The CHIRP Blog
It's the holiday season, which means Christmas music. Lots and lots or Christmas music, most of which was written before the people listening to it were even alive. While "Jingle Bells" and "We Three Kings" are great, and resilient, we're devoting this year to finding the best Christmas song written since 1989. We continue today with #8, and a novelty Christmas song for the modern era from Fountains of Wayne.
#8: Fountains of Wayne, "I Want an Alien for Christmas" (1997)
Last Christmas, I had the honor of interviewing Fountains of Wayne's Chris Collingswood and Adam Schlesinger about their band's two entries into the Christmas music canon. While Chris was more forthcoming about the inspirations and reactions to his song (the also-excellent "Man in the Santa Suit"), Adam revealed the single most surprising detail: "I Want an Alien for Christmas" was supposed to be a Hanson song.
Had it appeared on 1997's Snowed In, it still might've made the list. The song captures everything there is to love about fantastical gifts, and the novelty songs they inspire: tough-but-earnest requests, imaginitive lists of potential usage, and the outsized expectations that only come from the minds of children gripped by Santa fever. It's also a great slice of '90s power-pop, which gives it the edge over older cuts like "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas."
Retail programmers agree; unlike many songs on this list, "I Want an Alien for Christmas" has already made the jump onto more traditional holiday playlists. The next time you're at Target, keep one ear open, and one eye on the skies.
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Throughout December, CHIRP Radio presents its volunteers’ top albums of 2014. Our next list is from DJ Cher Vincent.
These are the albums I just couldn't quit.
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Keep Reading…
It's the holiday season, which means Christmas music. Lots and lots or Christmas music, most of which was written before the people listening to it were even alive. While "Jingle Bells" and "We Three Kings" are great, and resilient, we're devoting this year to finding the best Christmas song written since 1989. We continue today with #9, and a carol you can dance to from Sally Shapiro.
#9: Sally Shapiro, "Anorak Christmas" (2006)
As Stereogum's Tom Breihan put it in his recent review of the new Christmas track by Dum Dum Girls, "If there’s any such thing as a not-great Christmas-themed synthpop song, I haven’t heard it." Neither have I, Tom, and that certainly includes this track from the mysterious Sally Shapiro. If a snow angel came to life and decided to write a danceable love song, it would probably sound something like "Anorak Christmas." Filled with a quiet passion that threatens to melt the chilly Italo synths that surround her voice, Shapiro issues a breathy plea to her newfound love. Whether or not he hears it is beside the point—when the days are short and the nights are long, even an imagined love is usually enough to keep someone going until spring.
The song also earns an extra point for the wordplay in its title; "anorak" here likely refers to both a winter coat (which Shapiro is probably wearing) and a British slang term for a person with a geeky or obsessive love or hobby (falling in love with stranger at a rock show most certainly counts). Anyone looking for a closer for their Unrequited Crush Mixtape, Holiday Edition: this one's on us.
Keep Reading…
It's the holiday season, which means Christmas music. Lots and lots or Christmas music, most of which was written before the people listening to it were even alive. While "Jingle Bells" and "We Three Kings" are great, and resilient, we're devoting this year to finding the best Christmas song written since 1989. We continue today with #10, and an ode to Christmas on the road from Low.
#10: Low, "Just Like Christmas" (1999)
This Friday is predicted to be the busiest airline travel day of the 2014 holiday season, the peak of a 17-day period in which more than 45 million people will crisscross the skies over America, looking for (or getting away from) home. The urge to return to our origins hits strongest during the winter, whether the journey takes us to a physical place or a group of people or the signifiers of our youth. It's a subject covered by many classics carols ("Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" and the tearjerkingly on-the-nose "I'll Be Home For Christmas" chief among them), and it seems to be on the mind of Low's Mimi Parker as she rambles through the Scandanavian countryside.
Although it's got all of the snow and sleigh bells needed to make our top ten (and score a plum spot on 2004's The O.C. Mix 3: Have A Very Merry Chrismukkah), the action of "Just Like Christmas" doesn't necessarily take place during the holidays. Rather, the song speaks to the power of human interactions, especially those entered into when you're cold and lost and far from home, to conjure the same kind of warmth usually reserved for the December 25s of our bubble-light-illuminated memories. It wraps its all-weather sentiment in some shiny holiday trimmings, waiting to be opened whenever it's needed most. If you wind up delayed in an airport during the next three weeks, you know where to find it.