Well tonight thank god it's them instead of you (The Best Christmas Album In The World Ever)

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	The Best Christmas Album In The World Ever
Date:	18/12/04 (1183 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: It's difficult to, imagine Christmas without, Band Aid and Wizzard

Disadvantages: Some classics aren't there, and Cliff Richard is on it, far too bloody much

Let's face it, you need a Christmas Album. It's not something you need very often, but, like cufflinks or prophylactics, it can be utterly maddening if you find you need it and you haven't got it. If you're having a few friends over for mulled wine and mince pies it's the height of rudeness not to play Slade at some point. So, with this in mind, I bought this album a few years ago. Is it really 'the best Christmas album in the world... ever'? No. No it isn't. I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to mess up a Christmas compilation, but the geniuses at Virgin Records somehow managed it. And the cover's stupid, too (why is Santa about to eat a Christmas pudding decorated to look like the Earth? And since when did he have a cat?)

With 44 tracks I'm obviously not going to describe each of them in depth. You probably know a good many of them anyway. The album cheekily starts by putting John Lennon's Happy Xmas (War is Over) next to Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmastime. Lennon's slightly downbeat song is actually quite good, at least until Yoko starts squeaking along to the choruses. McCartney seems to be trying to evoke some kind of idealised vision of Christmas that almost certainly never existed anywhere. It is far more representative of Christmas songs than Lennon's. It's nauseatingly jolly, and essential listening at this time of year.

Next up are two classic Glam-era Christmas songs, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard and Merry Christmas Everybody by the criminally-underrated Slade. I would argue that any Christmas gathering that doesn't include these two songs is a complete waste of everyone's time and a betrayal of the spirit of the modern yuletide. This is followed by Band Aid (the original, obviously), a great song, probably the best on the whole album. Then we get Greg Lake (of Emerson, ..., and Palmer) with his rather mean-spirited and borderline pretentious song about Father Christmas. Nice tune, though. Chris de Burgh's frankly hilarious musings about Jesus having been some kind of space alien are next - very mid-Seventies/Chariots of the Gods stuff.

So far so good, then. No Christmas album could, in all conscience, leave out any of the above mentioned. But then things go off the rails big time. The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood may have been released at Christmas, but it's not a Christmas song, not by any stretch of the imagination. Neither is the ghastly Angels by the ghastly Robbie Williams. Baby, It's Cold Outside by Tom Jones and 'Cerys From Catatonia' (sic) is a bit more fun, but again, nothing at all to do with Christmas. Saviour's Day by Cliff Richard is at least appropriate, but I really hate it - I think it's the awful drum-machine/synthesiser backing that was five years out of date even when the song was released.

Elton John's generally acceptable Step Into Christmas restores one's faith slightly. But then there's a cover of Sleigh Ride by the Spice Girls - it's horrible, they talk and 'joke' in the bits between the verses. It makes you feel dirty, and not in a good way - I defy anyone to listen to the whole thing and not need to take a shower afterwards. Little Saint Nick is by the Beach Boys before Brian Wilson went doolally, so you know pretty much what you're going to get. I'm not convinced that their normal style really works with this kind of material, but it's a lot better than the Spice Girls. The Jackson 5's Santa Claus is Coming to Town is great, Mike Oldfield's In Dulce Jubilo likewise; I'm sure you know them both. Jona Lewie's rather bleak Stop the Cavalry is another Christmas perennial, although I'm not entirely sure why. Then there's Jethro Tull with Ring Out, Solstice Bells. I've always regarded Tull with the deepest suspicion, and this sounds exactly like all their other stuff. Disc one concludes with the awful, awful Millennium Prayer by Cliff Richard, who was a lot more fun in the 70s when he didn't wear his religion on his sleeve so much.

Disc 2 is substantially better. We get a lot of the old standards - White Christmas, Winter Wonderland, Let it Snow etc. - sung by some serious class acts - Bing Crosby, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald. Dean Martin gets a couple of songs (including Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer - insert obvious alcoholism joke here), as does Nat King Cole (including a great Frosty the Snowman). Mud's Lonely This Christmas is brilliant. Adam Faith's Lonely Pup (In a Christmas Shop) is a real revelation, a song that remorselessly bludgeons you into liking it through the unrestrained use of jauntiness, silly lyrics and children as backing vocalists. Deck the Halls sung by a full-on Welsh choir *in Welsh* is a tactical masterstroke by anyone's reckoning.

On the debit side, you have Cliff's Mistletoe and Wine and his embarrassing rendition of O Little Town of Bethlehem (he gets four songs on this compilation - when did he become the Voice of Christmas?) Also Mel Smith & Kim Wilde doing Rocking Around the Christmas Tree is pretty unpleasant. Aled Jones sings that bloody song from The bloody Snowman. And exactly who thought it would be a good idea to include a lift-muzak cover of Wham's Last Christmas, but not the classic original? Things really fall apart towards the end of the disc, with acts out of your worst repressed childhood-memories: the Spinners, the Weavers and (shudder) Steeleye Span. Sinead O'Connor's version of Silent Night is enough to make even Santa want to slit his wrists (cheer up, love! It might never happen!).

I've never been sure what to think of Peace on Earth/The Little Drummer Boy by David Bowie and Bing Crosby. It's awful, certainly, but compellingly awful - probably the most spectacular car crash in popular music history. You just can't stop yourself listening to it - really, I'm right, try it sometime. The last track is a really forgettable number called What Are You Doing New Year's Eve by someone called Mary Margaret O'Hara. It's one of those songs that you keep expecting to go somewhere, but it never actually does.

And that's it. It wouldn't be so bad, but there are so many greats that they leave off. Where's Queen? Elvis? Sinatra? Eartha Kitt? Why Matt Monro's version of Mary's Boy Child instead of Boney M's? And most unforgivably, where the *hell* is When A Child Is Born by Johnny Mathis? What's the matter with these people? They even left off that Pogues song. The music industry can complain until it's blue in the face about people downloading music without paying for it - if they can't even get something as simple as a Christmas compilation right, what other option is there?

Anyway, I guess this was the best option available when I bought it. It might not even be in print anymore. I still stand by my assertion that everyone needs a Christmas album. It's not the kind of music you'd want to conceive your children to, but if you're drunkenly arguing about what board game to play then it will defuse the tension perfectly.

Simply have a wonderful Christmastime.

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