Before we fade out on the Galilean, the Nazarene’s big day, let’s consider the nativity as a place in time. The setting is so much a part of the story, we’ll thumb through a couple Bethlehem songs.
There are so many in the hymn book….
Making a pop album out of world weary traditionals may tax an artist. So palm branches to Chicago for an original song “Bethlehem” that beat boxes the limited band instruments into a holy moly melee.
Third Day pokes the folk bear with strumming and humming throughout “Born in Bethlehem.” This monotonous metronome of music rocks just a wee bit.
But if you’re holding out for a foreign language travelogue, this Hungarian version of “Betlehem, Betlehem” haunts and daunts the human spirit. Eerie. [Although i prefer the studio version from the album Xmas Marks the Spot. Cool kick beat.]
Do you believe scripture and verse about the night in the barn and the virgin birth?
Some songs lean on the lesson a bit too hard and become a bit… shall we say ‘camp’?
It’s country-time harmonizing like the church choir when The Gatlin Brothers pull every loose thread out of the robe of “Sweet Baby Jesus.” They so mean it!
Kingdom Heirs pun up the praise with “Hay Baby.” Fiddlin’, yet serious fun!
The Statler Brothers poker face the cheese corn out of “Who Do You Think?” Catch the oompah beat and feel the years pass you by!
The Oak Ridge Boys, earnest emissaries of evangelicalism, head the list of the country crown slingers (George Strait, Blake Shelton and Kelly Clarkson, Trisha Yearwood, Alan Jackson, Kathy Mattea, Lee Ann Womack, and Keith Whitley) who have heralded “There’s a New Kid in Town.” It uses vernacular to revere the Almighty: swoon you must.
What’s in a name? Well, Adolf Christ probably wouldn’t have worked so well.
Plain folk singer Pete Seeger muses through “Glory to That Newborn King.” It’s close, intimate, and moving.
Leave it to gospel man Kirk Franklin to explain that “Something about the Name Jesus” means everything. (I heard it was a variant of Joshua anyway.) There’ some trouble ending a joyful refrain here though.
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