Christmas music in foreign parts?
Here's a question for our Spanish, Polish, Russian and Yankee-Doodle-Gun-Juggling-Burger-Monkey Spec-chums - does the rest of the world have a list of favourite nutty Christmas tunes, besides the usual classic carols, like the UK does?
In the UK around Christmas, all the shops and radio stations switch to playing favourite No.1 records from past Christmasses, many of which are completely and shamelessly over-the-top productions, but with the catchiest tunes you'll ever hear. Ones anyone in the UK will know off-by-heart like:
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Wham! - Last Christmas
Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas
Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmas-Time
Stop the Cavalry - Jona Lewie
Even more recent additions like:
The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)
And whatever Cliff Richard has turned into a modern carol lately.
But what about the rest of the world? I guess there are some international classics that must get played everywhere:
Pat Boone (or Bing Crosby) - White Christmas
Johnny Mathis - When a Child is Born
David Bowie & Bing Crosby - Little Drummer Boy
But the only relatively 'modern' track I can think of like that is:
Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas is You
Or maybe 'Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo'...
So do other countries have this tradition of trying to write a new Christmas song every year? Or do they just crank out the same old slow classics? What do they sound like in forrin?
In the UK around Christmas, all the shops and radio stations switch to playing favourite No.1 records from past Christmasses, many of which are completely and shamelessly over-the-top productions, but with the catchiest tunes you'll ever hear. Ones anyone in the UK will know off-by-heart like:
Slade - Merry Xmas Everybody
Wizzard - I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday
Wham! - Last Christmas
Greg Lake - I Believe in Father Christmas
Paul McCartney - Wonderful Christmas-Time
Stop the Cavalry - Jona Lewie
Even more recent additions like:
The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)
And whatever Cliff Richard has turned into a modern carol lately.
But what about the rest of the world? I guess there are some international classics that must get played everywhere:
Pat Boone (or Bing Crosby) - White Christmas
Johnny Mathis - When a Child is Born
David Bowie & Bing Crosby - Little Drummer Boy
But the only relatively 'modern' track I can think of like that is:
Mariah Carey - All I Want for Christmas is You
Or maybe 'Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo'...
So do other countries have this tradition of trying to write a new Christmas song every year? Or do they just crank out the same old slow classics? What do they sound like in forrin?
Post edited by joefish on
Joefish
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Comments
Spike Jones & His City Slickers - All I Want for Christmas is my two front Teeth (1947)
:-D
My favourite ones are in the first paragraph, even I rather like Jona Lewie song.
Being Spanish I bother our carols a damn... except for Raphael performance of "The Little Drummer".
Sorry, but I left believing in Christmas some years ago since my father and one brother of mine passed away.
There are loads more hits from past Christmasses that don't really get the same sort of repeat play of the likes of Slade, Wizzard and Paul McCartney. I love the Greg Lake one, and When a Child is Born - right up to the awful cringeworthy bit where he starts talking in that syrupy voice-over.
Really in the UK Christmas is more about the festival and family time than the religious origins. Cliff Richard can get a religious-themed song to No.1 maybe once or twice a decade, but no-one else ever could. Well, except maybe Boney-M. In the UK you can deny Christ, but you can't deny Christmas!
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Or are there even any other attempts over there at a novelty Christmas hit?
There are some lovely spoofs by American DJ Bob Rivers ('Twisted Tunes') that you sometimes hear. I'm guessing the small, independent US radio stations are all over these..?
Walkin' 'Round in Women's Underwear
The Restroom Door Said 'Gentlemen'...
Wreck the Malls
We Wish You Weren't Living With Us
Didn't I Get This Last Year?
The very excellent:
What If Eminem Did Jingle Bells?
And the rather brilliant:
(I'm Stringing Up) Decorations
But I don't suppose they're even released as singles, let alone chart.
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It was crap, but it summed up chrimbo quite nicely for me.
The Mexicans here like Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad, and it was hilarious last year at work hearing my Puerto Rican mate join in with it when it came on the radio. I actually said to another one of my work mates if he sings along to that song in Spanish it'll make my Christmas, and he did.
It was awesome, so we joined in with him :lol:
Even though my Spanish is complete sh*te, and I don't know the words to the song :D
Best Christmas song ever.
Kevin Bloody Wilson - Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! (2013)
oh and santa.................wheres my ****in bike?
We have a lot of old, 100 years or older religious carols about Baby Jesus which are still played most of time during Christmas in radio and tv.
Then there are all these American songs about snow, bells, Santas, snowmen and reindeers. They are played usually in shopping malls.
And yes there are some new Christmas "hits" every year. In recent years they play them quite a lot but generally forget about them the next year because they have another fresh one.
Oh, and did I say that they are all very repeatative, if you heard one, you heard them all ;)
I'm sorry to hear you get all the bland American ones in shopping malls. We get those in the UK too, in places with overly high opinions of themselves. I get the impression that traditional Christmas carols are forced on you in the US whether you like it or not, which is why I so like the anarchic spirit of the British charts knocking out a new mad song every few years that you don't mind if it comes back year after year.
I mean, The Darkness managed to fit in references to 'bell-end' and 'ring-piece' in the chorus, and then get a choir of kids to join in singing it - brilliant!
I remember seeing one of those 'documentaries' they film in airports about a small transit hub in the US where there was some huge delay - flights grounded by storms - and people were packing in to the terminal and getting seriously wound up. And what the airport staff thought would help calm everyone down was to force a group of carol singers into the crowd to try and shout them down with their jolly songs. I can't imagine what that did to all those frayed tempers, but if that was an airport over here I'd be surprised if the singers made it out alive...
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This year it was a couple of nights with 2 Christmas songs then 95 versions of Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree.
Believe me I'm over Christmas, and my wife gets back today which means I'm going to be throwing a hissy fit in the next day or so and stamping on her Rod Stewarts or Michael Boobles Christmas CD's.
I can't stand any more of this sh*te!
Merry Rampant Commercialism Time you f**kers! :evil:
(missing an amen break hehe)
they are all the same like thier awful xmas movies which always seem to be about someone unlikely having to help santa out.
Fixed that for you :-P
(got bored after a minute as Steeleye Span isn't quite at a constant tempo - although it's surprisingly close)
in the style of warrior dance hehe.. :) lot of chops, which is always good. I like mucking around with stuff with minimal drums.. makes it far easier.
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my parents , and more used to speak latin many moons ago for mass when they were young abroad..
that was on the same show the other day biggest hit to feature a record (well 2) .. 1 ikkle one for the high octaves.. was a monk, reminded me of the rasputin game.