Why It’s a Gift: For a holiday filled with musty platitudes and gift-giving anxiety, leave it to the late Beatle and his musical partner/wife to celebrate with this iconic combo homage to the season and Vietnam War protest. The Jackson 5, "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" (1970).But those voices? If you don’t get chills from hearing these two masters bounce back and forth, then you deserve that lump of coal. If you count the super awkward two-minute “getting to know you talk-up” at the beginning of the song’s video, this duet has enough cheese in it to clog your arteries worse than a straight egg nog IV. The key is the way it pairs Crosby’s mellow croon with Bowie‘s high harmonies and counter-melodies as they meld the two old chestnuts into one beautifully weird, warm modern carol. Somehow, though, the forced marriage on this string-laden, soft rock duet recorded for Crosby’s 1977 Merrie Olde Christmas special has become one of the most enduring, beloved holiday classics. Why It’s a Gift: Nearly 45 years later, there is still nothing normal about watching one of most successful mainstream entertainers of the ’30s to ’50s share a mic with the transcendently weird/wired Bowie. Here are Billboard‘s staff picks for the 100 greatest Christmas songs of all time - songs that, try as folks might, no amount of commercial overplay or corporate co-opting can seem to ruin. It makes every Christmas season a musical family gathering where everyone shows up and co-exists peacefully - something precious few of us are lucky enough to be able to say about our actual families’ real-life holiday celebrations. Perennials that date back the better part of a century at this point are still ubiquitous every holiday season, while new seasonal releases often take whole decades to prove their worthiness.
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Unlike the oldies and classic rock canons, which are forced to update their timeline parameters every so often (or at least shed some old songs to make room for the new), being a Christmas standard is a lifetime appointment. Well, maybe for ten months of the year, it goes into hibernation - but you know it’ll be back next November at the latest, and it’ll include the same songs it has for your entire life. It’s music for the most wonderful time of the year, even if it always makes you cry.Īnd it never goes away. It evokes a visceral, nearly oppressive sentimentality, one fortified and strengthened by a lifetime’s worth of associated holiday memories - personal, familial, romantic, nostalgic.
But when they do connect, it’s magic – not to mention a holly jolly payday.Ĭhristmas music has a wavelength entirely its own, shared by an overwhelming majority of its most recognizable classics: a sublime yearning that’s at once profoundly saddening and deeply comforting.
Some succeed, as with these modern Christmas classics others, which just dropped this year, have yet to prove their mistletoe mettle. And with each passing year, more than a few contemporary artists try their hand at crafting a new seasonal standard, something sweet and melancholy that lingers in the pine-scented air for as long as it takes you to finish a candy cane (without chewing, that is). People have been singing about Christmas almost as long as it’s been celebrated.
The things that make Christmas songs great - whether carols, old pop standards or newer enduring hits - are most of the same things that make pop great in general: emotional connection, universal relatability, unshakeable catchiness. There’s a reason that listeners seem to get more impatient every year for the Christmas music season to start: Nothing else feels quite like it.
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