There's Only So Much You Can Do With Rudolph

And other thoughts on a saturated Christmas music market

I asked an AI program for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer listening to a lounge singer. I got a black-nosed reindeer singing into an old radio microphone. Close enough.

A few days ago I was at my Mom’s place having coffee and she had the TV tuned to one of the morning shows, Today or Good Morning World or Wake Up America or It’s Entirely Too Early to Be Entertained or one of those. The guests for this particular segment were Seth MacFarlane and Liz Gillies, who were promoting their new Christmas album called We Wish You the Merriest. MacFarlane, of course, is an actor and writer and the creator of Family Guy but also a pretty smooth singer of standards. I knew nothing of Liz Gillies but she has appeared on Broadway and a handful of TV shows and her voice is pleasant enough.

The two of them sang “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” one of the songs on their new album, and it sounded perfectly fine.

But it also sounded like every other rendition of Rudolph you’ve ever heard.

There’s only so much you can do with Rudolph. But people keep doing it. And that’s why I’ve been thinking recently that the Christmas music market has been saturated. We’re good on Christmas music. Pack up your instruments and go home. Yes, you’ll be paid for the whole day.

You say you have a new approach to “Winter Wonderland”? I’m going to bet you don’t.

This is coming from a guy who has no problem with radio stations switching to an all-Christmas format on the day after Thanksgiving, or the day before Thanksgiving, or the day after Halloween. I’m all for Christmas joy. But I’ve heard all the old stuff a million times and too much of the new stuff sounds like the old stuff and none of it moves me like it used to.

I think there are two explanations for this, neither of them containing the word curmudgeon.

One is, as I noted in Monday’s newsletter, that the holiday season comes around faster and faster these days. Each successive year is like a tether ball winding itself around a pole. Eventually it will reach a point of singularity where it will seem like no time has passed between the end of last holiday season and the beginning of the next one. It will be all Christmas all the time and the Andy Williams version of “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” will be playing on a permanent loop. It’s hard to feel the magic when it never seems to stop.

I feel the same way about fireworks, but that’s another story.

The other explanation is that the songs of Christmas have their greatest emotional pull in childhood, much like Christmas itself. I used to get up early on school mornings in December and just sit in the front room with only the Christmas tree lights on, counting down the days, eager to see my cousins, wondering what was in each box marked for me, looking forward to watching Mom and Dad and Ric open their gifts, and just feeling the spirit. (It was also my tradition to drink a glass of ice-cold Dr Pepper on those mornings. Because, you know, I’m a health fiend.) Any music I heard during those holiday seasons of childhood was tied to that living room and to Grandma’s house and to the big family get-together and to the desire for something wonderful and cool and surprising in those unwrapped packages.

And while the songs themselves are as great as ever, they no longer evoke the memories of those old traditions and they haven’t seemed to attach themselves to the new traditions. They’re just there. Background noise. Crosby and Sinatra and Dean Martin have been joined by Mariah Carey and Michael Buble and Kelly Clarkson and Seth MacFarlane in a perpetual music-go-round that accompanies driving and shopping and making dinner.

They’re just there.

Maybe the Christmas music market hasn’t been saturated. Maybe it’s just me. And maybe there are bluegrass and ska and Swedish death-metal arrangements of “Rudolph” I just haven’t heard yet.

Either way, I wish all my readers and their families a very happy Christmas and very happy lives. And now, let’s get specific about some of my favorite and least-favorite Christmas music.

My Favorite Christmas Albums

Blame It On Christmas, Vol. 1, Various Artists

This purports to be a compilation of Christmas songs from all over the world but seems instead to be the work of a handful of like-minded musicians and satirists. There’s “O White Christmas” done in Irish style, a surf version of “The Little Drummer Boy” called “The Little Endless Summer Boy,” a group called The Three Weissmen doing “Schlep the Halls with Loaves of Challah,” and my favorite, a lounge version of “Away in a Manger” by Bob Francis, described in the liner notes as the poor man’s Frank Sinatra Jr. That song contains the stanza “The cows they went moo moo / They woke up the kid / But that little savior / Never flipped his lid.”

