Writes Alexandra Petri, explaining her placement of "Christmas Time Is Here" at #80 on "A ranking of 100 — yes, 100 — Christmas songs" (WaPo).
I found her reasoning very amusing, throughout. Maybe you don't have access to WaPo, but — if you have Spotify — here's the whole list:
The numbering is backwards though. "Little Drummer Boy" isn't #1, as it looks on this list. It's #100, and Petri "cannot stand it. Nothing will fix it, even the application of David Bowie to it. Every year I say, 'I hate this song,' and every year people say, 'Have you heard David Bowie’s version?' Yes. Yes, I have. It is still an abomination."
Speaking of objecting to David Bowie, earlier today, before encountering Petri's list, I was watching the trailer for the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie, "Licorice Pizza," and...
... David Bowie was getting on my nerves. The song is "Life on Mars," which — did you know this? — is said to express Bowie's irritation with the song "My Way" (after Paul Anka's lyrics were selected over Bowie's in making an English-language version of a French song for Frank Sinatra).
You see the contrast with the bombastic pride of "My Way." As Bowie put it: "I think [girl with mousy hair] finds herself disappointed with reality... although she's living in the doldrums of reality, she's being told that there's a far greater life somewhere, and she's bitterly disappointed that she doesn't have access to it."
And isn't that what Christmas is all about?
IMPORTANT: The embedded list doesn't show the last 5 songs in Petri's top 100, even though the list ends at 100 in the written version. On Spotify, for a few songs, there is more than 1 recording, and the list actually goes up to 105. So even though "All I Want For Christmas Is You" ends the embedded list, it's only #5, as you can see from this screen:
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"I feel strongly that the essence of Charlie Brown is premature existential despair and world weariness..."
"and both this song and the holiday special give you an inaccurate idea of the Charlie Brown ratio of despair to maudlin moments of transcendence."
Good grief.
Ms. Petri has produced a mostly tasteless list.
Dean Martin clowns his way (as is his wont) through "Baby It's Cold Outside". Everyone knows the definitive version was recorded by Ray Charles & Betty Carter.
"I Wonder as I Wander" & "Blue Xmas (To Whom It May Concern)" aren't even on the list. And so much more is wrong.
Well, Wall Street is panicking over the new variant that the vaccines and previous exposure do no good against. So maybe the despair is not premature …
"The Little Drummer Boy" is awful. I can't stand it. I like "Santa Baby" and find it amusing.
Does it get any better than Mariah doing Petri's top song in Ronnie Spector drag?
An OK list with some really dumb choices in the top 25 (well, and throughout for that matter).
I won't argue with “Good King Wenceslas” at Number 1, its being one of the maybe five best Christmas Carols. Throw a dart to select Number 1.
"Carol of the Bells" in the bottom 10?! That beautiful Christmas song should be in the Top Ten. Her mistake was listening to the awful acappella mess that Pentatonix made of it (as Pentatonix is wont to do).
“Silent Night” at Number 44. Negative. That tedious, overplayed, draggy ass thing belongs at Number 200 on this Top 100 list.
Frankly, for my purposes you can flush them all after a couple days of hearing them in the season.
Have you heard David Bowie’s version?
No. I have versions by Joan Jett, Johnny Cash, Anne Murray annnd... The Brady Bunch.
The only truly unlistenable Christmas song is "All I Want for Christmas Is You" by Mariah Carey.
Next to last is any other song by Mariah Carey, the worst singer ever inflicted on the English-speaking world, including Mrs. Miller.
Linus' monologue from the Peanuts Christmas show is the best presentation of the true meaning of Christmas ever captured on celluloid cartoon cells. And the essence of Charlie Brown is continuing to live despite existential despair and world weariness, because you can dance to music with your friends.
The trailer for Licorice Pizza looks good. I'm looking forward so seeing it since I grew up in SoCal and was a teenager in the 1970s. Plus, Tim Conway Jr. is in the movie. Ding dong with him! ("Ding dong!" is Tim's catchphrase. It comes from horse racing when the two lead horses are running neck and neck and the name of the horse in the lead keeps going back and forth. The race announcers would say, "We've got a ding dong here!" It's funny that Tim Conway was seen as such a wholesome actor but he got his kid hooked on horse races.)
