Merry Xmas Everybody

If I’d thought ahead, I might have been able to come up with an interesting list of noteworthy-but-neglected Christmas pop songs. As it is, deadlines are looming and I’m left picking through my CD collection, scrolling through iTunes and hitting up the p2p networks to find any Christmas music at all worth commenting on. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Various artists
Where Will You Be Christmas Day?
Dust-to-Digital (2004)

A two-disc collection of old—and frequently weird—jazz, blues, folk, calypso and gospel versions of familiar and not-so-well-known Christmas songs from all over the world, sort of like a global holiday version of Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. (The Rev. J.M. Gates and Buell Kazee, in fact, appear on both sets.) The earliest recording on Where Will You Be Christmas Day? is the haunting pipe hymn “Tu Scendi Dalle Stelle,” by the Italian singer Pasquale Feis, made in 1917. The most recent ones, Vera Hall Ward’s bluesy gospel a cappella “The Last Month of the Year” (“I want you all to remember, Christmas is Jesus’ birthday,” she reminds listeners in the spoken introduction) and the Alabama Harp Singers’ “Sherburne,” are from 1959. The tone ranges from reverential (a shape-note rendition of “Holy Babe” by a quintet of singers recorded on an Arkansas farm in 1939) to jubilant (the Cotton Top Mountain Sanctified Singers’ “Christ Was Born on Christmas Morn”), from mournful (Kazee’s “Lady Gay”) to irreverent (Bessie Smith’s “At the Christmas Ball” and Leroy Carr’s “Christmas in Jail—Ain’t That a Pain”).

Slade
“Merry Xmas Everybody” from Slade Smashes
Polydor (1980)

A seasonal hit that still enters the British pop charts around Christmas, more than 30 years after its initial release as a single in 1973, “Merry Xmas Everybody” represents the sweeter pop side of Slade, with obviously Beatles-esque harmonies and utterly un-ironic nostalgia in the lyrics. (The tune was written in the band’s early days, in 1967, but had never had lyrics or been recorded.) Only Noddy Holder’s feral shout—“It’s Christmaaaaaas!”—as the song ends hints at the stack-booted glam/arena stomp Slade was perfecting at the time.

The Fall
“No Xmas For John Quays,” “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” from The Complete Peel Sessions 1978-2004
Castle (2005)

“No Xmas for John Quays,” from The Fall’s first album, Live at the Witch Trials, and reprised for their first session for BBC D.J. John Peel in 1978, could have been one of the saddest Christmas songs ever—“There is no Christmas for junkies/No girls, no curls/Just the traffic passing by/Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye”—but Mark E. Smith delivers the lyrics with his characteristic snarl. There’s no sympathy for the poor bastard from him, and the band churns out a groove that gradually turns into a pummel.

The Fall were on an upswing, creatively if not commercially, when they recorded “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” during a 1994 Peel session. Their take on the chestnut “Jingle Bell Rock” isn’t as good as many of their other covers (“Mr. Pharmacist,” “Victoria,” “Black Monk Theme,” “Strychnine”), but it’s fun enough coming from post-punk’s reining Grinch. “Hark!,” on the other hand, is brilliant, Smith’s deadpan lead vocals undermining the celebratory joy of the lyrics while the band absolutely hammers the hymn behind him. Brix Smith’s vocals on the chorus are bewildering and otherworldly.

John Prine
“Christmas in Prison” from Sweet Revenge (1973)

The final image, of snowflakes slowly falling in the glare of a moving guard-shack spotlight, is cinematic and wrenching. Prine captures the narrator’s longing for his lover on the outside in a series of unforgettable couplets—“Her name’s on my tongue/and her blood’s in my stream,” “Her heart is as big/as this whole goddamn jail”—but it’s all buried by the snow and the cold. “It’s Christmas in prison/there’ll be music tonight/I’ll probably get homesick/I love you, goodnight.”

Yo La Tengo
Merry Christmas From Yo La Tengo
Egon (2002)

This barely distributed three-song EP opens with a blazing cover of Chicago weirdo Jan Terri’s “Rock N Roll Santa,” sweetly sung by Georgia Hubley, followed by a mellow version of the Sun Ra composition “It’s Christmas Time.” (They had released four versions of Sun Ra’s “Nuclear War” on an EP just a few months before Merry Christmas was released.) The disc ends with Yo La Tengo’s slightly lounge-y take on Sven Swanson’s  “Santa Claus Goes Modern;” the lyrics were composed and submitted to one of those your-poetry-set-to-music ads from the back of a magazine from the 1960s and ’70s and released as part of the American Song-Poem Project. Merry Christmas is slight compared to Yo La Tengo’s best work, but its eclecticism captures many of the band’s best elements.

Alan Jackson
“Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)”

One of the best voices in country gets the tone just right on this song from his first Christmas album. It’s got all the makings of a honky-tonk classic—a tortured mother staring out the window, boozing, trauma, steel guitar and fiddle—as well as a couple of truly over-the-top touches—the Christmas tree that works as a prop for Daddy’s downfall and Jackson’s exhortation to his band, “Everybody sing now!”—that pitch the story from tragicomic to straight-up farce, even as Mama stands at the foot of the stairs with tears streaming down her face.