Category: show tune

The opposite of dressed is… next.

Escaping the entire fashion scene is Dan Hart with his light-hearted “Xmas in the Nude.” It’s poppy ragtime. It’s natural.

This doesn’t have to be sexual, you know. Unless you ask Donny Lovering. “Kenny’s Naked Christmas” is on the naughty list. Lounge pop.

Yeah, “Naked Noël (A Naturist Christmas)” by Andy Twyman does that thing with comparing your free swinging bits with food. We’ve done that! But, those Brits laugh at the same thing over and over.

Time to let it all hand out! The Naked Cowboy (Gaetano Lattanzi, Lee Evans) party down with dance and reggae and country and rock and all manner of noise in “Naked Christmas.” Whoa.

You’re not intimidated are you? Big Mess ukes up a lively folk warning about “Naked Santa.” Run doesn’t seem to cover it.

Peter E Clarkson is seething. His frantic showtune “Santa Saw Me Naked” is propounded on mere conjecture. Settle down, man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuyXOhxT02w

Cross dressing for Christmas has some small following.

Bob Rivers does a silly naughty bit, but i like the reimagining of (and new intro for) “Walking Round in Women’s Underwear” by The Stag Party Quartet a cappella. (You know what carol that’s from.)

Robert K Wolf also makes brazen his “Crossdressing for Christmas.” Smoky honky tonk blues, if you can believe that.

Cumberland Sausage Show claims to have caught Santa wearing Mother’s silkies in “Cross Dress Christmas.” Poppy show tune.

A Don’t Hug Me Christmas Carol updates the Dickens into Minnesota, but also allows for a woman ‘they call Bill’ singing about fashionable choices from “Deep in the CLoset.”

Post Millennium, stamped cards have gone the way of old folks sayings. Kids today send greetings in other ways.

Pointy Bird Records homespin a family children’s song (with valiant effort over talent): “Special Christmas Email.” It cheers up the childies.

Addison Weismantel’s uncles have a bouncy country pop tea party while having an “Email Christmas.” Technologically observant.

Spottily able (or drunk?) Mike Hayes wombily warbles “Who’s Gonna Tweet Me this Christmas?” He’s sad. I am too, now.

The Modern Prosthetix go much more professional and retro rock ballad, with “Facebook Christmas.” He’s never alone, you know, a-whoa-oh-ohhh.

The Perry Brothers favor the stupid, as with their Stupidface and Retarded Policeman series on Youtube (oh, ay, one of ’em preformer’s autistic; is okee). But their “Xmas Txt” is a mediocre callout to the thumby generation. Cards are (somehow) more personal!

The excellent Jon Lajoie lets you know how much he cares when he sends you a Christmas text. “Merry Christmas Exclamation Point” is country rock pop done stone cold ironic.

Just as predictably Kristen Bell fronts Straight No Chaser with “Text Me Merry Christmas.” This was probably a gas several years ago when first sung, but it’s a smug MOR show tune now. Cute.

The classic 2003 Will Ferrell film “Elf” got crammed into a B’way musical 2010. It didn’t get better. But it gave us an okay song about Christmas singing “A Christmas Song” here star-powered by Jim Parsons and Kate Micucci from the 2014 TV special (quaintsy and quirky) as opposed to Sebastian Arcelus and Amy Spanger from the original cast recording below (more chorus, more from the diaphragm).

Mob, the hard rocking band, protests with taste in “I Hate Christmas Songs.” I think it’s about you.

Touch My Rash get less specific and much more punk with “I Hate Christmas Songs and I Hate Everyone.” I got you some anger management for Christmas.

Todd Steed and the Christmas Suns sing (over the girls playing in front of the camera) a stern folk lesson “I Hate Christmas (Songs)!” Wait, there’s a happy ending (i guess).

My favorite Greensboro pranksters Piedmont Songbag have the bitching in the bag with “Stupid Christmas Songs,” a rambling country pop pisser about the futility of carols. (Love that Bing Crosby imprssion!)

Teresa Fischer belabors the burden of the professional singer told which tune to croon. “Please Don’t Make Me Sing a Christmas Ballad” is a roller coaster of a story with piano pounding, range stretching, and lyrical loopiness luring you to sing-along: don’t!

The 1992 musical ‘Scrooge’ (Anthony Newly in London) (2004 had Richard Chamberlin on Broadway) opens with the ensemble “Sing a Christmas Carol.” Gee, that’s loud.

Radio City Music Hall pulls out all the stops (stop being original, stop being clever, stop making sense) with “Sing a Little Song of Christmas.” It’s not little, and it’s much more about The Great White Way than the one true way. Bleh.

Self reference sells The Lucky Face’s (feat. Lizzie London) “Just Another Christmas Song.” Folk rock with a wink and a nod and a tongue in a cheek and a leg pulled. Ouch already, my funny bone!

Stephen Colbert mashes up the gray area between vacuous formula horse-beating, and the irony of it all. Judge “Another Christmas Song” with your side-eyes, yourself. It’s all in either way.

Rarely has a smudgily drawn cartoon about middle class losers of–at best–annoying personality traits been rendered with and received so much talent and love. The show is at times cringeworthy and at others breathtaking, without any warning.

The songs are often brilliant. Though they can be headscratching…

“The Bleaken” is the marching song of the Belcher children on their way to confront a Christmas demon who steals presents. The song only has a couple lines, but a fan here are stitched together snippets to form the metallic battle cry anthem here.

During the same episode the mother stumbles upon a rave that has been constructed out of her stolen neighborhood decorations, but relents when the Queen of the Ball sings “Twinkly Lights.” R+B party music. The “Reprise” is actually better (a trademark of the show is the end credits music.)

The music also inspires groups to replicate it. The Nationals makeover “Christmas Magic” as an alt folk dirge. The original is noisy and crazy as a group improv folk number.

Rerun: “The Spirits of Christmas” is sung by landlord about the reason for the season–glug glug glug.

“Linda’s Christmas Dream” is the apotheosis of the sudden fragmentary musical number out of nowhere teaching us to live above our misery. Showstopping diva symphonics. (Mr. Present sounds nice.)

Let’s end on one of those end credit pieces. “We Can’t Spell Christmas Without US” wails and sells the jazzy show tune out of the park.

This Rocko’s Modern Life descendant is a musical cartoon about adventurous step-brothers, but as a Disney channel kidstoon the songs are a given. Since the songs have been nommed for awards, we’ll give some of the 2010 album a listen.

“Winter Vacation” is a good place to start. for to look over the setting, meet the characters, and glimpse their unlikely adventures. Disneyfied rock, but Bowling for Soup thank you very much. The inevitably drippy pop song “That Christmas Feeling” comes from Olivia Olsen, the daughter of the evil mad scientist.

The signature childhood angst of the show finds form in older sister Candace’s ’50s pop lament “What Does He Want?” and the entire cast’s showtune anthem “Where Did We Go Wrong?” (Don’t fret, those are answered in “Danville for Niceness” and “Thank You Santa.” Happy endings, all!)

Most kids’ favorites for the show are the hero-nemesis duo of the pet platypus Agent P (featured in a commercial promo for the show, as he doesn’t get a whole lot of song or vocals, “We Wish You a Perry Christmas“) and Dr. Doofenshmirtz the not-so-confident mastermind, whose conflicted song “I Really don’t Hate Christmas” is a virtuoso of character constricted vocal chords (think Daffy Duck a la Gilbert and Sullivan).