  | The Best Christmas Albums | |||
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Top
Five Records
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If it can be difficult to choose ten definite classic Christmas songs, it's perhaps even trickier to find a Christmas-themed album which manages to keep the quality high all the way through. But there are some records, listed below, which for one reason or another make themselves indispensible. It's a bit of a cheat, though, as will become clear if you read on, only four of the 'top five' actually exist...
With
one exception, this is a uniformly wonderful album with Christmas
classics given the Spector wall of sound treatment to great effect.
There's also a brilliant original song, Xmas (Baby Please Come Home).
It's used extensively in seasonal TV programmes, but even its high
exposure doesn't cause its glittery magic to fade and even if you
haven't sat down to listen to it, these versions will have seeped into
your consciousness over the years. That one exception? The rather
creepy Phil Spector spoken-voice message over a very schmaltzy Silent
Night. Fortunately it's the last track and can be avoided and it's a
small price to pay for such a good record.
2. A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi Trio The soundtrack to the classic Peanuts cartoon warrants inclusion in its own right as a record. Excellent arrangements of familiar and new tunes to a very cool jazz aesthetic. Even the not-so-familiar tracks will again be recognisable to many. We weren't aware of this record until recently and we were pleasantly surprised not only by how good it was but with how much of it we had heard before.
3. Where Will You Be Christmas Day?, Various Artists This
is fantastic. A selection of recordings spanning the first half of the
twentieth
century from 1917 to 1959, focusing on
what the enclosed notes describe as 'sacred and secular ... Christ and
Santa Claus ... respectable and rowdy'. It's brilliantly diverse in its
styles, but wonderfully coherent in the way it's put together. It
shares Christmas between different traditions, classes and cultural
groups. Christmas Matters really can't praise this highly enough. It's essential.
4. Christmas, Low This is a record suggesting that the Christmas album can still be a current, vital art form, both in terms of its versions of established classics and its original songs. It is a mini-album, small but perfectly formed. It doesn't outstay its welcome or ladel on the sentiment and its best new song, 'Just Like Christmas' is a real contender to become a recent classic.
There are a few. Now That's What I Call Xmas is the most comprehensive available (it's released in the middle of November 2007) but it has some omissions. No Darkness, which we suppose isn't that surprising given it was such a recent release, but no Chris Rea either: it has a cover version by Michael Ball which turns our blood cold just thinking about it. As the Amazon reviewer points out it also resorts to a cover version of Wham's 'Last Christmas'. And, hold on - there's no Shakey! Now we know we had some cruel words for Shakey, but if you're getting a compilation you want the rubbish stuff too - and the proper rubbish stuff, not some ropey cover versions. Then there's Christmas Hits (also available on download at 7digital), but hang about! No Slade! No Wizzard! No Mud! It's like the Seventies never happened. The Best Christmas Album in the World... Ever! (also released November 2007). Well, in our opinion not really. Only 6 out of the top ten make it in (no Chris Rea, Darkness, Mariah Carey or Pogues) and the incomprehensible omission of 'Fairytale of New York' is supposed to be satisfied by a cover version performed by... Ronan Keating! Good grief! The good thing these days is that you can do a pick and mix - perhaps buying one of these big compilations and filling any gaps by resorting to tracks purchased from iTunes or 7Digital. Try our list of 10 best Christmas songs and follow the links to download. | ||||
