It'll be lonely this Christmas...
'Tis the season to be jolly, listen to the traditional Christmas songs, eat copious amounts of mince-pies, the whole shebang. But for some reason everything you hear on the radio at this time of year is truly awful.
Here at Spoonfed HQ we've been trying, at least, to get in the festive spirit. We've stopped surfing myspace for breakcore and weird old grarge rock song and begun a Youtube trawl for maddening seasonal anthems.
Here's our pick of the Christmas classics...
The Pogues - ‘Fairytale of New York’
Cynics unite; the Christmas spirit is dead and buried under six feet of consumerism, debt and unending re-runs of the later Only Fools and Horses (the ones bereft of humour).
For this reason, the song that embodies the festive spirit best must be The Pogues and ‘Fairytale of New York', basically for all the drunkenness, regret and violence, and the fact that the main characters accept in the last verse that they might as well just get on with it, so it’s not all doom and gloom.-MF
MXPX - ‘Christmas Night of the Zombies’
This song first made me believe that the phenomenon of possession was a real and dangerous prospect. Imagine it, an annoyingly clean-cut pop-punk band sitting in a garage trying to pen a track for a festive comp, when BAM! They’re taken over by the spirit of Danzig and come up with a song that combines all the tweeness of Christmas with wholesale slaughter of the living dead with high powered weaponry.
When I first heard this tune, it was on mix tape someone had made for WRC in Leicester, soulless Top-Shop-esque clothes shop where I’d stand by the changing rooms all day and allow people to abuse the shit out of me for minimum wage. At the time the idea of blasting people in the face with shotgun was quite appealing… -DH
Wham - ‘Last Christmas’
My favourite Christmas song (for ‘favourite’ read the one that conjures up the most amusing, least nauseating memories) is ‘Last Christmas’ by Wham.
It reminds me of mullets and of a Christmas family holiday in Israel when I was 14. The hotel played ‘Last Christmas’ and ‘Baby Come back’ by Pato Banton virtually on repeat until we became indoctrinated and feral; maddened by the chirpy lament of the respective singers. As a reaction to this insidious abuse, I pushed my brother fully clothed into an ice cold swimming pool just before we left for the airport. -LC
Aled Jones - ‘Walking in the Air’
The best Christmas song, for anyone whose heart is open to the true spirit of the season, is 'Walking in the Air', from The Snowman. At best, most others are simply cursory accounts of some of the more incidental features of Christmas, like mistletoe, wine, fires and so on. At worst they concern mundane subject matter germane to any time of year, which shows you that someone was just trying to cash in by giving their music a shallow, superficially festive air.
'Walking in the Air', on the other hand, really captures the unique feeling associated with this time of year for children and adults all over the world. Even Australians probably get it, and they don't even have snow. And with his sophisticated arrangement and use of Aled Jones's voice, which is so high-pitched it's avant-garde, composer Howard Blake successfully aims far over the head of more simple-minded pretenders to the honour he deserves. -RH
Rolf Harris - ‘Six White Boomers’
Starting relatively late in the scheme of piano lessons, I started high school with an urge to tickle the ivories.
With Christmas 1996 fast approaching I frantically mastered 3 basic chords from a piano book written for 8 year olds, and learned my first melody, the Australian themed "Six white boomers", a Christmas carol about Santa's sleigh being drawn by kangaroos. Even now living in London, and having a snowy Christmas roast instead of a summer barbeque, I still think of having to play the D chord. -S'OD
Traditional Christmas Song - ‘Little Donkey’
When set this festive task I desperately wanted to think of an apt East End Christmas song, just so I could live up to every stereotype that accompanies being the cockney sparrow of love that I am. Unfortunately, I couldn’t think of one that delivered the message required and in any case I was finding it nigh on impossible to choose just one as it is. Depending on my mood I love them all, except that none by Mud that could actually coerce me into slitting my wrists if caught at a ‘delicate’ time.
Anyway, I digress. This time I’m going for the carol, ‘Little Donkey’. Not quite the commercial money spinner of my peers but the only Christmas song that gets me a little misty eyed, reminding me of what this time of year is all about donkeys, precious loads and a pregnant virgin following a star to Bethlehem. -LM
Traditional Christmas Song - 'Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht'
Who says the classics aren't the best? Christmas would simply be lost like a pine needle in a green hay stack without this beautiful tune. When sung in its mother tongue, while standing in front of a glowing tree decked out with real candles, yuletide is clearly palpable.
Just wait for the drop and watch the Christmas crowd convulse in fits of itchy dancing...or maybe not. -AW
Wham - ‘Last Christmas’ (again)
Favourite Christmas Song? The one with the most memories? Shi-at, I mean, there’s loads of suitable ones. Ultimately, however, I’m going to go with the track I’d consider least appropriate for Christmas, a time, as others have mentioned, ripe for the misuse of (poisonous) mistletoe and (spiked) wine.
Yes, yes, yes. You knew it all along. Wham’s very own ‘Last Christmas’. For me, it’s the feeling that our George is breathing his dragon breath all over my alabaster skin, forever polluting me with the foul stench of over-cooked Brussels sprouts and spleen-failure inducing greed. -PS
We should really stop listening to Joy Division all the time…
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