Music Monday 35 - New Christmas Classics

It’s the Christmas season and I finally got to start listening to Christmas music. In the days since Thanksgiving the soundtrack to my life has been filled with yuletide cheer and wintry carols. As we were listening to a holiday Genius playlist, my wife complained that there isn’t very much variety in Christmas music. I was about to object when I realized that there were four different versions of “The Christmas Song” on the playlist we were listening to.

There is so little variety in Christmas music because most new Christmas songs are terrible. There are so many viable Christmas songs, religious and secular alike, that we hardly need any new Christmas songs; this leads to a lack of variety. I’d rather stick to the homogenous nature of Christmas music, though, than embrace every artist’s attempt at creating a new Christmas classic.

However, there have been a few new Christmas songs that have crossed the line from flash-in-the-pan to true Christmas classic.

“All I Want For Christmas Is You” – Mariah Carey
Released in 1994, “All I Want For Christmas Is You” has become a modern-day classic. The holiday season now feels incomplete without Mariah Carey’s seminal pop offering. I worked at the Gap one Christmas and this song was on the loop; I grew to hate the song because I heard it 1,359 times during an 8-hour shift. But the song is so charged with holiday goodness, that I’ve grown to love it again. It’s also interesting to note that Mariah Carey’s husband, Nick Cannon, was 14 when this song was first released.

“Last Christmas” – Wham!
I wrote about this song last year because I absolutely love it. I wasn’t old enough to fully appreciate Wham! when they were still together but that doesn’t mean I don’t fully appreciate them now. “Last Christmas” is the perfect break-up Christmas song because it’s built upon the hope that next year there will be someone special. I can only hope that “Last Christmas” cements its status as a Christmas classic when it plays under another gasoline fight in Zoolander 2.

And that’s it. I can’t think of anymore Christmas songs that have become classics. In the past 26 years these are the only two songs that have ascended the musical Christmas tree to rest atop it like a knitted angel.

What songs have become Christmas classics for you?