Entries categorized as “Christmas Top 25” 25 results

Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop 25 Christmas Songs of the Last 25 Years: #16 - Sharon Jones, “Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects”

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 #16, and the story of how Santa flaunts municipal building codes from Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings.
 

#16: Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, "Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects" (2009)

We return for some more Santa talk today, with a question that's confounded generations of parents: what do you say when your children start asking for the hard truths about Santa Claus? You could tell them the truth after a little hemming and hawing, which is what my mom did. You could trick them with an elaborate story of crash-landed sleighs and oddly-dressed Bavarians, like the dad from the This American Life story. Or, you could just lie a little longer, buy another year of innocence, and wait for your kid to figure out the real loving figure responsible for all those gifts.

That's the strategy found in this great tune by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, which originally dropped as a holiday 7" in 2009. The song's style and subject matter immediately bring to mind James Brown's classic "Santa Claus Goes Straight to the Ghetto," but as NPR's Marc Silver points out, "Jones' saga is all about the strength and resourcefulness of African-American women." It's a sweet message, and an underappreciated one, but thanks to Jones' massive talents, it's one that will be heard and celebrated for many Christmases to come.

Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop 25 Christmas Songs of the Last 25 Years: #17 - Vermont, “Santa Claws”

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 #17, and a one-item Christmas list from Promise Ring side project Vermont.
 

#17: Vermont, "Santa Claws" (1999)

It's a hard truth to swallow: even Santa, as both a supernatural figure and living allegory about the power of giving, has his limits, and some kinds of happiness just can't be gifted. As universal lessons often do, this truism has taken lots of forms. Maybe you've seen this one, a sappy meme that's made its way around the Sentimental Aunt wing of Facebook for the past few Christmases:



Middle-aged ladies sniffling into their third glass of chardonnay aren't alone here, though. Even jaded emo dudes get these blues. Consider the plight of Davey Von Bohlen, frontman of Vermont/The Promise Ring/Maritime and grade-A mope. On "Santa Claws," his side project's entry for Kindercore Record's tragically overlooked Christmas Two, DVB bemoans the end of his relationship by doing what sad folks do best: imagining all of the activities that he and his ex-girlfriend could be experiencing together if they weren't broken up. With weary resignation, he musters the will to ask Santa for a little holiday intercession.

Will Davey's Christmas wish come true? Probably not. Is the song's bruise-poking wallowing healthy? No. Is it necessary? It might be. DVB has the kind of sadness that's felt even more acutely during the holidays, when the people-shaped holes in our lives present themselves in sharper-than-usual contrast. It's what makes Christmas such a fraught time of year, and how numbing the pain with a little retail therapy became so downright appealing. Santa might bring you that 80" TV. It's the least, and most, he can do.

Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop 25 Christmas Songs of the Last 25 Years: #18 - The Flaming Lips, “Christmas at the Zoo”

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 #18, and a little holiday eco-terrorism with the Flaming Lips.
 

#18: The Flaming Lips, "Christmas at the Zoo" (1995)

Looking back, 1995 was a weird time for the Flaming Lips. They were two years removed from the unlikely chart success (and 90210 shout-out) of "She Don't Use Jelly," but still two years from Zaireeka and their metamorphosis into a full-on psych-pop act. Their album from that year, Clouds Taste Metallic, now comes off like a transitional record, a bittersweet document of the band's last days as their old selves.

Part of that bittersweetness rests in "Christmas at the Zoo," a sentimental holiday tune about the limits of good intention. The song's narrator attempts a daring midnight rescue of the zoo's animals, only to find that "All of the animals agreed they're not/ Happy at the zoos/ But they preferred to save themselves/ They seemed to think they could." It's a rejection of the usual weaponized charity agenda that creeps into a lot of holiday media, but it's not a strident one. In fact, you get the sense that both sides come away feeling a little better, even though nothing actually changes. Who would've expected such world-weary philosophizing at the center of a 3-minute Christmas song?

The Lips have gone on to do weirder holiday projects (the Bradbury-flavored b-movie Christmas on Mars) and safer holiday projects (the limp "A Change at Christmas (Say It Isn't So)"), but they've never hit the sweet spot in the center better than they did with "Christmas at the Zoo."

Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop 25 Christmas Songs of the Last 25 Years: #19 - Outkast, “Player’s Ball”

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 #19, and the best (and possibly only) use of sleigh bells in an Outkast song.

#19: Outkast, "Player's Ball" (1993)

Outkast may be the only hip-hop act in the history of the genre to debut with a Christmas song. On November 19, 1993, the now-legendary Atlanta duo released "Player's Ball," their debut single and ode to the annual gathering of pimps that later appeared on 1994's Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. However, a version of the song actually debuted ten days earlier, on November 9, as part of A LaFace Family Christmas.

Powered by sleigh bells (and setting the date of the ball back from November to December), the song finds Big Boi and Andre 3000 taking stock of another year on the hustle while getting blitzed on eggnog. They also take time to throw in lyrical callbacks to famous Christmas songs along the way, the most obvious of which would get edited out of the (much more popular) album and radio versions. Even with the alterations, the song retains the soul-searching mood that everyone settles into around the holidays without sacrificing its all-season durability. It's almost impossible to write a Christmas song that sounds as good in July as it does in December, but Outkast did it.

Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesTop 25 Christmas Songs of the Last 25 Years: #20 - Rufus Wainwright, “Spotlight on Christmas”

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 #20, and Rufus Wainwright's uncanny ability to write songs that sound 70 years old.

#20: Rufus Wainwright, "Spotlight on Christmas" (2003)

When I started prepping for this countdown, I thought that Rufus Wainwright's "Spotlight on Christmas," which first appeared on 2003's Maybe This Christmas Too?, was a cover of a much older song, and thus ineligible for inclusion. Fortunately for all involved, I was wrong, but my initial mistake speaks to both the timeless quality of the sentiments and Wainwright's own ability to conjure the spirits of Tin Pan Alley.

Take a listen again and see if you can't imagine the song as a bonus track on an Andy Williams, or maybe as a lost Bing Crosby number from the deleted scenes of Holiday Inn. So much contemporary holiday music goes out of its way to cover topics and feelings not represented in classic carols, but Wainwright proves that a little holiday moralizing should never go out of fashion.