Christmas songs

[LMcD]

While I tend to find most Christmassy music pretty dire, I must confess to enjoying one particular song whenever I hear it, and that's Chris Rea's 'Driving Home for Christmas'. Dunno why!

[pastoralguy]

I find most of Christmas music inoffensive but that terrible 'Fairytail in New York' by the Pogues and Kirsty Mccoll drives me nuts! Horrible singing and dreadful lyrics.

[Beef Oven!]

My favourite Xmas song, just ahead of Wizzard, Slade, Fat Lake and John & Yoko Plastic Ono Band.

[MrGongGong]

I find most of Christmas music inoffensive but that terrible 'Fairytail in New York' by the Pogues and Kirsty Mccoll drives me nuts! Horrible singing and dreadful lyrics.

I was asked to do an arrangement for my village band
but I share your opinion
not that I dislike Kirsty Mccoll or even the Pogues (though i'm more keen on Jem Finer's other work) but it really is dire

[Nick Armstrong]

I find most of Christmas music inoffensive

Be careful what you listen to: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-46425160

[oddoneout]

Being force-fed Christmas 'songs' over the ten years I worked in a supermarket was pretty effective aversion therapy for something I wasn't that keen on in the first place.....Made it quite difficult doing Christmas concerts sometimes, but a decade on(and away from that employment) and having been introduced to some more appealing examples of the genre things have improved.Fortunately carols don't seem to suffer the same fate, any irritation at repeated onslaughts of mangled versions being temporary, and easily resolved.
Mind you my aversion to 'I saw mommy kissing santa' started when I was quite a young child and the queasiness has not abated.

[Barbirollians]

While I tend to find most Christmassy music pretty dire, I must confess to enjoying one particular song whenever I hear it, and that's Chris Rea's 'Driving Home for Christmas'. Dunno why!

A song of extraordinary blandness - like unseasoned bread sauce . I cannot stand it .

I like Fairytale of New York it has just been very overexposed - as I understand it it is meant to be about two struggling Irish emigrants to New York and their first Christmas there.

I rather like traditional Christmas carols , Christmas with Geoff Love and MfP album which we had when I was a kid in the 1970s and for all its rather syrupy arrangements is an essential part of our Christmas .

My seven year old loves Rocking around the Christmas tree - it takes all sorts !

[LMcD]

A song of extraordinary blandness - like unseasoned bread sauce . I cannot stand it .

I like Fairytale of New York it has just been very overexposed - as I understand it it is meant to be about two struggling Irish emigrants to New York and their first Christmas there.

I rather like traditional Christmas carols , Christmas with Geoff Love and MfP album which we had when I was a kid in the 1970s and for all its rather syrupy arrangements is an essential part of our Christmas .

My seven year old loves Rocking around the Christmas tree - it takes all sorts !

It appears that our respective views of Geoff Love's* Christmas and Chris Rea's neatly cancel each other out. For what it's worth, I like quite a lot of Chris Rea's other stuff.
I quite like some of the older songs, such as 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas' and 'The Christmas Song' (the one with the chestnuts roasting).
In these days of streaming and downloads, some people in the entertainment industry still seem to get pretty excited as they ask 'What will be the Christmas No. 1?'
(* Did Manuel and his Music of the Mountains release any Christmas-related material?)

[ardcarp]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e61uC-5s9VU

[LMcD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e61uC-5s9VU

I think the pianist is the legendary Eugene Quills, so greatly loved by the people of Balham...

[MrGongGong]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pp1gTKoOUg

or even if Conlon Nancarrow had been at the egg nog ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBSa62btetI

[Constantbee]

While I tend to find most Christmassy music pretty dire, I must confess to enjoying one particular song whenever I hear it, and that's Chris Rea's 'Driving Home for Christmas'. Dunno why!

Chris Rea - son of a Teeside Italian ice cream shop owner, local hero on Teeside but now seriously ill with pancreatic cancer Always makes me think of the big exodus of unemployed workers during the 80's driving home from jobs in the south to see the family at Christmas:

Top to toe in tailbacks
Oh, I got red lights all around
I'm driving home for Christmas, yea

Then they built the M11 link road.

[LMcD]

Chris Rea - son of a Teeside Italian ice cream shop owner, local hero on Teeside but now seriously ill with pancreatic cancer Always makes me think of the big exodus of unemployed workers during the 80's driving home from jobs in the south to see the family at Christmas:

Top to toe in tailbacks
Oh, I got red lights all around
I'm driving home for Christmas, yea

Then they built the M11 link road.

Would that be The Road To Hell?

[gurnemanz]

Fairytale of New York is great. I hardly do any rock gigs but their concert at the Town and Country in 1988 where the now sadly missed Kirsty McColl came on as a surprise guest was a superb occasion. Steeleye's Maddy Prior in most appealing renditions with the Carnival Band will also get its annual outing.

Good to have children singing at Christmas. My wife is German and this is a favourite which has been played every year since our children were small. As well as boys choirs, Leipzig St Thomas's and Dresden Kreuzchor, there is a children's choir. (We once got tickets - gold dust - for the Weihnachtsoratorium in Bach's church in Leipzig)

I like Roger Norrington's "Baroque Christmas" with the Heinrich Schütz Choir, now amazingly 50 years old and out of print.. Also Andrew Parrot's "Seven Centuries of Christmas Music" from 1989 with the Taverner Consort, now, I see, re-issued on Erato.

[MrGongGong]

https://www.whamageddon.com/?fbclid=IwAR02M1vDEkcGQKQ7wKcWr2fn9f7v5HJPfco2dPTOReMF29Fmc-pfuhQH46A