Last year, we had a trio of uncommon Christmas music selections chosen by me, Lenny, and Halodoc. Between us, we covered a fairly large swath of tunes.
Christmas songs are like rabbits, though; there are more each and every year. So, once again, some lesser-heard holiday tunes:
First I’m going to a song I heard performed live a few weeks ago, a Christmas song by Frank Turner. If it’s strange to get a Christmas song off of an album dedicated to telling the personal histories of interesting women, it’s stranger still to write one for the dozens of London women forced to work as prostitutes by the Church of England and then buried in a mass grave at Southwark. Graveyard of the Outcast Dead is a Christmas song in the way that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
Then we can go over to Pat Benatar, and a much happier and patriotic Christmas song. It might seem weird to throw “patriotic” into the mix, but I don’t think anyone was willing to tell Benatar no. I wouldn’t. And it’s a nice, sweet song.
“Christmas in America” was a popular choice for a title (unlike “Breakfast in America”, which is used only for a Supertramp album) and Melissa Etheridge came up with her version a couple of years later.
Not every Christmas song is mellow. Some are fairly energetic, as Lenny’s choices last year demonstrated. In deference to that, a punk classic from the Ramones, “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)
One might think that new Christmas songs by pop singers are a modern trend, but Bing Crosby puts the lie to that. Sure, everyone knows his renditions of the classics, but what about “Looks Like a Cold, Cold Winter”?
If I’m going to start this out with a Christmas song I’ve heard performed live, I figure I’ll end it with another. It’s a bit less serious than the others mentioned tonight, but it’s Weird Al’s “Christmas at Ground Zero”, so….
Question of the night: What are your favorite Christmas songs?