The Jethro Tull Christmas Album

This album confirms my belief that Jethro Tull was once the house band at some rowdy tavern in Renaissance England. There’s no trace of American Christmas tradition here; everything from “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” to “Ring Out Solstice Bells” to the beautiful “Bouree” to the mystical “Jack Frost and the Hooded Crow” evokes madrigals, roast suckling pig, and an ancient Christmas spirit—one with a weakness for jazzy flute solos.

The Sinatra Christmas Album, Frank Sinatra

I suppose the information exists somewhere, but I have no idea how long it took the Chairman to make this record. It sounds like he entered the studio with a cup of coffee at around 9 a.m., did all 14 songs in one take, and still made it to lunch with Ava Gardner on time. For some artists, that would sound like criticism. For Sinatra, it’s a tribute to how he makes it look easy. The 14 songs on this album offer simple, straightforward arrangements, and Frank provides a sincerely joyous or reverent take on each one.

A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi

“Christmas Time Is Here” belongs in the list of all-time greatest Christmas songs, and “Linus and Lucy” belongs in the list of all-time greatest Christmas songs that don’t necessarily have anything to do with Christmas. This album also contains the “loo-loo-loo” version of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” which ranks right up there with “Ave Maria” in terms of reverence.

We Three Kings, The Roches

This is the perfect mix of traditional carols, Christmas standards, and just plain fun. Fans of the Roche sisters’ playfulness will love the thick New Jersey take on “Winter Wonderland” (“Gone away is the blueboid”) and the skeptical grownups vs children’s chorus on “Frosty the Snowman,” while everyone who loves the Roches’ tight harmonies and innovative arrangements will be tempted to put this album on repeat while enjoying a cozy winter’s night around the Christmas tree.

Honorable Mention: Christmas-a-Go-Go, Various Artists. Various being the key word here, with tracks by Keith Richards, Soupy Sales, Darlene Love, some Beatles imitators, Joe Pesci, et al.

The Jury Is Still Out

Christmas in the Heart, Bob Dylan

I like it. I don’t quite love it, yet I’ll defend it to people who hate it. Mostly I’m not sure why we needed a Bob Dylan Christmas album. “Winter Wonderland,” “The Christmas Blues,” and the double-time “Must Be Santa” are highlights but “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” and “Adeste Fideles” are painful to listen to. This was recorded during a time when Dylan’s bluesy rasp disappeared at times behind a throatful of phlegm. All proceeds from the purchase of this album are donated to children’s charities, so I’m glad it exists.

My Least Favorite Christmas Songs and By Least Favorite I Mean I Don’t Ever Want to Hear Them Again

Last Christmas, George Michael or Wham or I don’t even care

Even if the music weren’t so insipid I wouldn’t be able to get past the continuity error in the verse: “Last Christmas I gave you my heart / The very next day you gave it away / This year, to save me from tears / I’ll give it to somebody special.” Wait a minute—did you mean the first person gave it back? Because that has a whole different meaning than “gave it away.” And if it was given away, now you’re claiming your heart had three owners in two days. Why would the third person want someone else’s heart?

Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time, Paul McCartney

I like Sir Paul but this cloying glob of treacle should be called “Simplistically Writing a Horrible Christmas Tune.” And I think I did this joke in a previous newsletter but the time seems right to do it again. Paul sings “The choir of children sing their song / They practiced all year long” and then the children’s choir comes in with “Ding dong ding dong ding dong.” They practiced that for a year? Those lyrics aren’t exactly Gilbert and Sullivan. Surely along about the second week of January some kid said “Mr McCartney, I think we’ve got the ding dong line down.”

And My Favorite Christmas Song

I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, Gayla Peevey

Gayla Peevey recorded this song when she was ten years old. When I was ten I was drawing sideburns on potentially valuable baseball cards.