Bowie's Life on Mars is a really good song; which is a part of the reason for it's downfall. It's just gotten overused. A friend of mine had a Goth/New Wave band in the early 80s. They had a song called, Popular Song. The lyrics went something like, "I used to like that song until I heard it again and again and again and again and again..."
I'm a lifelong Bowie fan but you're right, even David couldn't fix "Little Drummer Boy".
Licorice Pizza seems targeted to me and my wife. I turned 16 in 1973 and my wife grew up in the Valley in the 70's. Plus, we're fans of the Heim sisters' band (apparently Paul Thomas Anderson is too, having directed several of their videos). The trailer for the movie suggests they captured the look and feel of the early 70's, in a similar way that Dazed and Confused did, so am interested in seeing it.
You may not like "Life on Mars?" but at least it's music from that time.
I think Bowie makes everything better. I was just watching the music video of him and Mick Jagger doing "Dancing in the Street" the other night and was thinking that he could even make cheesy dancing look cool.
I like the song "Live on Mars". I also like the TV show - the UK version was better than the US one which was better than the South Korean one. They absolutely ruined the US "Life on Mars", so it may deserve to be ranked last but I put it second because I'm swayed by '70s music nostalgia. I'm not sure if the SK one even had '80s music in the same way the others had '70s music. Not that it matters to my viewing, I wouldn't have recognized the songs.
"I won't argue with “Good King Wenceslas” at Number 1, its being one of the maybe five best Christmas Carols."
"Good King Wenceslas car backed out,
on the feet of heathens."
As a young Jewish girl I had a surprisingly uncomplicated relationship with the Peanuts Christmas cartoon: it was a sappy salve to be applied to the penumbra of Christian Guilt when people could be at their most melancholy.
When I was fourteen I dated a Catholic boy; he was so wracked with shame and guilt that he refused to believe that his parents knew he masturbated. Me, I was flattered: I wasn't quite ready for sex yet, but I knew what he would be doing later when I caught him staring at the ass of my tight jeans. And, I mean, his mother did his laundry: she knew.
It was just a school crush -- we never even had the conversation about the Jews killing Jesus -- but I kinda enjoyed being the Jewish Temptress that he couldn't tell his family about.
-Loren
I love Paul Thomas Anderson and his movies but have no idea what this new movie is about after viewing the trailer.
Plus Oh Holy Night is far and away the greatest Christmas song. Fall on your knees, any dissenters!
My #1 requirement for a Christmas song is that it must be possible to sing along with. That automatically leaves out anything by Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. (Although I'd love to hear either of them give "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.)
Handel's Hallelujah Chorus (preferably the Mormon Tabernacle Choir version) is my very favorite Christmas music. And yes, I sing along! Not well, perhaps.
I could get through life very well without the deep thoughts of the semi-egg heads of the MSM.
Pleased she selects Andy Williams' Most Wonderful Time of the Year near the top. That came out at what for me was peak Christmas, before I stopped believing in Santa. Surprised to learn it was not released as a single since his folks chose to release his version of White Christmas from his Christmas album instead! Speaking of which, the Bing Crosby version should be much higher. Below Granma run over by a reindeer?? But overall lots of Bing (and Nat King Cole) as is proper. Also happy Baby It's Cold Outside survives wokeness, although I wouldn't pick Dean Martin's version. Partial to Margaret Whiting-Johnny Mercer duet.
@Wilbur: Next to last is any other song by Mariah Carey, the worst singer ever inflicted on the English-speaking world, including Mrs. Miller.
Clearly the trauma of having ever heard Yoko has blotted her from your memory.
Petri, predictably, mostly ignores the older carols. I give her props for including "Ding Dong Merrily" (despite her no-bells rule?) and "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" (she wouldn't praise the "Lo" if she knew that the original title was "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen.") Also "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." I must have missed "Joy To the World."
But where's "Joseph, lieber Joseph mein"? Or my own favorite, "There Is No Rose Of Swych Virtu"? It's not that she disdains early music, exactly; she's OK (more or less) with the Coventry Carol. But she's on the whole more interested in "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus." Which to me is a "don't-pay-attention-to-the-Petri" sort of thing. I do recall saying something of the kind only last week.
Wilbur said...
Next to last is any other song by Mariah Carey, the worst singer ever inflicted on the English-speaking world, including Mrs. Miller.
No, that would be Miley Cyrus. If you can call her wounded goat bleating vocalizations singing.
This is a good spot to point out the uncanny way the lyrics of O Little Town Of Bethlehem and the Gilligan's Island Theme Song fit with each other's melodies.
