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Senior Member
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rutland
Posts: 25,358
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Rutland
Posts: 25,358
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Santa or Satan?
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Santa or Satan? Simon Cowell may not be, as Neil Tennant claimed, a “pop Satan”, but he certainly isn’t a pop Santa either. In fact, to Simon’s already large crimes against music, we can now add “the death of the Christmas single”.
Since Shayne Ward’s inevitable arrival at No 1 in 2004 with the decidedly unseasonable That’s My Goal, the bookmakers’ favourite flutter of the pop calendar has been axed. And now all bets are off as Cowell has colonised Christmas.
The festive period used to be a traditional boom time for record retailing with a variety of big names setting out their seasonal stall. But Cowell’s fiendish world domination plans hit on a masterstroke with The X Factor’s Christmas climax, soaking up the spirit of goodwill to all for a here today, gone tomorrow ‘star’.
Last year, a Good Fairy arrived in the form of lovely, talented Leona Lewis, hopefully a talent for life and not just for Christmas. There’s precious little sign that this year’s crop will prove so durable, but maybe the traditional Christmas record was dying anyway and the Cowell cull was the final blow that put it out of its misery.
The advent of downloads and the chance to chose your purchases without enduring seasonal queues, sales assistants in half-hearted festive garb and shops full of yuletide cheer (ie propoganda) also contributed to the demise.
Fearful of appearing uncool – or offending anyone – leading popstars no longer make merry in the old fashioned way. The controversy over Cliff Richard’s Millennium Prayer video scared off some, while others have simply decided that the best Crimbo classics have all been written.
Back in 1973, and every year since, Slade’s Noddy Holder asked, “Does your Granny always tell you that the old songs are the best?”
When it comes to Christmas tunes, the old dear might have a point.
Here are some of the perennial classic Xmas favourites from yesteryear – with the year of first release – and a couple that suggest that Cowell’s crime may have been a mercy killing.
CLIFF RICHARD
Mistletoe And Wine (1988)
Saviour’s Day (1990)
Millennium Prayer (1999)
Cliff’s controversial Millennium Prayer video dealt a grievous body blow – and a TV poll voted it the worst No 1 of all time – but the mere fact that he became so identified with the Christmas record may be an even bigger factor in making Yule uncool than anything dreamt up by Simon Cowell.
JOHN & YOKO AND THE PLASTIC ONO BAND
Happy Xmas (War Is Over) (1971)
John Lennon didn’t want for ambition. Despite changing the world with The Beatles he longed to write “a Christmas song that would last forever”. With Phil Spector, producer of the definitive rock ’n’ roll Yuletide album A Christmas Gift For You at the controls, and the Harlem Community Choir in attendance, this song fulfilled his wish. Initially a flop in the US, over the years its timeless message has ensured it the posterity Lennon sought.
WIZZARD
I Wish It Could be Christmas Every Day (1973)
Multi-instrumentalist and Birmingham legend Roy Wood was the brains behind Wizzard, often playing all the instruments. He had carefully planned for this Christmas classic to be a No 1, but was so annoyed when Noddy Holder and Slade knocked him aside in the race for the top that he flung a custard pie at Holder while filming that year’s seasonal Top Of The Pops. All good glam rock fun, of course. In any case, the song has proved a nice little earner for Wood over the years and he can currently be seen making merry to it on an Argos TV ad.
SLADE
Merry Xmas Everybody (1973)
Proving that mother-in-law sometimes does know best, Slade songwriter Jim Lea wrote this at the bidding of his wife’s mum who suggested the band write a modern day White Christmas. Recorded, in best Xmas record style, in the middle of a New York summer heatwave, it spent five weeks at No 1 – the sixth and final time they topped the charts. In recent years, Lea has complained that the song gets played too early and that he is sick of Christmas hysteria. Though, obviously, not the handsome publishing royalties the song continues to produce.
WHAM!
Last Christmas (1984)
Wham!’s Christmas song may not be the most celebrated, but it is certainly the one that has been most covered. Billie Piper, Manic Street Preachers, Travis, Busted, Hilary Duff and The Ordinary Boys are just some of the 180 odd cover versions logged at the lastchristmas.com website. But it’s the original with its touchingly dated snowbound video that still rules the roost. Pipped to the No 1 spot by Band Aid (which also featured George Michael), all proceeds from the single went to Ethiopian famine relief.
BAND AID
Do They Know It’s Christmas? (1984)
Still the mother of all Christmas charity records – even Band Aid20 couldn’t top the original when Bob Geldof reconvened the pop aristocracy in 2004 for a cover version. Co-composer Midge Ure admitted it “wasn’t even a particularly good tune”, but Band Aid was the right record at the right time and sold more than three million copies. Inspired by a BBC report on famine in Ethiopia and driven by passionate need, even PM Margaret Thatcher made a U-turn and agreed to hand over VAT from the record to the Band Aid charity.
THE POGUES
Fairytale Of New York (1987)
It took frontman Shane MacGowan and banjo player Gem Finer over a year to get this song right but, when they did, everything was perfect. The strings, the male voice choir, the duet between Shane and the late, great Kirsty McColl – even the video with movie star Matt Dillon – ensured instant classic status. But it was kept off the top spot by The Pet Shop Boys’ Always On My Mind. It must have been Neil Tennant’s turn to play pop Satan that year.
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Source: Daily Mirror
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14-12-2007, 09:10 AM
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