You might have heard some Christmas songs enough times to make you want to perforate your eardrums with a candy cane, but many festive pop songs are great works of art.
Here are some of the top Christmas songs, from ancient carols to the best Christmas Number Ones.
It’s the perfect soundtrack to your Christmas party – and since New Year’s Eve isn’t far behind.
Some of the more popular songs are:
‘Merry Xmas Everybody’ – Slade
Noddy Holder and his troupe of platform-wearers continue to blight our television screens each December with their frightening fashion sense. There’s a reason for that, of course. It’s the joyful simplicity of 1973’s ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, which is guaranteed to inject that euphoric, slightly drunken, Christmas-love vibe into the festive season.
‘It’s Clichéd to be Cynical at Christmas’ – Half Man Half Biscuit
If you’re at all familiar with Nigel Blackwell’s long-serving indie band (who once blamed a temporary split on ’musical similarities’) you’ll know all about their spiky, surreal and satirical viewpoint on British culture. But HMHB make an exception for the festive season, skewering modern-day Scrooges and spreading a little Christmas joy with the bells and violins of this lovely, lilting folk number. Cheer up: it’s Christmas!
‘Christmas Time is Here’ – Mark Kozelek
We wouldn’t actually want to spend Christmas with Mark Kozelek: he’s the indie version of the miserable uncle who gave you that sexist joke book last year. But his 2014 version of the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s yuletide classic (written for the ‘Peanuts’ TV special ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ in 1965) is a real beauty. Maybe Uncle Mark can come round and play it on Christmas Eve, then get a cab home before he says something offensive?
‘Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want To Fight Tonight)’ – The Ramones
Joey Ramone’s plea to his lover to put their scrapping aside for the holidays is undoubtedly the punk Christmas anthem. Beneath its acquiescent lyrics, mind, is a typically fiery Ramones riff that’s more likely to fuel high tensions rather than ease them around a warring Christmas dinner table.
‘Santa’s Got A Bag Of Soul’ – Soul-Saints Orchestra
This funky-as-you-like number might sound like rare groove from ’60s America, but is actually the product of mid-’90s German band The Poets of Rhythm, playing under a different name. Who cares about the provenance, however, when the beats are this big?
‘Space Christmas’ – Shonen Knife
This track from everyone’s favourite all-gal, Japanese punk-pop band may not make one jot of sense, but it’s positively dripping in youthful Christmas cheer. Anxiously awaiting the arrival of Santa, who apparently travels by ‘bison sleigh’, the girls hope for a spaceship so they can fly to Pluto and eat ice cream. Makes dry turkey and lumpy gravy round Auntie Jeane’s look rather unexciting, doesn’t it?
‘Little Drummer Boy’ – Lauryn Hill
No-one had ever made ‘pa-rop-pa-pom-pom’ sound sexy before Ms Lauryn Hill recorded this old number for Christmas 1999. Nor had that drummer boy ever played a funkier beat. And yet somehow Hill’s swinging R&B version hasn’t entered the Christmas canon, possibly because it came out on an unforgivably tacky charity comp featuring Celine Dion, Cher and Elmo from ‘Rugrats’.
‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ – Greg Lake
This is Christmas cynicism at its most tuneful. Intended as a denouncement of the increasing commercialisation of the festive season, Greg Lake inadvertently crafted a folk-prog Christmas classic. Ironically, it’s now one of the go-to songs for cash-cow Christmas compilations.
‘2000 Miles’ – Pretenders
It sounds like a take on the classic ‘it’s Christmas, I miss you’ theme, but Chrissie Hynde’s frosty ballad gets much sadder when you know it was written for the band’s guitarist James Honeyman-Scott, who had died the previous year. Honeyman-Scott’s replacement Robbie McIntosh pays tribute with some gorgeous arpeggios: the closest a guitar gets to the sound of snowfall.
‘Mary’s Boy Child’ – Harry Belafonte
Trivia fans take note: this is the only song ever to hit Christmas Number One twice, for two totally different artists. ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ was recorded first by American calypso star Harry Belafonte in 1956. His slow-and-steady, ultra-classy arrangement was a massive hit and it still delivers the Christmas magic nearly 60 years later. You’ll have to wait and see whether Boney M’s 1978 disco version can do the same.
Want to receive news alerts via WhatsApp? Send us an SMS/ WhatsApp message with your name and cellphone number to 079 414 6709.
Familiarise yourself with our WhatsApp service disclaimer.
Do you perhaps have more information pertaining to this story? Email us at roodepoortrecord@caxton.co.za (remember to include your contact details) or phone us on 011 955 1130.
For free daily local news on the West Rand, also visit our sister newspaper websites Randfontein Herald, Krugersdorp News and Get It Joburg West Magazine
Remember to visit our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages to let your voice be heard!