Amaze your friends!
"Does it get any better than Mariah doing Petri's top song in Ronnie Spector drag?"
Oh! You made me realize that I must have put up another year's list! That is no longer the top song.
Movie looks like all the rest. zzzzzzzzzzz.
For some reason, some people really hate Mariah's song.
It doesn't have to be Beethoven or Mozart.
It's a bouncy, upbeat tune that always cheers me up.
There is no song worse than Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.
"Life on Mars?"
Yes, spiders.
"Oh! You made me realize that I must have put up another year's list! That is no longer the top song."
The embed cuts off at 100, but the list goes up to 105. I added a screen shot to show the last 5 songs, which all rank higher than "All I Want" (and are more interesting choices).
There are 105 instead of 100 because there are more than one version of a few songs.
"There are 105 instead of 100 because there are more than one version of a few songs."
You can see that the first 2 items are the same song.
I don't remember it being that cold in The Valley back in the day.
I really hate most Christmas standards, at least as I hear them performed in any given supermarket I find myself in between November 1st and December 25th.
I'm just going to ramble a bit about Christmas songs I like now. Mary Kaye Holt's Cowboy Christmas is the best Christmas album no one has ever heard of. Sons of the San Joaquin also make great Christmas stuff. What else? Tom Waits "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis" is great, and Sabaton just released a song about the World War I Christmas truce. Put those on your Christmas playlist.
As an Irish-Bavarian-American Hetrosexual Agnostic, I have several problems with this list.
First, there's not enough Doris Day. Her version of "Toyland" is the Gold standard. Also, "Silver Bells".
Second, there's far too much of Nat King Cole and Bing Crosby. Yes, I like them both, but y'know plenty of others have sang the ol' Favorites. However "God Rest Ye merry Gentlemen" with Bing is the best.
Drummer Boy - God, Shoot me. Or shoot the Ipad or whatever is playing it. Its not a bad song, if song ONCE IN A WHILE. But, the radio stations play this Goddamn thing 4 times an hour in December.
Nobody wants to watch neurotic children trudging through the snow to smooth jazz…
- Jebidah Atkinson
"Mariah Carey, the worst singer ever inflicted on the English-speaking world, "
Send her over to my apartment. I will comfort her and spare the rest of you people.
"Linus' monologue from the Peanuts Christmas show is the best presentation of the true meaning of Christmas ever captured on celluloid cartoon cells."
And Snoopy's Christmas is one of few rock 'n roll tunes that capture it.
Little Drummer Boy has to be looked at as a power-of-music song more than a Christmas song. A craggy old musician - Ray Charles, Johnny Cash - makes it work.
Some songs are best heard closer to Christmas Eve:
Silent Nacht - Vienna Boy Choir is a good version
Adeste, Fideles _ Morman Tab Choir is great
Messiah (Handel)
O Little Town of Bethleham
Christmas music. A lovely tradition at home when I was a child. We'd spend all day on the second Saturday after Thanksgiving decorating the house inside and out. My father always bought the tree the week before (buying early to get a "nice, big one") but it stayed outside in a Number 8 washtub full of water to hydrate it until decoration day. It always went up in the living room in front of the bay window for the neighbors' object lesson in Tannenbaum taste using the stand my parents bought shortly after their wedding.
Then the decorations came out of storage. Boxes and boxes of them, far too many for one tree, even one almost nine feet tall. But each one was removed from its nest, admired, and commented on, though many got put right back in its accustomed place. Many were heirlooms acquired by ancestors, including some brought from Grünstad by my great-grandparents. A number displayed the Maddona and Child theme, which I eventually concluded were essentially fertility fetishes. You see, Quaestor didn't arrive until the ninth year of his parent's wedded life. I suspect my mother miscarried one or more pregnancies, but she never said so and I never asked. Yuletide coming close to their anniversary came to symbolize their longing for a child, whom they spoiled outrageously once he deigned to show up.
By the time everything was complete the sun had set, thus suitably dark for the full Christmas tree effect. Since our RCA Home Entertainment Center™ was in the den, a room too small for furniture and a tree, Quaestor the Elder would say to Quaestor the Younger, "Get your record player." Then candles were lit, a fire was laid in the fireplace (Mom bought a Christmas set of firedogs shaped like reindeer) and the electric magic was applied to the tree! And there we would sit in silence listening to Nat King Cole or the Robert Shaw Chorale sing all your holiday favorites. My parents had a stack of them -- LPs by Perry Como, Bing Crosby, and many others. (According to Mom, Dad looked just like Bing Crosby turned pirate with his black eyepatch.) It was beautiful -- better than a full-page Coca-Cola Christmas ad in Life magazine.
