Christmas Music

The 10 Best Christmas Songs...... we think!

Doing this list has made us realise that there aren't as many proper classics as we might have thought. The top three seemed obvious, but as for the rest... well, suffice to say that we thought we might have to include Shakey at one point.

So before the countdown, a brief mention of some songs which didn't make the final list for one reason or another. No place for Shakin' Stevens' Merry Christmas Everyone, because it's just rubbish, no matter how much cosy nostalgia is embodied in an ageing Welsh rock 'n' roller in a jumper. Also, no Wombles we're afraid, because their glam-by-numbers effort is just a little too cynical, like it was put together by a committee. No Paul McCartney, because it makes us want to run from a room in which it's playing. Absolutely no Cliff Richard, especially not the wretched Mistletoe and Wine. The way he enunciates the word 'Christ-i-an' is enough to drive anyone to Satan. When a friend told Christmas Matters that her little boy was singing in the school choir's Christmas concert and the programme included Sir Cliff's Mistletoe..., we suspected there was no hope for Western culture.

Three more missing out that need a mention:

Wham's Last Christmas - this only has any credit for us because we remember 1984 being a nice year;

Queen's Thank God It's Christmas - we loved this when we were little, but it has the knocked-off quality of four men wanting to get on to the champagne, coke and caviar; and:

East 17's Stay Another Day - it's got bells, a snowy video and it's a nice enough tune, but it's not really very Christmassy.

Finally, no crooners here, just pop songs. So Mel Torme and Bing are absent just on grounds of genre. The Christmas Song (chestnuts roasting and all that) does everything that a Christmas song should and Bing playing the bells on the tree with his pipe in Holiday Inn, during White Christmas, is a huge iconic moment, but they're not in the pop list. More on Holiday Inn as well as a guide to Christmas Crooners coming to the site soon..

The List

If you click on the images it will take you to a site where you can download the track (more info).

10. Chris Rea - Driving Home for Christmas

Now, this really isn’t our kind of music. It’s noodling, a bit bland MOR, gravelly-voiced & rather sentimental. But, well, it’s that last bit, the sentimental bit. For some reason Christmas Matters gets a bit blurry-eyed when we think about gravelly-voiced men driving back to their families for Christmas.



9. Greg Lake – I Believe in Father Christmas

We were in two minds about this one. On the one hand it is always good for a laugh, especially at the video which features Greg soulfully hanging out with some bemused Bedouins. The lyrics are fun but a little hackneyed in their protest against The Man - 'they sold me.... a dream of Christmas'. But you know what, it's actually a pretty good song, although if you're in an uncharitable mood, the Prokofiev quotation halfway through is a bit much to take.



8. The Darkness - Christmas Time (Don't Let the Bells End)

Released at the end of their annus mirabilis in a self-conscious attempt to re-take the festive chart on behalf of 1970s style guitar-driven excess, we're very fond of this. It has the worst (the only?) penis joke in all Christmas tunes, a bittersweet lyric & singing children and should have been Xmas no. 1, if it hadn’t been beaten by the woeful Gary Jules and his execrable Tears for Fears cover.



7. Maria Carey – All I Want for Christmas is you

Christmast Matters was a bit surprised the other year when we saw this turn up top of a list of the worst Christmas songs of all time. It’s a bit harsh & seemed based on a judgement of the artist’s apparent consumerist hypocrisy (very Observer) – ok, it’s got a dubious wobbly intro and the whole thing is Motown/Spector-lite. But it’s a really nice tune & even if it was all put together in a cynical box-ticking way, there is something about Christmas that subverts that kind of cynicism.



6. John Lennon - Happy Xmas (War is Over)

A lot of Christmas music seems to be good rather despite itself & its constituent parts. We don't generally have any time for John Lennon & Imagine is one of our most hated songs, but on this occasion the simplicity verging on banality seems to work. The rising and falling lines are catchy, evocative; while the bells and the children's choir are a bit on the cheesey side and the strings a bit gooey, it somehow seems to work. It's not our favourite by any means, but underneath all the white icing there's a decent song.



5. Mud – Lonely This Christmas

Cod-Elvis! Another song that should by all measures be rubbish, but somehow isn’t. A doo-wop paean to Christmas misery, it somehow manages to be over-the-top and downbeat at the same time. It's even got a spoken voice section intoned over a tinkly xylophone - and still it's endearing rather than annoying. The backbone that holds it all together is that it's basically a good song overlaid by festive trimmings, rather than mere trimmings in search of a song.

4. Jona Lewie – Stop the Cavalry

It took us a while to like this, as one of us at least is younge enough not to be really aware of it much when growing up. But its constant rotation on the excellent Top of the Pops 2 Christmas specials has now brought us round. It’s a song that makes a big statement about war and peace in an understated way. Of course, everyone knows that it was rather spun as a Christmas record based only on one line 'I wish I was at home for Christmas', with added bells. It's a peculiar little song but its downbeat character makes a nice contrast to some of the more extrovert songs here.

3. Wizzard – I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day

The one that’s not Slade. It's longer, more ambitious and has *that* children's choir and some genuinely bonkers lyrics. But a bit like the start of Slade's classic, the ker-ching! of the cash register and 'When the snowman brings the snow' bring back all sorts of great memories of Christmas. And let's be fair to Roy Wood, what Christmas songs tell us is that it is very difficult to successfully introduce a children's choir into proceedings, but set within the bells, belting saxophone and the general mayhem, this is one time it works.

1=. Pogues / Kirsty McColl – Fairytale of New York

The cred choice for hipsters. It's really impossible to choose between this and Slade for the number one spot - so they can share it. This is a genuinely great song without any connection with Christmas and what seems like a duty to listen to some of them here. Unlike most of the tunes in this list, you can listen to this one at any time of year. A well-written story, pulled off with panache and style - it's one of those perfect singles that you can't fault on any level.

1=. Slade – Merry Xmas Everybody

The automatic choice for number 1. We don't care how many times we hear it, the descending melody at the beginning just says 'Christmas' to us. 'Are you hanging up your stockings on the wall?' ushers in a collection of standard Christmas images, including a tipsy Father Christmas, rather like the hero of Raymond Briggs' book. Along with the Santa Claus stuff, the song describes an idyllic working class Christmas, there's the chorus that somehow never gets totally hackneyed and the bellowed 'It's Christmas!', described once by Noddy Holder as the working man's cry of freedom. Great stuff.

"what great tracks! Where can I get hold of them? On a really cool compilation CD?"

You'd think, wouldn't you. Without wanting to give the game away, it's not that straightforward: for the full story, click here to see the best Christmas albums. For the short story, it has to be iTunes or 7digital.

Most of the tracks above are available on 7Digital and the rest are on TuneTribe. On both sites the music tends to be protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management) and in the Windows Media Audio format. But simply burn to a CD and rip in iTunes to play on an iPod. (Back to the list)