[youlist pid="PL0B0C1538CF27F76D"]

01

The Pogues & Kirsty McColl: Fairytale Of New York

This song is about Irish people who emigrated to America in the 19th century to escape the potato famine and in hope of making it as entertainers in New York. Many didn’t, however, and ended up homeless. It is also said to come from a desire to move away from tacky Christmas songs and to highlight the fact that a lot of people have a terrible time at Christmas.

At first, this song had lyrics about a sailor and a distant ocean, but Finer’s wife suggested he change it to be about a couple at Christmas who are hard on their luck. Finer wrote another song and took both to MacGowan, who combined the melody of the first with the story line of the second

02

Brenda Lee: Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree

Despite her mature-sounding voice, Lee recorded this song when she was only 13 years old. Despite the song’s title, its instrumentation also fits the country music genre, which Brenda Lee more fully embraced as her career evolved. The recording features Hank Garland’s ringing guitar and Boots Randolph’s swinging solo sax break.

An instrumental version of the song appears as background music in the 1964 television special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which exclusively featured music written by Marks. It can be heard in the scene where Rudolph first arrives at the Reindeer Games and meets another reindeer named Fireball. The song was also used in the 1990 film Home Alone during a scene when Kevin McCallister pretends that there is a holiday party taking place in his house, and discourages the burglars from robbing it.

A version of the song by Kim Wilde and Mel Smith (credited as “Mel & Kim” as a parody of then-popular sister act Mel and Kim), featuring Pete Thomas, reached No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart during the Christmas season 1987. The track was recorded to raise funds for Comic Relief. Its accompanying video featured the two hosting a Christmas party with guests including The Mekon.

03

Mud: Lonely this Christmas

Written and produced by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, “Lonely This Christmas” was Mud’s second number one single in the UK, spending four weeks at the top in December 1974 and January 1975. It was the third number one single that year for the ChinniChap writing and production team, and was performed in the style of Elvis Presley’s slower songs from his later career. Due to this, the song is often erroneously attributed to Presley.

The song is noted for a memorable performance on Top of the Pops in which guitarist Rob Davis was covered in tinsel and wore Christmas baubles as earrings, while vocalist Les Gray sang to a ventriloquist’s dummy.

The song has been covered by Lucky Soul, Blue, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine (fan club limited edition Xmas 7 inch), Little Man Tate and KT Tunstall. The song is currently used as background music in North American Buick Lacrosse commercials.

04

John Lennon: Happy Xmas (War is Over)

John and Yoko spent a lot of time in the late ’60s and early ’70s working to promote peace. In 1969, they put up billboard advertisements in major cities around the world that said, “War is over! (If you want it).” Two years later this slogan became the basis for this song when Lennon decided to make a Christmas record with an anti-war message. John also claimed another inspiration for writing the song: he said he was “sick of ‘White Christmas.’

Though now a Christmas standard, Lennon originally penned this as a protest song about the Vietnam War, and the idea “that we’re just as responsible as the man who pushes the button. As long as people imagine that somebody’s doing it to them and that they have no control, then they have no control.”

05

Eartha Kitt: Santa Baby

The song is a tongue-in-cheek look at a Christmas list sung by a woman who wants extravagant gifts such as sables, yachts, and decorations from Tiffany’s. It is one of the few hit Christmas songs written by a woman.

The song was a huge hit for Kitt, and she later said that it was one of her favorite songs to record; she reprised it in the 1954 film New Faces. Kitt also reprised the original song in a 1963 re-recording for Kapp Records, with a more uptempo arrangement. (Madonna’s popular rendition for the 1987 charity album A Very Special Christmas is based on this latter version.) In 1954, Eartha Kitt recorded a new version of the song with new lyrics titled “This Year’s Santa Baby”, to no commercial success. Writers listed did not change. The song was featured in the 1989 film Driving Miss Daisy.

06

Frankie Goes To Hollywood: The Power Of Love

There’s no connection to Christmas at all in the song “The Power Of Love”! The only reason the record company decided on a “Nativity” style video was simply due to the fact the song was released at Christmas time. That’s why people falsely believe it has something to do with Christmas and that’s why it appears on Christmas compilation CD’s. That also why the song has been labelled “the best non-Christmas CHRISTMAS number one” in the UK. It was rumoured that the members of FGTH ‘hated’ the video and were against the whole idea because “The Power Of Love” was meant to be the fall-out/’morning after’ reprise from “Relax!”.