We'd hear two or more versions of The Little Drummer Boy while the changer went through its paces, and I loved them all, ranking in the Top Five along with Carol of the Bells, Good King Wenceslaus, Silver Bells and O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. I still love them and wonder how anyone can use the word abomination in conjunction with the drummer boy.
I enjoy almost every Christmas song, including Little Drummer Boy (with and without Bowie).
My favorites that get me bopping around the house -
The Waitresses
Christmas Wrapping
Straight No Chaser
Christmas Can Can
Los Straightjackets
We Three Kings
SHeDAISY
Santa's Got a Brand New Bag
Thanks for the clarification, Ann, and I can't argue with the ranking of "Good King Wenceslas" as the #1 Christmas song (though my favorite version is by The Roches). If we were ranking Christmas song videos instead, I'd stick with retro Mariah.
The story behind A Charlie Brown Christmas is very interesting:
http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2016/11/a-charlie-brown-christmas-meets-mad-men.html?m=1
Tl;dr: everything great about the special was looked down on by the network heads. The animation, the music, the children's voices, Linus reading Scripture - all of it was despised. It's a miracle that the show was ever aired.
Changing the subject...
My favorite Christmas song is not usually considered one: "For unto Us a Child is Born," from Handel's Messiah.
https://youtu.be/FJ9wS2J0GOs
New top 5 perverse. 2 songs I consider novelties, one I never heard before. But good to have Judy Garland from Meet me in St Louis and then Bing at the top.
"everything great about the special was looked down on by the network heads."
To be fair, Gilligan's Island and The Muensters were pretty good television, quality out of the reach of today's network executives.
Andrew,
"For Unto Us a Child is Born" was originally "No, di voi non vo fidarmi," a chamber duet. A lot of Messiah was rather hastily recycled like that. Which matters not at all, because the music remains terrific whatever the text. And that one really is one of the best numbers in Messiah. Maybe behind "He Was Despised" and "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth," but not by much.
(I have played Messiah a gazillion times, but it was only the fifth or so time through that I realized that the the B-section text in "He Was Despised" was not "He gave His back to the spiders." That was a nasty image.)
The best Christmas music was when the public schools had the kids put on a Christmas event and sang traditional Christmas hymns. That was before the national neurosis about Christmas.
Mariah Carey, David Bowie? Awful. Give me a third-grader singing Silent Night.
If there’s no Back Door Santa fugget it..
@Michelle,
I did not know that. Thanks for the info. I'll look up that duet.
LOL on the spiders. When I was a kid, and heard Messiah (we had a record album that was on constantly at Christmas), I thought the choir was singing, "Oh, we like sheep!" And I didn't know why.
The charm of the David Bowie version of Little Drummer Boy is that it's a duet with Bing Crosby. It was a bridging of the WW2 and the boomer generations to celebrate the season.
I like it, no matter what the haters say.
If you find the classics getting a bit stale as the season wears on, try Sia’s recent album “Everyday is Christmas”. Every song is great.
Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is the most saccharine, maudlin piece of drivel ever written or performed, pure crap.
I dislike seasonal music of all forms. Christmas music is no exception.
Do carry on.
One of the things that irritated me most about the holiday season at work--the secular state u library--was that the boss bent the rules during the last days before Christmas break by allowing enthusiasts to pipe their Christmas music all over the library by way of the p.a. system.
It was all or nothing, so even the reading room of the special collections department got the noise. One year I had an out of town scholar doing research who was no more a fan of the stuff than I am, and for her benefit and mine I called to complain.
It was clear that the person to whom I complained had a hard time believing that there was anyone who didn't want to listen to crappy versions of mediocre Christmas songs, but she had no choice but to turn it off while my patron was there.
My friend who worked for the Christmas music lover told me later that she was asking around if I was Jewish.
Andrew,
On "All We Like Sheep," let me just say that the members of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (SF Bay Area) had alternate words for many numbers, and that one went
All we, asleep, still have to play;
We have yearned, every one for his own pay
(That's another chamber duet, btw, but utterly perfect for its place in the drama.)
