Giles Brown
YOU may have noticed that we are in December and, as John Lennon famously wrote ‘And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?’
Granted this is 2020, so for the vast majority of us the answer is not very much actually, apart from endure lockdown, binge on box sets and Netflix and become embroiled in heated internet arguments about vaccines, masks and the car crash drama that are US elections and Brexit in the UK. Personally, if it’s all the doing of a ‘Dark Cabal’ of 12 foot lizard people, let them have a shot at running the world. Let’s face it, our reptilian overlords can’t possibly do a worse job than the politicians that we currently have.
Pandemic or no pandemic, this month proves that there is one thing that is unaffected by world events. I am, of course, talking about the Christmas single.
I’ll be honest with you on this one. If there is something that I dislike even more than Ed Sheeran, it’s the Christmas single.
Back in the age of vinyl, most artists were contractually obliged to release a Christmas Album. The majority were slickly produced and brilliantly marketed efforts by Sinatra, Deano, Elvis and Bing which have become as much a part of the festivities as putting up the decorations, while Phil Spector’s ‘A Christmas Gift for You’, featuring the talents of The Ronettes, is one of the greatest Christmas albums of all time.
The Christmas single, however, has seen some absolute turkeys. For every “Last Christmas”, or “Fairytale of New York”, there is a Paul McCartney and Wings “Wonderful Christmas Time”, anything festive from Robbie Williams (this year’s offering is a ‘COVID inspired’ song), or the inevitable “All I want for Christmas is you”.
I once worked in a theme pub that started playing Christmas music on a non-stop loop from mid-October. That sort of torture does things to a man, trust me.
Far worse, however, are the reality TV celebrity Christmas songs. In a world where auto tune can arrange the sound of you stepping on the cat into something resembling the St Paul Choir, even the most hopeless singers are getting in on the act.
And so, just when you thought 2020 couldn’t get any worse, we were threatened with the possibility of TOWIE star Gemma Collins and Darren Day reaching Christmas Number One with their, ahem, ‘memorable’ rendition of “Baby, it’s cold outside”. (Ed’s note: they failed!)
Having seen “GC and The Dazzle” on Social Media promoting the track with all the subtlety of a frozen Christmas Pudding thrown at the Flatscreen TV, 2021 and whatever global apocalypse it brings can’t come soon enough!
