After hearing it piped over every shopping center since before Thanksgiving, by the time the end of December rolls around I’m usually pretty done with the whole holiday music scene. However, there are some songs that I always love and think deserve the playlist rotations that I fear have been given to Jessica Simpson and her new…erm…song this year.
Holly Cole – “Santa Baby”
This is how you sing it, Madonna.
Judy Garland – “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
It has to be Judy’s version because (1) it’s Judy and (2) her’s is one of the only recorded versions that uses the original line “Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow.”
Leroy Anderson – “Sleigh Ride”
As a military musician’s daughter, I think I’ve been to more holiday concerts than most people go to in their whole lives. No matter, I never get tired of this song – especially at the end when it, in the words of my dad “Tries to get funky in a way only a bunch of white guys can.”
And just because I can…
Gayla Peevey – “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”
If I can’t get my frog body brooch, can I at least have a hippo?
So are you sick to death of the music, or are you still grooving to that little drummer boy? What songs do you love and/or loathe right around now?
P.S. I’m also a bit of a softie for anything The Carpenters did, but that’s mostly because I love Karen Carpenter’s voice. However, she sings the wrong lyrics in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” so that’s minus points right there.
I love Gordon Lightfoot’s Song for Winter’s Night and Joni Mitchell’s River … even though it’s not really a holiday song. Kinda sad, kind wintery, kinda perfect.
I love Song for a Winter’s Night, too. Millie and I put that song (Sarah McLachlan’s version) in last week’s music selections!
Yay, Sleigh Ride!!! I love watching that one played live– my eyes are always on the percussionist. That slapper-clapper (and the neighing) make me cheer every time.
I work retail, but I STILL love Christmas music. The only two I can’t take anymore by Dec. 25 are “Little Drummer Boy” and “Feliz Navidad.”
I think I remember my dad telling me once that he was one of the musicians recorded in one of the versions of Sleigh Ride you hear on the radio this time of year. But he’s done a lot of neat stuff, so I could be mistaken. But it’s probably my all-time favorite Christmas song.
My least favorite songs are “Grandma got Run Over” (of course), and that British one with the line “It’s Christmas…and what have you done?” in it. And as for “I Want A Hippopotamus…”, what’s not to like? The songs about drummers puzzle me, though – were I woman who’d just had a baby, and in a stable, too, the LAST thing I’d want to hear would be a kid playing a drum!