Not, maybe, the best of all, but close. I liked
Let us shake these thighs of thunder
And fast away their bulk from us
and
Oh, thou that smellest, get up, put a tie on,
. . . for that Tory from the Board is hitting upon thee
and
I know that I have reamed my liver
And shall end up like pate upon the Earth;
Though no germs can live in toddy,
Yet in my flesh shall I see spots;
The worst booze is them wot's cheap.
And
O Beth, where is thy thing? O Dave, where is thy dick for me?
The thing of Beth is thin, and the length of his is . . . quite long
But thanks be to Todd [PBO tympanist]
Who playeth us the tympani through our long winter nights
And of course,
Dressing and onion, oil and flour, please not too thin, please not too thin,
Thou sittest upon the phone, and undercook the lamb
Followed by
Ramen
I worked in stores that played Christmas music non-stop from Thanksgiving on, ruining every song by constant repetition over an eight-hour shift for a month. Luckily, their anti-Christian bias meant that they only played Happy Holiday classics and all the real carols were preserved. "Silver Bells, silver bells" no, no, not the bells, silver bells, silver bells. Yet I'd give a lot to get back some of the feeling of those days, silly and over-commercialized as it all was. The masks and constant anti-American sloganeering we have now is the same repetitious "song" filling the air with tedium and boredom but these "songs" didn't even start as fun and they aren't doing anyone any good. It's just a mess with criminals off to the side making money on it.
Good King Wenceslas - Mel Torme
Glow Worm - Mel Torme
Christmas Island - Ella Fitzgerald
Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
My Favorite Things - Tony Bennett
Mele Kalikimaka - Bing Crosby
Jingle All the Way - Lena Horne
Jingle Bells Cha-cha - Pearl Bailey
It's Christmas Time All Over the World - Sammy Davis, Jr.
It's a Marshmallow World - Dean Martin
Mistloe and Holly - Frank Sinatra
I'd Like You for Christmas- Julie London
Jingle Bells - Count Basie Orchestra
@Michelle,
Musicians. Eyeroll emoji.
Just kidding. That is very funny. I imagine levity is needed when rehearsals go too long.
I like all Christmas music, even the bad ones like Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. They’re only played during one season , the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and they make me feel festive. My favorite song, though is The Cherry Tree Carol. It made me think about the relationship between Mary and Joseph and gave me a new appreciation for Joseph as a saint.
For many years, I wondered how we're supposed to hark the herald.
I can't bear Jingle Bell Rock or that Burl Ives song that thankfully isn't coming to me. Ear worms.
Don't forget
Hardrock, Coco and Joe.
Well, I well remember the time when I was a little boy in the Pilgrim's Choir and we were going to sing "We Three Kings" and I couldn't believe we were going to sing such a great song! And one that I knew all of the words to, as well!
"We three kings, of Orient-are
Tried to smoke, a rubber cigar.
It was loaded, it exploded.
That was the end of one.
Cigar of wonder, cigar so bright
Cigar that killed a king tonight.
Neck still bleeding, westward leading,
Yonder's another cigar!"
"We two kings...."
Dammit! It was "Still proceeding, neck still bleeding."
Saw someone else mentioned, but best secular Christmas song: "Christmas Wrapping," by the Waitresses.
How about Mark Knopfler's " Ragpicker's Dream"? That should be top ten at least.
In the '60's, I was back home in Connecticut from either college or law school, driving around doing last minute shopping, etc., listening to WTOP on the car radio. The DJ was playing Little Drummer Boy. It's such an awful song that I pretty much blocked it out in my mind, so it took awhile to realize that Little Drummer Boy was the ONLY song the DJ was playing -- Here's a Christmas favorite . . .; And now for a change of pace, here's . . .; and do so on. Turned out, the DJ had locked himself into the control room, and played that song over and over for hours. After that TOP became an all-news station, as I recall . . . .
Scot is right, terrible list. The omission of "Jolly Old St. Nicholas" is egregious, but maybe understandable since she was rating recordings, not the songs themselves. The line, "Nellie wants a picture book, yellow, blue and red" just kills me. What a heartbreak that she has had to live all her childhood in a world without color. Most shocking: nothing from the best Christmas album ever, the Roches' "We Three Kings." They even redeem "Little Drummer Boy" and "Frosty The Snowman" (with a musical quote from :Easter Parade").
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