Far Out There Christmas Soundtrack: Jenna

Last time we had an extremely 60s Christmas playlist with Trigger, and this time Jenna brings us an extremely 80s one! Yes, in keeping with the heavy reliance on frothy Synthpop in Jenna’s regular Character Soundtrack, I decided her Christmas one would have to lean just as hard on songs that were either authentically 80s or at least deliberately borrowed from the DayGlo sound of the era. And let me just go ahead and say right now that Jenna’s lucky I’m only doing these Christmas playlist NOW, and not back when I first started this comic. I grew up with a STRONG dislike for the worst of 80s excess, and while I’ve mellowed out enough in my old age, there’s still a few songs here that I would NEVER have allowed anywhere a Christmas playlist of mine even just a few short years ago due to their flagrant 80s-ness. I mean, I’m still not going to put “Do They Know It’s Christmas” on here, so I haven’t compromised on my core values THAT much, but you’ll see what I mean when we get there. The important thing, though, is Jenna totally loves this kind of frothy electro-pop, so that’s just what her holiday playlist is going to be full of, whether I like it or not.

We start off with “Save All Your Love” by Jon Anderson. Yes, the Yes guy returns with one of the original compositions off his 3 Ships album. For the most part, the new songs on that album are much weaker than the standards… and that holds true for “Save All Your Love,” which is a very superficial bit of “Hey, maybe don’t be so mean all the time” fluff. But what is 80s Pop if not superficial fluff? And anyway, more than any of the other tracks on 3 Ships, the light keyboard arrangement here at least SOUNDS convincingly Christmasy.

Next up, we have a mainstay of Jenna’s regular Soundtrack whom we’ll also be seeing a lot of here: Joy Electric with “Lollipop Parade (On Christmas Morn).” The most contemporary act on the list, though you’d never guess it from the sound, Joy Electric is a fairly convincing Erasure/Giorgio Moroder throwback who first rose to moderate prominence in the mid-90s. Honestly, that’s pretty early for 80s nostalgia. The song itself is a ripe slice of nostalgia, too. I’d have sworn that this was some decades old obscurity plucked from some random cartoon, but nope! This is a Ronnie Martin original. It’s as slight as my assumptions suggest, but it’s also as sugary as the titular candy, and that’s what really matters here.

Proving that the 80s didn’t end until a few years into the 90s, our next entry is “The Closing Of The Year” by Wendy & Lisa featuring Seal. The opening and closing number from the infamous 1992 film Toys, “The Closing Of The Year” has more of an Adult Alternative vibe going for it than a lot of Jenna’s playlist, but it’s still got enough of her vibe going that I think it works.

There’s no doubting the 80s credentials of our next song, though: “Last Christmas” by Wham.  And I don’t care who I offend by saying this, but I hated the CRAP out of this song for years, and even now it’s not one of my favorites. I only mellowed out on “Last Christmas” after hearing a rather drastic rearrangement by another artist… which I’ll get a chance to talk about later on, so I’ll save my full rant for that. In the meantime, there’s no question that Jenna would be among the millions who love the original, so I couldn’t not include it.

Just to prove how inherently hypocritical it is for me to not like Wham, we next have another track by Joy Electric: “Mrs. Santa Claus.” This time, the song actually IS an older tune given the blip bloop electric update, though there have been so many songs under that name over the years, it took me a bit of digging to be absolutely sure that this one dates back at least to the early 50s. That’s covering a lot of ground, chronologically speaking.

Next up, just in case having a song from Toys wasn’t enough of a flop for you, I present “It’s Christmas All Over The World” by Sheena Easton, from Santa Claus: The Movie. Yes, this one is more of a sappy power ballad than the Synthpop I normally attribute to Jenna, but you can’t say this isn’t equally driven by electric keyboards and drum machines. And be it a big dumb power ballad or a big dumb Synthpop song, the 80s were all about the big and the dumb, so I guess Jenna is all about that in one way or another (despite, you know, being neither big nor dumb herself). Part of me wishes I’d put this one at the end of the playlist to be the big award-bait credits song, but you’ll see why I held off later.

Still an obscurity, though in a more high profile way, if that makes any sense, we next have “Here Comes Christmas” by The Chipmunks. No, not THAT Chipmunks Christmas song… or that other one. THIS one is from the Christmas episode of the 80s TV show, and I continue to insist that this one should really get a few cover versions by artists that DON’T sound like squeaky rodents. It really is a delightful little modern-day carol. I doubt Jenna would care about the vocals, though, especially since the rest of the song is bathed in so many swirling synths.

And speaking of synths, here comes our final Joy Electric track on the playlist: a cover of “Winter Wonderland.” And because I couldn’t find a place to say it earlier, I’m, going to take this moment to retroactively tell Ronnie Martin to CUT IT OUT with the fake British accent! You’re from California! Yeah, I know you wanna be Erasure, but you still sound stupid! *ahem* Anyway…

Somehow, we actually have ANOTHER song from Santa Claus: The Movie here, and counting what I put in that other 10 Songs blog post earlier, this makes the FOURTH song from that movie I’ve talked about this month. And I don’t even like the movie that much! But that doesn’t stop “Thank You, Santa” from being another tune that’s right up Jenna’s alley. The combination of children’s choir (who are ACTUALLY British, Ronnie) and oh so 80s backing track is just the right balance of classy and cheesy, and the bouncy melody doesn’t hurt either. This almost sounds like the theme to a Christmas anime, not a misguided Holiday/Superman mashup.

And we wrap things up with a surprise! It’s “Save All Your Love” by Jon Anderson again! This one’s a reprise that’s actually twice as long as the opening track. For whatever reason, Anderson only chose to bookend the first side of 3 Ships with these tracks rather than the whole album, meaning that this track is actually in the MIDDLE if you’re not listening on vinyl. Obviously, I needed to make things right and put this at the ACTUAL end where it belongs.

And that’s Jenna’s Christmas playlist! I hope it more than meets your yearly quota of Casio!

Jenna's YouTube Christmas Playlist