My ears are being assaulted this year by deplorable Christmas music. I wrote two years ago about how I enjoy Christmas music, particularly holiday music of the jazz variety. That's still true, but my God, there is some awful Christmas music to be heard if you go looking for it.
Take a CD Mrs. Geek found at Bath & Body Works for example. While there is some good music here (Ella Fitzgerald singing Santa Claus Is Coming To Town, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy doing Mr. heatmiser, Chris Isaak's version of Let It Snow, and The Ramones' Merry Christmas (I Don't Wanna Fight Tonight)), leading off with The Pussycat Dolls' predictable version of Santa Baby, continuing with one of the lesser Bing Crosby holiday efforts, A Marshmallow World, and Rascal Flatts sing a LOUD country version of God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, well.. there's a lot of chaff stuck in with the wheat. I think we need to go back to 1990's A Very Special Christmas with it's rather alien-sounding version of Silent Night by Stevie Nicks, the somewhat miscast Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band doing The Little Drummer Boy and the utterly 80's version of Winter Wonderland by The Eurythmics to even find a parallel. That disc also had some excellent music (Sting's version of Gabriel's Message foreshadowing his current flirtation with Elizabethan music, and Run DMC's groundbreaking Christmas In Hollis), it was an album more for the moment, than for the ages. (We won't even get into A Very Special Christmas Vol. 3 that traumatized me recently with Chris Cornell - who I normally love - doing an abominable English version of Schubert's Ave Maria. *shudder*)
Of course, I really came across utterly moronic Christmas music fare recently, when I saw the video for Twisted Sister doing "O Come All Ye Faithful". Yes, you saw that right: Twisted Sister and Adeste Fidelis in the same sentence. If some of the other music I've mentioned is downright stupid, this track should be outlawed. Some things don't go together; raw fish and Hershey's chocolate syrup is a good example. 80's Metal music, which is about conspicuous consumption, revelry, and excess (the scantilly clad stripper with huge breast implants wearing nothing but leather is a good totem creature), has nearly zero in common with a song with the refrain "O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord". Dee Snyder, shame on you! Though it was not unexpected to hear you sing "All Hail! Lord, we greet thee", it was more than passing strange that you were singing to Jesus and not Satan. Stop it!
Where has all the good Rock'n'Roll Christmas music gone? The Ventures Christmas album? Jethro Tull's Christmas Song? The Phil Spector Christmas Album? Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmas Time? Even that Hall & Oates version of Jingle Bell Rock? We live in degenerate times.
*sigh* Well, Christmas is almost here. Maybe it will be better next year.
said drgeek
on 2006-12-21 at 10:23 p.m.
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