I have not yet watched this special, owing to the fact that I'm old and I remember the legendary (?) "Star Wars Christmas Special," but I did look into the soundtrack, where I found almost entirely movie soundtrack-type instrumentals except for two excellent pop-rock tunes featuring the Old 97s, who are already on the Christmas tip. They back Kevin Bacon on a solid midtempo "Here it is Christmastime," which they previously released without Kevin, but the winner of this two-horse sweepstakes is "I Don't Know What Christmas Is (But Christmastime Is Here)," a solid jangle-rocker with hilarious lyrics written from the viewpoint of an alien who just landed on Earth and is trying to explain the holiday. This you will want on your holiday playlists. The PowerPop blog notes that the show also includes airings of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" and Fountains of Wayne's "I Want an Alien For Christmas," though these don't appear on the official album. Oh well, download or add to your streaming queues the two songs reviewed here and be a little better off for it.
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Nobody ever lost money retinseling Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" for a modern holiday, whether a straight dramatization of the original novella or an all-singing, all-dancing takeoff, whether animated or live action. Your friends at Apple TV+ went musical theatre for their 2022 version of the venerable story, featuring Will Ferrell, Ryan Reynolds and Octavia Spencer, and this album is the resulting soundtrack. As with any musical theatre production, the songs tend to be specific to the plot, but as anyone with any experience in the realm of popular music knows, the canon, holiday and otherwise, is filled to the brim with songs that originated on Broadway or in other musical theatre realms. The whole show is filled with fourth-wall-breaking snark, so feel free to let the "Glee" nerds in your immediate circle put this in your streaming queue and make notes as to which songs might fit your holiday playlists. "Bringin' Back Christmas" would pair nicely with your favorite Stan Freiberg tunes like "Green Christmas," and "That Christmas Morning Feeling" is mostly independent of the show's plot when heard in isolation. "The View From Here" is a nice ballad, though it's a little specific to the show, and "Do a Little Good" starts out like Oasis' "Wonderwall" and is generally nice, though a minor expletive near the beginning might spoil it for some. As it's a new production (of an old story), this will probably be a worthwhile diversion this year, certainly more so than yet another sequel to "A Christmas Story."
Christmas movie soundtracks are a dime a dozen, but I tend to ignore most of them as they typically compile existing Christmas song performances that we covered for their original release. In this case, we have a new-for-2021 Christmas movie with a mostly original soundtrack, so we're giving it some notice. The "various artists" tag is for the site's own housekeeping, as a small collection of folks is actually responsible for these tunes: Sean Brown & Gemma Bulos, songwriters and performers credited separately and also under the band name The New Carpenters, and Jordan Taylor Roach, who did the movie score and provides several originals and a few covers of familiar carols. Unfortunately for Mistletunes readers, the new songs here are mostly musical theater-type songs that won't resonate with listeners unless they've seen the movie (available on DVD or for rental at Amazon, iTunes and Google). "Cool Xmas" and "Cool Christmas" are the same pop ballad, one given a more traditional orchestral arrangement and the other paring back the accompaniment to emphasize pedal steel guitar. "Misfit In" is a bouncy number establishing the star's character, "I Can't Even" is a Seventies-style funk-soul tune, "Christmas Is the Very Best Day" is a pop-rocker, and "Merry Christmas Clarice" is a power pop number about eating holiday pizza with your girlfriend. Having not seen the movie, I'll reserve further judgment, but at the very least the movie's premise is distant enough from the Hallmark Channel's version of the holiday that you may wish to follow through.
It's definitely progress that one of the most hyped holiday film debuts in 2020 has a plot revolving around two lesbian lovers trying to navigate Christmas traditions. (There's no shortage of naysayers about this, but to hell with them.) It's also so 2020 that the film is premiering not in theaters, but on streaming site Hulu. Although this soundtrack is nominally a "various artists" collection, it would be an incomplete overview if I didn't acknowledge that most of these songs were created just for this collection by a group of performer-writer-producers including Daniel Crean, Eren Cannata, Justin Tranter, Kennedi Lykken, Caroline Pennell, and Shea Diamond. They work their modern pop-chart magic on a solid uptempo "Jingle Bells" featuring BAYLI, and typically reverent versions of "O Holy Night" from Jake Wesley Rogers and "Silent Night" by LP. Originals include Anne-Marie's exuberant "Think of Christmas," Brandy Clark's poppy strum "Only Time of Year," kennedi's dreamy waltz "Christmas Morning," and Carlie Hanson's folky "Chosen Family," an ode to the oft-raised notion that people have birth families and chosen families. I definitely want to highlight Shea Diamond's neo-soul contributions to this collection, the Specter-influenced duet with Bebe Rexha "Blame It On Christmas," and his "Mrs. Claus," yet another female-positive reclaiming of the Christmas myth. Also appearing here is Sia's "Candy Cane Lane" from her Christmas album of a couple years ago, and a new midtempo holiday song from Tegan and Sara, "Make You Mine This Season." Plenty of contemporary hit fun for your playlists.
