Megashaun’s Music Mix: Christmas Songs

Weekends at the Hatton household consist of me lounging around in my pajamas while sipping coffee and listening to music instead of gaming. With the sun shining brightly through my living room, there’s too much ambient light to enjoy most of the games I own. Occasionally, should the fancy strike me, I’ll even write a post for 4cr. So here I am, in my big comfy robe, listening to Christmas music and having my twentieth cup of coffee while tapping away at the keyboard.

Christmas music is altogether strange. This time of year you can’t step into a shop without hearing some sort of boring same-old Christmas song. There are few that I enjoy, and I think that may only be because of some fond emotional attachment to them from childhood. Others are just plain goofy, proving themselves instantly likeable. See Boney M.‘s Christmas album for a prime example of this. It’s an album that friends and I seem to believe that everyone’s parents own, but perhaps that’s a phenomenon local to the suburbs of Toronto, where we grew up. Boney M. is perhaps best known for their semi-biographical tune “Rasputin” which appears to be a must-play at wedding receptions alongside “The Macarena” and “The Chicken Dance.”

The idea that Boney M. has a Christmas album that is enjoyed by parents is just as perverse as the album existing in the first place. After all, who’d have thought a group of over-sexed musicians could sing such compelling songs about Jesus? But they did! Also, I like to believe that Boney M. pioneered the dance song cliché of female lead vocals followed by a deep-voiced male talk-over during the bridge that’s prevalent in just about every techno/euro song ever.

My Christmas playlist also includes a few other goofy songs, including a full suite of totally rockin’ instrumental tunes as performed by The Moog Cookbook. The band are masters of the synthesizer and aren’t afraid of ad-libbing and throwing in subtle references to other songs. And let’s not forget El Vez, the Mexican Elvis who is known for his live Christmas shows and has released a number of playful holiday records such as “Sno-Way José.”

Redd Kross has a handful of Christmassy tunes in their song catalog. They’re a band that I feel most people would really love if they took the time to listen to an album. As it is, they’re under-appreciated rock gods; I’ve been to hundreds of concerts and the one time I’ve seen them eclipses every other show I’ve been to. Their original Christmas tunes are sugary sweet and as full of hooks as their song, “Bubblegum Factory.”

On a more sentimental level, A Christmas Together by John Denver and The Muppets is a well-done and humorous album that’s even sad at times. It takes the listener through a wide range of emotions and is about as perfect and one could expect a holiday album to be. If listening to it doesn’t put a smile on your face, or make you think, you may want to check your pulse.

Then there’s the 80s power-pop collaboration that is Band Aid‘s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in which each singer gets a few lines in. But my favorite Christmas tune is the relatively new Venture Aid rendition of this song, performed by the cast of The Venture Bros. You can download the mp3 of it from Quick Stop Entertainment, where you will also find a hilarious cover of the Crosby/Bowie version of “Peace on Earth/The Little Drummer Boy” as sung by The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend as well as a few others.