A-Sides: John Legend, RuPaul, and all of this Christmas’ red-hot musical chestnuts
Music Features A-Sides
Old 97’s, Love The Holidays
[ATO, November 16]
Original holiday songs are difficult to do well, because it’s too easy to reach for overly saccharine sentiments or instrumentation. Love The Holidays, the first seasonal album by Old 97's, unsurprisingly avoids this trap. The diverse (but cohesive) full-length contains the expected twang-rock rave-ups (the horn-peppered title track) and torchy ballads (“I Believe In Santa Claus”), in addition to subtle moments of orchestral-rock grandeur (“Here It Is Christmastime”) and even gentle, psychedelic-country-pop (“Snow Angels”). Best of all, Love The Holidays’ lyrics celebrate the magic of the holiday with no traces of cynicism. “Gotta Love Being A Kid (Merry Christmas)“ captures the childlike wonder of the season, while highlight “Rudolph Was Blue” is a clever love song about the titular reindeer finding his match. Don’t sleep on the album’s bonus tracks, either, which are Old 97's spins on holiday classics, such as the jaunty jig “Up On The Housetop.” [Annie Zaleski]
The Beths, “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas”
[Carpark, November 30]
New Zealand band (and honoree of our 2018 best albums list) The Beths just unveiled their take on the gentle yuletide ballad “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.” Refashioning it into a lilting 3/4 waltz rhythm, the group delivers a mellow, almost stately version of the song, adding strings to their sound to expand the sonic palette, and even adding a guitar solo to the tune. It’s a pleasingly old-school offering that resists the all-too-common urge to simply cram an old classic into an updated pop-punk mold, instead letting the graceful tenor of the song dictate the style, thereby keeping the sense of gentle melancholy that always accompanies the best iterations of the Judy Garland stunner. [Alex McLevy]
15 Comments
Counterargument: The best John Legend Christmas song.“Wow, I’ve never heard a love song to a spice before.”“What? Tony Bennett did an entire duets album with a can of oregano.”“You don’t know the true meaning of Christmas, Stephen Colbert.”
John Legend’s Christmas album really is shockingly good. It’s hard to make an album of standards that is actually worth listening instead of previous versions. Hopefully it puts Buble’s overly croon-ed songs out of rotation.
It’s such a baller move to cover “What Christmas Means to Me” with Stevie Wonder on harmonica.
Here I thought RuPaul’s Christmas album must be the worst record of the year, but man, that John Legend track just elbows the Queen Of Spectacularly Poor Music Now Available On iTunes out of the way with some force in that race.On the other hand, this Jim Henson thing I’ve never heard of is quite nice and this The Beths that I’ve also never heard of is just lovely.
re: “make it all slow and sad and nostalgic” That’s why Richard Cheese’s “Silent Night” is one of my faves… his version is flat-out rollicking!
It’s not 2018, but I’m on a Sharon Jones kick right now and never realized she and the Dap-Kings put out a holiday album. It’s fucking amazing. She remains missed. Here’s the set they did at a Tiny Desk.
Anyone here have Annie Lennox’s Xmas album? It’s my jam (is that what the kids call it nowadays?)
Seems like an oversight to list John Legend without mentioning he also has the best original Christmas song of the last however-long-it’s-been.
This is related right? They actually released the Spider-Man Christmas album which is talked about in Spider-Verse!https://open.spotify.com/album/1dO8j15uVKxkHA92rYufUv?si=L5lXCJlDTQKppUzdmZhUdQ
No The Killers – “Don’t Shoot Me Santa” on here? Shameful.
Didn’t bother to read the premise of the article? Shameful.
I read the whole article, but I guess I glanced over the line about them being recent releases. Emmett Otter threw me off.
Family tree is a mess, but I run this C.U.N.T.
Pretty sure it’s “but I wanna stunt”
It’s been good to see JD McPherson’s album of Christmas originals, “Socks”, get its due.
Ingrid Michaelson (who co-wrote and co-performed “Winter Song” with Sara Bareilles) released a great Christmas album this year that hasn’t been getting much buzz.