I haven't made a big effort with holiday movie soundtracks because the vast majority of them consist of either background music or they rely mainly on stuff you've heard a thousand times before, from Bing and Frank right up through the present day. This one isn't necessarily a stop-the-presses release, but it is notable for the attempt the music supervisors made to use more unique tunes like The Raveonettes' "Christmas Song," The Charms' "Frosty the Snowman" in the Phil Spector arrangement, The Ramones' "Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight Tonight)," Davie Allan and the Arrows' "Feliz Navidad," The Chesterfield Kings' Chuck Berry-ized "Hey Santa Claus" and Jean Beauvoir's "Merry Christmas to All the World." The Butties do "Joy to the World" in an arrangement they apparently nicked off the Fab Four's CD. UPDATE: Mark Humble of The Butties writes to tell us their song dates back to 2000 and was first released on an EP in 2001, a year before the Fab Four's version. It's also on the compilation Ho Ho Ho Spice. He's willing to mark up the coincidence to great minds thinking alike. Also on this CD, Dan Aykroyd gets a couple of cuts and Joey Ramone reappears with his solo "What a Wonderful World." The producers throw in Brenda Lee and Elvis Presley, along with some background music. Most of this stuff is available elsewhere, but not all of it as far as I know.
A decent soundtrack to the 2002 sequel that has been described as an improvement on the original movie. There aren't any great surprises, starting with the presence of "Lizzie McGuire" star Hilary Duff, a Disney Channel star at the time this movie was made. But her "Santa Claus Lane" actually isn't bad, although kid voices do tend to creep some people out. An impressive outing from SHeDAISY on "Santa's Got a Brand New Bag," but if this is country music then I'm Arlen Specter. Brian Setzer and the Orchestra's "Jingle Bells" makes another appearance here, as does Eddie Money's duet with Ronnie Spector, "Everybody Loves Christmas." Evergreens like Brenda Lee's "I'm Gonna Lasso Santa Claus," Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run" and Louie Armstrong's "Zat You, Santa Claus" are always welcome, along with a classic by Smokey and the Miracles, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town." That carol is reprised in a straight lounge reading by Steve Tyrell. A comparative rarity is "Blue Holiday" by The Shirelles (I've never heard it before this, anyway), and it's a bluesy belter. Unwritten Law joins Sum 41 for "Unwritten Christmas," a solid contemporary rock ballad with lots of crunch. Not bad, especially for a soundtrack album.
However you may have felt about the 1996 holiday movie featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sinbad (?), the producers made a fairly good stab at providing listenable incidental music, although it skews a bit toward lounge music and away from rock 'n roll. Still, there are some bonafide classics like Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run," Charles Brown's "Merry Christmas Baby," Clarence Carter's "Back Door Santa," Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock," along with pop standards like Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song" and Johnny Mathis' "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year." To round out the show, they brought in the Brian Setzer Orchestra and guest vocalists Darlene Love and Lou Rawls. Lou croons Setzer's own "So They Say It's Christmas," while Darlene rocks "Sleigh Ride" in a different arrangement than on the Phil Spector album and shows an affinity for jazz-pop on Sammy Hagar's "Deep in the Heart of Xmas." Setzer kicks off the album singing "Jingle Bells" and the rest of the album features non-holiday music from the soundtrack's composer, David Newman. It's not a bad album overall, but if you already have the classic tunes here it's up to you whether to buy it for the Setzer Orchestra's performances.
