10 MORE "Obscure" Christmas Songs I Wish Were More Popular
Added 2020-12-05 20:07:47 +0000 UTCYes, I’m doing this AGAIN. As I’ve said several times over the years, I may be an unrepentant Christmas junkie, but I CAN somewhat sympathize with people who just get sick of the whole thing. In particular, I really feel for people who hate on Christmas music specifically for how repetitive it is, because that drives me up the wall too. Not because I agree, but because I know it SHOULDN’T be the case. There is a massive galaxy of holiday music out there, and more keeps getting released every single December, which makes is ASTOUNDINGLY FRUSTRATING when every radio station and every store PS system just plays the same two versions of the same twenty songs over and over again for at LEAST six weeks straight. I totally get how working retail over the holiday season would be soul-crushing to begin with, and the added audio water torture of hearing that one Mariah Carey song AGAIN would only amplify everything. There’s just so much other Christmas music out there, so many fresh spins on familiar songs and so many completely unfamiliar compositions waiting to be heard, that I really think a lot of people’s miserably holiday outlook could be at least SLIGHTLY improved if we all just didn’t play “Santa Baby” again for the 500th time.
So here I go again, doing my civic duty to try and drown out another reprise of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” by suggesting ten more songs I wish got more airplay than they do. Obviously, I need to throw in a plug for the blog I did last year, for everybody who didn’t see it. Get yourself TWENTY songs you probably weren’t thinking about instead of ten! And just as obviously, I need to point to the quotation marks around “Obscure” up there, since that’s a very relative term. A least a few of these songs will probably me more familiar to some of you than I’m acting like they are, in fact there’s one that I KNOW you already know. I’m just talking about obscurity in terms of mass media saturation; if you don’t hear it on the radio or playing at the store, then it’s fair game. And just what songs am I bigging up this year? Well…
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Okay, right away we have a song that some people will find contentious. If you’re from or have any connection to the UK, then “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” probably isn’t very obscure at all. I’ve been led to believe that, over there at least, it’s one of those songs that everybody hears every December. Over on OUR side of the pond, though, things are a bit different, and I barely hear this song at all. And that’s our loss, because “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” is a great up-tempo, Phil Spector-esque oldies throwback. While I first encountered the song via a cover by All-Star United, it’s best known in its original incarnation by Glam band Wizzard (fronted by Roy Wood, of The Move and ELO fame). It’s one of a number of holiday Glam singles that seems to get cranked out every Christmas over there, and in my opinion it’s one of the best (I don’t think anybody needs to hear Slade’s “Merry X-mas Everybody” more than once a year, and NOBODY wants to play that one Garry Glitter Christmas song anymore) It’s definitely one of those songs that would get really old after too many repeat plays, which is ironic given the sentiment of the title. Still, the whole point of this blog is to help AVOID any one song getting over-played, so hopefully you’ll use your playlist responsibly and not give “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday” a chance for it’s high-energy exuberance to get annoying.
When I did the previous blog, I made a point of avoiding most instrumentals, on the grounds that it felt like cheating. After all, if there’s no lyrics, then what about the song makes it specifically Christmas related? You could theoretically slap a holiday-sounding title into ANY instrumental and try to pass it of as a new Christmas song. That goes double where Mannheim Steamroller is concerned, because they really do sound like a Christmas band all the time. Seriously, go look up Fresh Aire 7 and listen to “The Chakra 4 Of The Body.” If you slapped that exact same track onto one of their Christmas albums and renamed it, I dunno, “Holiday Dreamscape” or something else like that, nobody would question it. But then again, nobody questions “Linus and Lucy” being played in a Christmas context either. There’s a longstanding history of “Look, It’s a Christmas song because we say it is” at work in this holiday, so there’s not REALLY any reason to be picky about the token original pieces slipped onto every Mannheim Steamroller album. Actually, versions of “Traditions of Christmas” made it onto multiple albums, which makes sense as it’s a very pretty little melody. A very music box/lullaby tune, “Traditions of Christmas” has a heavy dose of John Williams whimsy about it, which admittedly means it sounds like at least a dozen other fantasy/holiday/kid’s movie melodies. But hey, the title of the song does say “TRADITIONS of Christmas,” so we can excuse a certain amount of familiarity in tone. If you want some more gentle, relaxing music while crashing after the sugar rush of all those Christmas Tree Cakes, this is a good pick.
