Far Out There Christmas Sountrack: Layla

Hey, you want some Christmas music but don’t wanna stop listening to rock? Well GOOD NEWS! Layla’s got ya covered! Layla’s musical tastes are well established to be stripped down, riff-heavy Rock and Roll, and you might be surprised just how easy it was to come up with a decent mix of tunes that bring the electric guitars but still have that Christmas spirit!

But before we go to far, I do want to make one thing abundantly clear: The Kinks’ “Father Christmas” will not be appearing on this list. Musically, it’s the perfect example of the kind of Christmas song Layla would love, with a Punk-y energy and Classic Rock hooks galore… but there is NO way Layla would tolerate the lyrics. I know, I said we’d let lyrical content mostly slide for these playlists, but I just found this instance too distracting to ignore. And before you say it, I know a song about punks mugging people and demanding money SOUNDS right up Layla’s alley, but no. She’d find this song slanderous to Rich Kids, and I don’ think it’s right to go around knowingly offending people over the holidays. This blog is a safe place.

But anyway, on to the actual playlist. We kick off with a song where pretty much the only people in the world who still remember it are probably the ones who read my previous Obscure Christmas Songs blogs: “Snow White Rock Christmas” by Vibra Corporation (aka The Intergalactic Touring Band). And I still say that obscurity is a crying shame, ‘cos this is some delightful kitsch. It really does sound like what would happen if Jim Steinman and Bruce Springsteen got together to write a Christmas song for The Muppets. It’s one of the most glorious snapshots of every NON-Disco thing going on in 70s Pop music imaginable, the one song a variety show would throw on to keep The Kids happy in between the show tunes and comedy routines. I can’t imagine even Layla would be immune to it’s cheeseball charm. She might be a bit embarrassed if somebody actually saw her rocking out to the sax solo, but she still would.

More obviously up her street would be our next track, “Christmas All Over Again” by Tom Petty. This is a song I only recently became aware of, which is a bit surprising since it’s floating around the Holiday either since the 90s. it’s a fun little Jangle Pop ditty with Petty at his most 60s-referential, which I’m always down for. It’s also just a little bit sarcastic without crossing the line of being mean, and since Christmas is one of the few times where that could be said of Layla herself, that alone makes it a fitting choice for her.

More straightforward is Elton John’s perennial Oldies radio staple “Step Into Christmas.” The noisy, Phis Spector-ish production is a little bit outside of what I’d normally say Layla listens too, but I still like Sir Elton’s original version a lot better than any more recent cover I’ve heard, so by default it’s what Layla prefers as well.

Speaking of modern covers, we next cheat a little bit with “Come On Christmas” by Cheap Trick, which is actually just a Holiday-themed rewrite of the pre-existing song “Come On, Come On.” While it’s not as egregious as something like “Macarena Christmas” (after all, there’s a ton of more recognizable Cheap Trick songs they COULD have done, and done worse. “I Want You To Christmas Me” anyone?) it’s still kinda lazy. Of course, this is Layla we’re talking about here, so she’d appreciate that hustle. She’s a confirmed Power Pop fan anyway, too (“Surrender was on her normal Character Soundtrack, after all) so she’d let this slide a lot more than if she got a warmed-over rehash of a song she DIDN’T like.

On the genuinely original side, we have “Everything’s Gonna Be Cool This Christmas” by Eels. A high-energy Alternative Rock tune, very much of a piece with “Saturday Morning,” which appeared on her regular Soundtrack, this one also feels a bit like a turn of the millennium update of “Christmas All Over Again.” And I like it a whole heck of a lot better than the OTHER Eels holiday tune, “Christmas Is Going To The Dogs.”

Moving on, we take another jump up in song notoriety with “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday,” though not the version everybody knows best. While I’m not saying Layla WOULDN’T like the Wizzard original, I’m also saying she’s already got two very 70s songs on this playlist as it is. Instead, I’m substituting the cover version by Contemporary Christian supergroup All Star United, which has a bit more of a lean Rock arrangement and a bit less Glam gaudiness. By amazing coincidence, it also happens to be the version of this song I was introduced to first, which TOTALLY didn’t affect my decision making in any way.

Moving still onwards to the most recent tune on this list, we have “Horray For Santa Claus” …which is NOT the song you MST3k fans think it'll be. No, instead of the Santa Claus Conquers The Martians theme, we instead have a quick little ditty by Parry Gripp, of “Space Unicorn” fame. A bit of an odd choice for Layla, maybe, but “Horray For Santa Claus” isn’t as silly as the “Space Unicorn” connection would lead you to assume. And even if it were… the songs only forty-three seconds long, it’ll be over before Layla has a chance to get annoyed by it.

Closing in on the ending, we next have “Christmas Is My Time Of Year” by The Monkees, a song which absolutely SHOULD be an Oldies radio staple, even if it didn’t get out to the general public until their ‘80s reunion. Well, blogs like this keep giving me a chance to try, in my own small way, to shove under-appreciated songs like this down the peoples throats, so that’s what I’m gonna go!

And speaking of stuff I shove down people’s throats each Christmas, we wrap up Layla’s Christmas Playlist with “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!” by The Fab Four. It just isn’t Christmas until I’ve made SOMEBODY listen to this Beatles tribute act’s re-workings of Holiday standards to sound like Beatles tunes. In this case, “Let It Snow” has been refitted with the arrangement of “Eight Days A Week,” whose jangly 12-string sound was an obvious influence on acts like Tom Petty, thus bringing this whole thing more or less full circle! Also, how weird is it that this is the only “traditional” Christmas song on the whole playlist, yet it’s also the only one that never actually mentions Christmas anywhere in the lyrics? That’s one of those things I’d never be clever enough to actually do on purpose.

Layla's Christmas YouTube Playlist