07

Charles Brown: Merry Christmas Baby

“Merry Christmas Baby” is an R&B Christmas standard written by Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore. It has been covered by many artists including Otis Redding, B.B. King, Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Christina Aguilera, Melissa Etheridge and Hanson. The original 1947 version by Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers (featuring singer/pianist Charles Brown (musician), is the definitive version of this song. Notable cover versions include those by Chuck Berry on his 1964 album St. Louis to Liverpool and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band recorded live at Nassau Coliseum inUniondale, New York, and included on the Christmas album A Very Special Christmas, released in 1987.^[1]

Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers was one of the hottest blues attractions on the West Coast when their recording of “Merry Christmas Baby” reached position #3 on Billboard‘s R & B Juke Box chart during the Christmas of 1947. Guitarist Johnny Moore commandeered an impressive lineup of players for the recording session, including bassist Eddie Williams, guitarist Oscar Moore (then of the King Cole Trio), and singer/pianist Charles Brown.^[2] A version of this song, recorded by Bonnie Raitt and Charles Brown, is included on the Christmas album A Very Special Christmas 2, released in 1992.

08

Bruce Springsteen: Santa Claus Is Comin’ To Town

The song “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” was released in 1975 by Bruce Springsteen. The music and the lyrics to Santa Claus Is Coming To Town were written in 1934 by Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie. This famous Christmas song was first sung on Eddie Cantor’s radio show in November 1934 and became an immediate hit.

09

Elvis: Blue Christmas

10

Slade: Merry Christmas Everybody

This was based on a psychedelic song, “My Rocking Chair,” which Noddy Holder wrote in 1967. In 1973 the Slade vocalist decided to convert it into a Christmas song after a night out drinking at a local pub. He and the band’s bass player and co-writer Jimmy Lea camped out at Noddy’s mother’s house and got down to changing the lyrics to make them more Christmassy. Jimmy Lea incorporated into the verse parts of another song which he was then writing and Noddy re-wrote the words incorporating different aspects of the Christmas holiday season as they came to mind.

Noddy Holder explained to Q magazine January 2013 how the song was originally inspired by The Beatles: “I wrote the original verse with the lyrics, ‘Buy me a rocking chair, I’ll watch the world go by. Bring me a mirror, I’ll look you in the eye,’ in 1967 in the aftermath of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper,” he said. I was being psychedelic. Dave (Hill) wrote another part to the song but it didn’t work so we put it away. Then in 1973 he remembered my verse one day when we were trying to write a Christmas single. We changed the words to, ‘Are you hanging up your stocking on the wall?’ and the rest fell into place.”

11

Judy Garland: Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

This was used in the film Meet Me In St. Louis. Judy Garland starred in the film and added some of the lyrics. At first, the words were very dark and she didn’t feel comfortable singing them in the scene, so she helped change them to lighten the mood of the song. It was still a very melancholy song, and included the line, “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow.” In the 1950s Frank Sinatra changed that lyric to, “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.” This is the way it was usually sung from that point forward, making it a much more uplifting song.

The Ralph Blane lyric that Judy Garland objected to the most was this: “Have yourself a merry little Christmas. It may be your last. Next year we may all be living in the past.” Judy Garland thought the lyric was awful and would be too cruel to sing to 7 year old Margaret O’Brien. Blane willingly changed it.

12

Louis Armstrong: White Christmas

“White Christmas” is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.

Accounts vary as to when and where Berlin wrote the song. One story is that he wrote it in 1940, in warm La Quinta, California, while staying at the La Quinta Hotel, a frequent Hollywood retreat also favored by writer-producer Frank Capra, although the Arizona Biltmore also claims the song was written there. He often stayed up all night writing — he told his secretary, “Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody’s ever written!”

13

The Jackson 5: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

“I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” is a Christmas song with music and lyrics by British songwriter Tommie Connor.

The original recording by Jimmy Boyd, created on July 15, 1952 when he was 13 years old, reached No. 1 on the Billboard pop singles chart in December 1952, and on the Cash Box chart at the beginning of the following year. The song was commissioned by Saks Fifth Avenue to promote the store’s Christmas card for the year, which featured an original sketch by artist Perry Barlow, who drew for The New Yorker for many decades.

The song describes a scene where a child walks downstairs from his/her bedroom on Christmas Eve to see his/her mother kissing “Santa Claus” (presumably his/her father in a Santa Claus costume) under the mistletoe.

Boyd’s record was condemned by the Roman Catholic Church in Boston when it was released on the grounds that it mixed kissing with Christmas, ignoring the fact that mistletoe, under which many couples kiss, is traditionally hung in many homes during the Christmas season. Boyd was photographed meeting with the Archdiocese to explain the song. After the meeting, the ban was lifted.

14

RUN-DMC: Christmas In Hollis

This samples “Back Door Santa,” which is a 1968 Blues track by Clarence Carter. In Carter’s song, Santa is sneaking around with another man’s girl (see “Back Door Man”). “Christmas in Hollis” tells the story of an encounter with Saint Nick in Hollis, Queens, which is where Run-D.M.C. grew up.