Sometimes reality just doesn’t make sense. Things that seem like the most obvious outcome imaginable don’t happen, and things completely outside the realm of rational logic happen with alarming regularity. For example, how in the WORLD did The Monkees not have a Christmas album until 2018? I mean, I get why the post-1967 “No really, we’re hip now!” Monkees wouldn’t do a Christmas album. But back at the start, when Don Kirshner was making them the biggest Bugglegum band on Earth, one would think that making a Christmas album to sell all the kids would have been right at the top of the to-do list. But no, they didn’t get around to making Christmas Party until well into their post-post-reunion nostalgia phase… and stranger still, the single best Monkees Christmas song wasn’t even recorded FOR that album. Way way back in 1976, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork, and Davey Jones reconvened to record “Christmas Is My Time Of Year” as a special gift for the Monkees fan club, which I’m surprised still existed in the mid 70s. Far more people heard it a decade later, during The Monkees' official, MTV-fueled 80s reunion, and in a just world it would have become a holiday standard immediately afterwards. Alas, The Monkees and MTV had a falling out just a few months later, and “Christmas Is My Time Of Year” never got the kind of yearly push necessary to become a fixture of the season. Too bad, because it really does a great job of melding bright, sunny 60s pop with the whole Christmas vibe. Basically, take “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” and replace the Phil Spector with “All You Need Is Love” and that’s the mood “Christmas Is My Time Of Year” strikes.
When I was in college, at the peak of my Indie Music craze, one of the biggest artists on the scene was Sufjan Stevens. His stuff was everywhere, all the cool websites heaped praise on him, even my Dad was really impressed by his albums, and I… I didn’t get it. I could appreciate the creativity and craftsmanship and whatever, but compared to bands I was ACTUALLY into, like The Flaming Lips or of Montreal, Sufjan had a fatal lack of focus or memorable hooks. The only Sufjan Stevens album I’ve ever consistently liked was Songs for Christmas, because, I mean, it’s ME. But seriously, he did put a lot more effort into actually writing new, original Christmas songs than most artists of his ilk, who’d mostly be happy just knocking out “ironic” covers of traditional tunes. Granted, most of those original songs are of the sort of twee, ramshackle, hipster noise that’s dated very poorly the further we get from the aughts, but I still like “Get Behind Me, Santa!” Despite what the title implies, the song is actually a response to anti-Christmas songs, or at least a dialog between a grumpy Grinch and a someone with actual holiday cheer. While I really can respect the pessimist side of things, I do like hearing the holly jolly crowd actually get to offer a rebuttal for once. Also, this song includes the whole band chanting out “Christmas” letter by letter like they’re The Bay City Rollers, and I can ALWAYS get behind that kind of cheesy audience participation.
Man, this list is a much more energetic affair than last year’s. THAT list was full of sappy ballads and choir songs and the like, but here we’ve had multiple sugary pop songs in a row. Let’s calm things down a bit with another instrumental that I WOULD have included last year if I had the guts: “Evergreen” by Jars of Clay. “Evergreen” is VERY much on the ethereal side of things, a single fairytale-ish melody with lots of magical ambiance to evoke the feeling of a quiet snowy night. I haven’t mentioned it as much this time around, but part of what I’m basing these choices on isn’t just how much I like the original version of the song, but how much I’d like to hear OTHER versions of it. After all, the whole goal here is to hear less of the same performances over and over again, and “Evergreen” is the sort of simple melody that lends itself to a lot of different interpretations. I’d love to hear Mannheim Steamroller do their typical big corny interpretation of this tune, with an orchestra and fifty layers of keyboards and a children’s choir “ooooh”-ing the melody and all that. At the same time, I’d also love to hear some Smooth Jazz group use the melody as the foundation of a mellow holiday jam. It’s simple enough to be very versatile, and that’s exactly the sort of thing we need more of around Christmas. Also, the song starts out with a cello right up front, and that's ALWAYS a way for a song to get on my good side.
Bright, Bright The Holly Berries
Okay, full disclosure: when I first heard “Bright, Bright The Holly Berries” (a.k.a. “This Is Christmas”) on The Singers Unlimited Christmas album, I was sure it was one of those English carols that have been around for centuries and there’s plenty of alternate versions floating around and nobody really knows where the original even came from. NOPE! It turns out “Bright, Bright The Holly Berries” is one of an impressive array of holiday songs written by Jazz arranger/conductor Alfred Burt in the 40s & 50s. There’s a much better chance of you knowing “The Star Carol” or “Some Children See Him” or especially “Caroling, Caroling,” the last of which I ALSO thought was an old traditional tune for the longest time, but I think “Bright, Bright The Holly Berries” deserves to be in circulation more as well. It’s great as the choral singalong it was obviously written as, but it also works well in other arrangements. In particular, I could see a lot of folksy blugrassy acoustic artists making good work of this galloping rhythm and catchy melody. Somebody call up Tingstad & Rumbel and tell them to get on this.
Oh boy, now we’re REALLY getting obscure. “Winter Time” is a song written by Jazz vibraphone player and film composer Hagood Hardy, and it rocks just as hard as you’d think a song by a professional xylophone player would. I joke, but it’s a really nice bit of old school vocal harmonies with a light jazz melody. Imagine if Jazz standard “Snowfall” were caught in a transporter accident with Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here” and you’ve got “Winter Time.” I was rather surprised to find that NO ONE seems to have recorded a version of this song other than Hardy himself… well, maybe “surprised” is the wrong word. His Christmas album didn’t come out until 1982, an that was pretty late for this kind of Jazz ballad to get any traction in the outside world. Maybe back in the 50s somebody like The Lettermen could have discovered it, but this was already unbearably square for the 80s. It deserves better, though. Any a capella group looking for a more mellow number for their holiday set, or a coffee house singer sick of doing “The Christmas Song” for the hundredth time, would do well to add “Winter Time” to their repertoire.
