My Most-Played Christmas Oddities (Patreon)

Okay, so the past several years I did a countdown of what my most listened to Christmas songs were, helped along by the fact that some computer swapping meant my iTunes play count was reset, so I could start from scratch and compare the difference. I’d THOUGHT about doing that again this year, hence this blog not happening until the day AFTER Christmas… but by this point the top of the list has so many more plays than the others that it doesn’t really read much differently than previous years. “Sleigh Ride” by the Boston Pops is still number one, with “Deck The Halls” by Percy Faith right behind it at number two. I don’t think it’s quite worth the trouble of writing a whole blog just to point out that “Christmas Is…” by Jack Jones moved up from four to three this year.

Instead, I’m more intrigued by some of the oddities that are the songs themselves. That is to say, those cases where the version of the song I’ve head the most ISN’T that one version everybody is familiar with. And to a lesser extent, it also means those cases where the song I’ve heard the most by a particular artist isn’t The Big One everybody remembers but some random deep cut. And yes, I’m totally merging these two ideas together because I don’t think either one is strong enough to fill out a whole blog alone.

Let’s start off that latter idea, the Christmas Deep Cuts, and talk about Mr. Christmas himself, Andy Williams. The man pretty much owned “The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year,” and for any normal person it’d be his most listened too track by far. But nope! Not even close! On my list, “Wonderful Time” is tied for a paltry FIFTH place. My top solo song from Williams is actually “The First Noel” and even that only makes third place. And I have to specify “solo” because most of my top Andy Williams tracks turned out to be collaborations. Fourth place belongs to his duet with Lorrie Morgan, “Little Snow Girl,” and the rest of the top of the list is dominated by The Williams Brothers. As the name implies, this quartet consisted of Andy and his siblings and was how he started his showbiz career. While they broke up well before Andy made a name for himself as a solo act, he kept getting the gang back together for his Christmas specials, which eventually resulted in a compilation album of their various performances. From what I can tell, that album sank like a stone when it was released, but it obviously resonates well enough with me. The Brothers’ version of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” is what tied with “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” for fifth place, and their “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” tops the list, getting more that DOUBLE the plays of Andy’s top solo song. What can I say? I’m a sucker for vocal harmonies.

There’s a bit of an upset for Bing Crosby, too, though not as extreme this time. That’s right, the almighty “White Christmas” is NOT my most-listened-to Crosby song, though it does clock in at number three. And it’s not “Silver Bells” either, despite that being the one to just barely nudge “White Christmas” out of the number two spot. Nope, my number one most-listened-to Bing Crosby song is actually his duet with David Bowie: “Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth.” In fact, I’m ninety-nine percent sure that this was the very first David Bowie song I ever heard, which is pretty cool unto itself.

Another heavy hitter in the Holiday music biz is, of course, the Carpenters, and any normal person would have “Merry Christmas Darling” at the top of their play count. Again, it’s up there, but stalled at number two for me. Instead, my number one Carpenters Christmas song is actually their version of “The Christmas Waltz,” first popularized by Frank Sinatra. To overlap a bit with the oddball VERSIONS category we’ll get two later, Sinatra’s “Christmas Waltz” is only my THIRD most-played version of that tune, lagging behind both the Carpenters versions and also an instrumental rendition by Hagood Hardy. And since none of you have any idea who “Hagood Hardy” is, that tells you how esoteric my listening tastes can be.

Before we go too deep down that rabbit hole, though, there’s one more obvious artist who must be addressed any time Christmas music is brought up… well, several, actually, but the one I’M focusing on is Mannheim Steamroller. Yes, their version of “Deck The Halls” has been inescapable around Christmastime for decades, but it only ranks number two on my personal play count. Number one, rather oddly, is “Wassail, Wassail,” an instrumental arrangement of “The Gloucestershire Wassail,” an English carol that dates back to the 18th century. For a group so known for synthesizers and (for the time) modern production trickery, “Wassail, Wassail” is an abnormally old-fashioned track, performed on harpsichord and other acoustic instruments. It’s really REALLY weird top track to have, which is probably why it makes so much sense coming from me.

