
Share
23rd December 2019
02:00pm GMT

There's Cliff Richard singing about Jesus. Boney M also singing about Jesus, but in a reggaeton Eurodisco kind of way. A song about Santa Claus literally making out with the singer's mother. And of course, 'Santa Baby', one of the horniest songs of all time that is entirely about having sex with Father Christmas in exchange for presents. Also, 'Mull of Kintyre'.
Sadly, the classics have fairly melted on the ground over the last 25 years. The last two I can think of are Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' and East 17's 'Stay Another Day', which is actually about suicide.
Fun fact! 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' has never been a number one in Ireland or the UK because it was beaten by the East 17 lads. Have that, Mariah.
Obviously, in that time, there have been popular re-imaginations of the classics, thanks to the team of scientists who thaw out Michael Bublé with hairdryers on 30 November each year. But no real bangers that would make Baby Jesus vibe in his manger.
'Mistletoe' by Bieber? Not enough character. 'Don't Let The Bells End' by The Darkness? Too much of a joke.
Christmas songs used to have purpose. Ambition. Whatever you think about him, John Lennon tried to stop literally all wars with his song. No, it didn't work - of course it didn't work - but what matters is that he tried.
Bob Geldof, Midge Ure and Bono brought us Band Aid and 'Do They Know It's Christmas', a well-intentioned song utterly littered with condescending inaccuracies about the continent of Africa (No snow? No rivers?) that features the very regrettable line (sang by Bono) "Thank God it's them instead of you." But they still raised $150 million in famine relief (with inflation, that would be $372 million today), so, you know, it was still quite an achievement.
There's 'Driving Home For Christmas', the lyrics of which kind of make it sound like Chris Rea is speeding home to kill his estranged family while they board up the windows and doors.
Then there's '2,000 Miles', 'Lonely This Christmas', 'Blue Christmas' and a whole other host of Christmas songs that remind us to be very, very sad.
We might not know that these things are what we need, but maybe they are. Maybe, rather than charity re-hashes of old songs, or audience-tested X Factor winning songs, what we need is something that we can't predict.
Perhaps, these days, in an effort to give us what they know we'll want, we're missing out on all the things that we don't want.
I think it says it all that one of the most famous recent Christmas songs is 'Mad World', a song which not only has nothing to do with Christmas whatsoever, but is actually just an existential crisis set to piano.
No music exec sat down and thought, oh yeah, bring back that Tears for Fears song about wishing you were dead, give it to a singer who looks and sounds exactly like the guy from REM but not the guy from REM and we'll make millions. It just kind of happened.