I take back what I said about “Winter Time” being obscure. Teja Bell’s “New Spirit” is the absolute obscurity leader on this list, because it’s the only one here where I couldn’t find a YouTube posting of the song. The best I can do is link to the song on the dude’s Bandcamp page. Again, though, I can’t really be surprised that the general public hasn’t rallied to share a piece of 80s New Age instrumental mood music that would only barely register as holiday-related if you didn’t know what album it came from. Teja Bell was one of many, MANY New Age artists to try and cash in on the Mannheim Steamroller boom with his album New Spirit of Christmas, and this song sounds exactly like what you’d expect from a song with that origin. Waves and waves of synth keyboards, no percussion worth mentioning, and a melody that’s only there to add one more texture to the mood. But you know what? I think there’s always a place for mood music in the greater pantheon of Christmas songs, and “New Spirit” hits its mood quite effectively. If “Evergreen” evokes a quiet snowy night, then “New Spirit” evokes the next morning: bright and sunny, yet frigid and still, with light bouncing off of the thick layer of snow covering everything. Actually, now that I think about it, “New Spirit” sounds a lot like the soundtrack to a snow level in some video game. Like, if the underwater levels in Donkey Kong Country froze over. Man, there’s a weird image…
Okay, THIS is why I really had to put “obscure” in quotation marks up top. “I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday” could be debatable depending on where you’re from, but if you’re in ANY English-speaking culture that celebrates Christmas, you’ve heard “Trim Up The Tree.” How do I know? Because it’s from How The Grinch Stole Christmas. Ain’t NUTHIN’ obscure about that noise. At least, it there shouldn’t be. And yet, while everybody loves to bust out “You’re A Mean One, Mister Grinch” as a comedy number, and you do occasionally hear “Welcome Christmas” as a semi-ironic musical choice, I’ve never once heard “Trim Up The Tree” played outside of airings of The Grinch itself. And you know what? That’s a dang shame, because it’s a fun ode to Christmas decorations that deserves to be one of the great novelty holiday tunes. I mean, seriously, which would you rather hear: Dr. Seuss or “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas”? Which would you rather sing about: bingle balls and whofoo fluff and bizilbix and wums, or old ladies getting trampled by arctic caribou? I think the choice is clear. Oh, and be sure to go with the version on the official 1966 soundtrack. I normally don’t endorse re-recordings over the original audio, but the album version of “Trim Up The Tree” has a whole extra half of the song that’s not in the TV version, including my favorite line of the whole thing: “Hang dang-donglers on the bathtub, Trim the occupant with floof.” Is it too silly for some people to sing? Probably, but so is “You're a three decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich with arsenic sauce!” but that doesn’t stop the Grinch song from getting played. Let’s give some love to the song that’s NOT about how much some guy sucks!
Okay, I know that objectively this can’t be more obscure than the Teja Bell song that isn’t even on YouTube, but Vibra Corporation’s “Snow White Rock Christmas” feels like even more of a forgotten oddity. For one thing, “Vibra Corporation” wasn’t even the band’s normal name, that was “The Intergalactic Touring Band.” For another, The Intergalactic Touring Band wasn’t even a real band, but a studio supergroup put together in 1977 to basically record the most Electric Light Orchestra album that the Electric Light Orchestra never recorded. Why the producers behind the project decided to also record a Christmas single with the same crew then release it under a different name is beyond me, but I’m still glad this slice of pure 70’s holiday cheese exists. I’d make a joke that this is what it’d have sounded like if Meat Loaf recorded a Christmas song at his Bat Out Of Hell peak… except that Meat Loaf was actually ON The Intergalactic Touring Band album. Even if he’s not on “Snow White Rock Christmas,” it’s still overflowing with forced Jim Steinman-esque puns about Christmas and rock & roll, sax solos straight out of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, and an amount of cowbell that even Christopher Walken would find satisfactory. It’s not really “good” in any objective sense, it’s actually profoundly stupid. But it’s a FUN kind of profoundly stupid, the kind that really should have secured “Snow White Rock Christmas” a place in campy ironic history. It’s a true shame that more people don’t know this song exists… but now YOU do! That’s something, right?
And there you have it, another ten Christmas songs what we COULD all be listening to instead of hearing “Do They Know It’s Christmas” for the 3,458,907th time. Will these be the songs that finally win over that one Scrooge who just hates everything about the holiday season? Oh, heck no. But if you already like Christmas anyway, hopefully this list will have added just a little extra variety and excitement into what you already love about this time of year. The REAL question is if I’ll somehow be able to fill up a third list next year. Heavens forbid that I should have to start coming up with NEW ideas for content…
