There is no stranger genre of popular music than Christmas music—and yes, I’m including seapunk. A commercial juggernaut so powerful that even Paul McCartney’s terrible “Wonderful Christmastime” earns the Beatle $400,000 a year (yes, that is the correct number of zeros) in royalties, Christmas music is a bizarre collection of ancient hymns, novelty throwaways, and syrupy ballads. The genre’s few dozen standards saturate the season to the point of meaninglessness, like saying your own name over and over again until it becomes just a strange collection of syllables. Amidst all this hoo-hah, the genre has somehow managed to produce a few incontrovertible classic cuts: records that stand among the best pop singles in any genre. The template for how to do this in the rock ‘n’ roll era was discovered by Phil Spector in 1963; his Christmas album has yet to be bettered.
What Timbaland was to the early 2000s, Spector was to the early 1960s: a producer with a golden ear for irresistible singles that, like all great records, were both perfectly of-the-moment and transcendently timeless. Spector’s trademark “Wall of Sound” captured the rush of adolescence in all its majestic urgency, and when it came time to cut a Christmas disc, Spector just swapped “he kissed me” for “he gave me presents.” The fact that the present was likely a dick in a box was lost on no one, and the greatest song on A Christmas Gift for You from Philles Records put romantic longing at its center.
“Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” is Phil Spector at his best, which is to say pop music at its best. Over a breathtakingly dramatic arrangement, Darlene Love brings a desperate power to the song (written by Spector with Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich) as it builds to a pleading chorus, peaking with one of rock’s great crescendos as Love wails amidst a thundering orchestra. Love’s Gospel wailing is appropriate for the season, though of course the song is addressed not to Jesus but a more tantalizingly tangible partner. Emile Durkheim says that when we worship God, we’re really worshipping society; Love made the connection between praying and fucking decades before Madonna got around to it.
30 years later, Mariah Carey and co-writer/co-producer Walter Afanasieff were savvy enough to go straight back to the Spector playbook for Carey’s 1994 album Merry Christmas, and if “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is no “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” it’s good enough to stand in its company. It’s also a little more accessible — Carey is cuddly while Love is almost creepy — but it’s equally direct about the singer wanting stockings in her bed rather than by the fire. Underlining that point is the video, with Carey sporting her sexy Santa suit and cavorting in the snow with an uncomplaining Claus.
A friend of mine refers to Carey’s song as “All I Want for Christmas is to Fuck You”…and really, how else is one to imbue the holidays with that special glow? A nice spiked egg nog might also do the trick, as might watching Darlene Love — still looking and sounding great at 71 — perform her annual ritual of singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” on Letterman just before Christmas. If your fondest holiday hope is for a Christmas song that doesn’t suck, this song is a wish that’s still coming true.
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Words by Jay Gabler, a co-founder and co-editor of The Tangential.
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