Before Danny Elfman became a soundtrack music maven, he was involved with Oingo Boingo, a new wave outfit that sounded like Devo crossed with the Glenn Miller Orchestra. This 1993 outing, written and produced as the soul of Tim Burton's stop-animation extravaganza, puts a nice twist on the holiday -- and isn't bad as Halloween music, either. Danny and fellow cast members Catherine O'Hara and Paul Reubens (SCTV and Pee Wee, respectively) do a knockout job on "Kidnap the Sandy Claws" and "Oogie Boogie's Song" with Ken Page and Ed Ivory is a bluesy romp. However, soundtracks do suffer from songs that don't travel well away from the movie or play, and this one's no exception. But the two songs above are almost worth the whole album. UPDATE: For 2007, in conjunction with the re-release of the film in IMAX 3D, there's a "Special Edition" of this album with a second disc of bonus cuts featuring versions of the soundtrack's songs from Marilyn Manson, Panic at the Disco, Fiona Apple, Fall Out Boy and She Wants Revenge, plus some of Danny Elfman's demos of those songs.
I've got a bone to pick with the producers of this album. In the first season of the show, Vonda Shepherd did a cool slow version of "Christmas Time is Here" aka "The Chipmunk Song." They recorded additional tunes to fill out this album but they couldn't find room for that? OK, maybe the rights weren't available, too expensive, etc. Having said this, I give this album a conditional OK, in that fans of the show will love it and even Ally-haters should find a few tracks on here to enjoy, especially Macy Gray's "Winter Wonderland." Vonda does credible versions of "This Christmas," "The Man with the Bag," "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve," and "Please Come Home for Christmas," but her torchy "Let It Snow" is just slow. Jane Krakowski does serviceable versions of "Run Run Rudolph" and "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," and Lisa Nicole Carson is good on "Santa Claus Got Stuck in My Chimney." Calista Flockhart takes a risk doing "Santa Baby," as Eartha Kitt casts a long shadow, but she just manages to get away with it. The real revelation here is Robert Downey Jr., who acquits himself well on Joni Mitchell's "River," sounding somewhere between Bruce Springsteen and Bob Seger.
The 2000 live-action movie got mixed reviews, but the soundtrack does all right by me. It contains a large helping of the movie's instrumental score, but there are as many songs on the album as there are on most song-only soundtracks. Needless to say, there are two versions of the Grinch's signature song, a rap version with Busta Rhymes that Jim Carrey tags with "I wanna give a shout out to the west side of Whoville," and later Carrey does a more conventional version. Gems include the Barenaked Ladies with their own "Green Christmas," not the Stan Freberg song; Little Isidore and the Inquisitors with "Christmas of Love"; Ben Folds with "Lonely Christmas Eve"; "Better Do It Right" by Smash Mouth; and "Christmas Is Going to the Dogs" by the Eels. There's also a surprising "Perfect Christmas Night" from Trans-Siberian Orchestra, although it segues into an overture-like tune called just "Grinch" that is more like their usual fare. Tunes by N'Sync and Faith Hill are just there to snag casual shoppers, in my opinion.
From the original soundtrack to the 2003 romantic comedy "Love Actually," this re-imagining of the Troggs' "Love Is All Around" as a Christmas song figures prominently in the plot as a washed-up hard rocker's attempt to return to the charts. I'm kicking myself for not having the idea -- but don't get me wrong, this thing is 24-karat schlock through and through. Which is part of its charm, as you'll know when you see the movie. Music fans will want to see it to watch how the Brits get all gooshy about what song's going to be no. 1 during Christmas -- as I've noted elsewhere on the site, that part is based in reality. And then they'll want the song too. Turns out, in another case of art imitating life, they're actually going to release this as a single in England. Almost forgot to give props to actor Bill Nighy's terrific portrayal of aging rock star Billy Mack, not to mention his performance of the song. A slight dollop of this variety of cheese might have improved the likes of the Moody Blues' album.
From the soundtrack to the 2004 remake of "Alfie," this is your basic big soul showstopper Christmas ballad featuring the up-and-coming singer Joss Stone, who duets with the moss-averse Mick Jagger to fabulous effect. This is, as far as we can ascertain, only the second Rolling Stones-involved Christmas song ever besides Keith Richards' "Run Rudolph Run," and it benefits further from the involvement of teenaged diva Stone. And keep yer mitts off 'er, Jagger. UPDATE: Well, Joss isn't so teenaged nowadays, and she, Jagger and Stewart, along with one of Bob Marley's kids and the music guy from the movie "Slumdog Millionaire," formed a band in 2011 called Superheavy if you're interested, no holiday tunes involved.