But now we get to the big guns, the songs everybody knows by That One Guy… except for me, apparently. We start off with a pretty major offender, not just because of how omnipresent the original is, but also because of how far that original is from my top spot: “The Christmas Song” aka “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire.” Yes, Nat King Cole’s version is an undisputed classic, yet his is somehow only my FOURTEENTH most-played version. Heck, it isn’t even my most played of his Christmas songs, it’s tied for second with his version of “Silent Night,” and his “O Tannenbaum” only squeaked ahead of them both by a single play. As for “The Christmas Song” itself, Cole’s version was out-performed by The Lettermen, The Williams Brothers, a latter-day incarnation of The Four Freshmen, and even the friggin’ Golddiggers. Heck, I spent more time listening to the version of “The Christmas Song” by The Going Thing, and they barely even existed as a band outside of recording jingles for Ford in the 70s! My actual top-played version of “The Christmas Song” isn’t any of those, though, but rather the version recorded by Vince Guaraldi for A Charlie Brown Christmas… and to the my best recollection was never actually played in the special, only appearing on the album. Sorry, Nat.

Next, let’s revisit a song I’ve already mentioned in passing: “White Christmas.” I’ve already had to deliver the shattering news that it’s not my most-played Bing Crosby song, but somehow Bing’s version isn’t even my most played VERSION. In fact, he’s in a four-way tie for SIXTH place, with the same number plays as covers by Easy Listening giant Percy Faith, Jazz guitarist Lee Ritenour, and the aforementioned Four Freshmen reboot. And ALL of them were beaten out by the likes of The Lettermen, Johnny Mathis, Hagood Hardy again, and even KENNY G. Truly, I know no shame. My actual number one most played version of “White Christmas” is by Tony Bennet, so fans of Real Music can at least rest easy in knowing that it was SOME kind of old-school crooner beating out Bing Crosby for this one.

Okay, I’ve been throwing a lot of names around lately, so let’s simplify things a bit: “Last Christmas” Everybody everywhere knows this as “The Wham Song,” but anybody who read my Far Out There Christmas Character Soundtracks over the past month knows it took me a LONG time to warm up to the original. They’ll also know that the wearing down my resistance was largely the work of a highly unlikely entity: Danish Beatles tribute act Rubber Band. Their version “Last Christmas,” arranged to sound more like the Beatles cover of “Please Mr. Postman” was the first time I’d heard the song and didn’t mind it, and even now it dwarfs the original in play count on my lists.

This next one is probably a bit more debatable, but while there’s surely a lot of people out there who don’t listen to Gene Autry’s version of “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer” first and foremost, it’s still generally understood that he’s where the song hit the popular consciousness. But he doesn't even come CLOSE to the top of my personal play count. Ol’ Gene’s beat out by everybody from dorks like The Ray Conniff Singers to synth experimenter Sy Mann to Oldies Radio staples like The Crystals and The Temptations to the goofy Surf version by The Ventures. And up at the top of my personal heap is Percy Faith’s version, just barely nudging past Dean Martin by a single play. And as long as I’m disrespecting the memory of Gene Autry, his version of “Frosty the Snowman” isn’t anywhere near my top of my charts either. The Ronettes and The Beach Boys both rank pretty high up, but my personal top rendition of “Frosty” is the one by Jimmy Durante. And not even his original one, either, but the later one made for the Rankin/Bass special. Because of COURSE I’d default to the version made for a cartoon.

I could ramble on further, there’s a whole paragraph to be filled with all the versions of “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas” that I prefer over Judy Garland’s, but I think I’ve largely made my point about how hipster my Christmas musical tastes can be (and yes, I have concocted a situation in which I can claim hipster status after mentioning listening to Kenny G). I do still have one more really oddball top pick that I need to mention just for how random it is. You know how Bing Crosby didn’t have my most-played version of “White Christmas?” Well, he doesn’t have dibs on “Silver Bells” either. Bing nails a more respectable fourth place this time, beating out everyone from Anne Murray to Rockapella to The Monkees, but there’s still three versions I’ve listened to more. Third and Second place belong to Percy Faith and Ray Conniff, making the Muzak quotient of this list strong indeed, but also making the number one pick all the more out of left field. My number one most-played version of “Silver Bells” is by Kevin Eubanks. Yes, Jay Leno’s bandleader. That guy. He did an especially Jazzy instrumental version that I don’t even think was for a full Christmas album of his own. As far as I can tell, it was just on a multi-artist Holiday compilation that his label cranked out to cash in on the Mannheim Steamroller craze for New Age Christmas stuff. And yet, somehow, it wound up recorded on one of the cassettes my Dad taped off the Atlanta Easy Listening station back in the 80s, and that was enough for it to cut straight to the front of the line for me. And that’s the thing I most wanted to drive home with this little rant: no matter how much society at large remembers one version of something, there’ll always be that one person out there who imprinted on a really random OTHER version of that thing. Good for you, that one person!