The hills are undead with the sound of Christmas

Due to my new job, I have been spending a lot of time in public places writing. I can't do my translation/editing stuff at home very well because of a little thing they call the internet. It is way too distracting for me. I start working and then look up a word or verify a fact online and end up going from wikipedia entry to wikipedia entry with a couple stops at BBC news and a detour through a blog or two and never get anything done. So I leave my house and head over to the nearest Starbucks. I don't particularly like Starbucks. I used to hate it, but have come to begrudgingly accept it out of necessity. Madrid is sorely lacking in coffee shop type places. It needs some variety. A couple snooty tea rooms. A few dreadlocked coffee houses. Mix it up.

However, recently my tenuous acceptance Starbucks has begun to wane. The problem is that it is the Christmas season, and Starbucks really likes Christmas. They have their seasonal blends, their special drinks and cookies, limited edition mugs and tea towels, and worst of all... their music. Now they are famous for having their own run of music albums. They always sell CDs and have begun to publish their own music label, most famously putting out the latest Paul McCartney album. But the season of santa songs has arrived and they are plentiful. And, whereas I could once sit on one of their sofas for 4 hours and review pages of work; now, after 45 minutes, my brain is threatening to smash its way out of my skull with a candy cane.

Why is christmas music so bad? Well, for one thing, most of it has nothing to do with christmas, which is irritating. Instead it revolves around some sort of ridiculous festive mythology. Or it is full of inane platitudes about winter. The songs that are able to pull it off with any amount of class are then taken and beaten into the ground by everyone who feels the need to make a christmas album. Of course, most of these songs end up becoming pop songs, because the nature of the songs is already appealing to the "pop." Pop artists doing songs that are already pop equals unfathomable poppiness. The worst ones are those 90's divas, like Whitney Houston or Celine Dion, or god forbid, Mariah Carey. (side note rant: the absolute worst christmas song of all time, nay, crime against humanity, is "all I want for christmas is you").

But still, lets not be too hasty in throwing out a whole genre of music (in this case "Holiday"). Normally, I like traditional carols, the ones that are over 300 years old, that have earned a certain respectability and that arent as overplayed due to their dated sound and their more religious content. One of my favourite Christmas albums is one called Christmas at Oxford, which I had many years before I ever thought I would live there. It is simply choral music sung by one of the college ensembles, New College Choir, I believe.
But not all christmas songs have to be religious carols for me to like them. Like I said before, some songs weren´t bad until they got raped repeatedly by the music industry. So lets go through a small list of songs that I like.


Christmas music I like:

-River, by Joni Mitchell
This is a good song. First of all, its Joni Mitchell, who is a great songwriter. Second of all, it captures the melancholy side of winter, rather than the Jingle all the way sentiment. I recently heard an acceptable version by Sarah Maclaughan.

-Thank God its Christmas, by Queen
Freddy Mercury could be singing about his kitchen sink and I would probably still listen to it. Yes, its bombastic, yes its cheesy, but c'mon, its Queen.

-Jethro Tull Christmas Album, obviously by Jethro Tull
This album has some stuff that is a bit much, but some of the songs are really nice. Carolesque and folky.

-Happy Christmas (war is over), by John Lennon
I dunno, I like this song. Sue me. It has been overdone by tainlicks like Celine Dion, but I like the song anyway. Then again, I like John Lennon.

-Christmas Time is Here, by the Vince Guaraldi Trio
This is the key song from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special. I must admit, I had never seen it, or heard it until my sophomore year at Gordon, when my RD forced the staff to watch it. Actually, I liked it. And I like Vince Guaraldi's songs for it. My only quibble is the children that sing the songs. They are consistently off pitch. But somehow that has become a part of it for a generation of listeners. But for someone who does not have the nostalgia factor, I'll take the instrumental version thankyouverymuch. Ah, also, Starflyer 59 does a sweeeet version of it.

-Feliz Navidad, by Jose Feliciano
This song has almost been run into the ground by the covers. The thing people don't realize that the whole appeal of the song was in its original rendition by Jose Feliciano, with whom the spanish/english mix both made sense and worked.

-Pedro the Lion's Christmas EP, by the one and only, Pedro the Lion
Pedro the Lion is known for approaching spirituality from a broken, honest and, many times, depressed perspective. But somehow it really works for songs like Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel, where his desperation really comes out as a prayer.

-Welcome to our World, by Chris Rice
In this whimsical little song Chris Rice recalls the christmas miracle and simply does what the title says, and welcomes Jesus to into our world during the time that is meant to remember his birth.

-White Horse, by Over the Rhine
Rapidly turning into one of my favourite groups of all time, Over the Rhine delivers a great holiday song with White Horse. It is a lullaby of sorts. Stellar