Canadian Christmas Music
More Marathon Man
Our Marathon Man, Andrew Parker, subjects himself to entire canons of Can-Con he missed out on while spending his formative years in the States. He picks something, watches it (or reads it or listens to it) until he gets fed up. Then he writes about it. Easy, right?
What exactly defines a Canadian Christmas, anyway? It’s not earlier in the year like Thanksgiving is. Presents aren’t delivered with the help of Zwarte Piet, but instead by good ol’ fashioned North American reindeer and a single morbidly obese man cramming his way down a carcinogen-laced crawlspace that can only be guarded by the use of indoor flames. And hoo-boy do these Canadians love a sale, or what?
Then again, when it comes to Christmas music, it’s really hard to have any identity to begin with. Much like with Shakespeare and writing, all of the good ideas for holiday songs have been taken. Is Christmas music made by Canadian artists unique? It’s time to cue up the 14-hour megamix of Canadian Christmas albums and songs to find out.
Start time: 7 p.m.
7:45 p.m.: The playlist is arranged at random to play albums in full with random one-offs in between, and no skipping allowed. First up is Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong album, a not-thoroughly soulless collection of holiday standards. After a yawn-inducing start that includes a sub-Robert Downey Jr. cover of Joni Mitchell’s “River,” McLachlan finds her footing with a sad and soulful take on “I’ll be Home For Christmas” that would be a good soundtrack to a bum drinking from a flask on a snowy night. She ends strong with a smile-inducing take on the Vince Guaraldi and Bill Mendelson Peanuts classic “Christmas Time Is Here,” with an assist from Diana Krall.
9:06 p.m.: Following the mostly forgettable, but far from awful, synth-laced Christian adult contemporary stylings of Connie Scott (whose website proclaims that her popularity “surged in the mid 80s”) and the piano tinklings of Music Box Dancer composer Frank Mills, I’ve come to a holiday curio that was probably best left to the sands of time.
1980s heartthrob Corey Hart recorded a live B-side of “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer” that might be one of the worst versions of that song ever committed to vinyl. While the last two albums I sat through were innocuous in their feelings of peace on earth, Hart unwisely decides to close his set at Ottawa’s Lansdowne Park with a carol. He amps up the crowd as best he can and calls out to a dude named Andrew. Then the flute comes in, and the crowd just dies. This is possibly one of the best instances of a crowd turning on someone I’ve ever heard. Holiday cheer can only take someone so far.
9:12 p.m.: After that last debacle, The Band comes in to make my heart grow a few sizes bigger with “Christmas Must Be Tonight” off of 1977’s Islands. With a song that’s melodic, gentle, and religiously tinged without being saccharine or preachy, one of Canada’s most famous exports renews my faith in what was quickly becoming a thankless project. Then again, I might be gravitating towards this because it’s one of the songs in this marathon I would least likely hear in a shopping mall.
10:46 p.m.: Now I’m knee-deep in The Canadian Tenors’ 2010 Christmas album, The Perfect Gift, which I fully expected to find grating but found to have some craft behind it. Sure, the world doesn’t need another tenor group (especially not one made up of four finely coiffed lads all designed to look as much like Josh Groban as possible). But this set the bar pretty high for best versions of “Oh Holy Night” and “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” I could wrap presents to this while sloshed once a year.
12:03 a.m.: I know I didn’t grow up in Canada, but why didn’t anyone prepare me for how awful Rita MacNeil is? One of the biggest holiday staples, the annual trotting out of the Cape Breton Christmas special, was something I had managed to avoid in every possible way for the last several years, until just now. That was quite possibly the longest 33 minutes of my adult life. The fact that MacNeil still gets work and is still so well loved brings on a feeling of crushing disappointment to my new permanent home.
1:47 a.m.: Now comes the rumble of two Canadian children’s artists coming up back-to-back. It’s Fred Penner vs. Raffi for all of the shiny, holiday marbles. It’s like Watch The Throne! Unfortunately, it’s really no contest. While Penner comes across better on television, his 1990 Christmas album, The Season, is pretty forgettable, probably explaining why it took me several hours just to find the darn thing. Raffi, on the other hand, mixes traditional staples with some surprisingly winning original songs on his 1983 Christmas Album. The sing-songy children on “Must Be Santa” are a bit grating for 2 a.m., but “Old Toy Trains” sounds like a track that could be co-opted by Ra Ra Riot any day now.
4:12 a.m.: After a few hours of pointless Canadian Christmas compilation CDs, Richard Verreau, The Rovers, the Chipmunks’ song as done by Tegan And Sara, and Rick And Judy, my mind began to wander. I wasn’t necessarily tired, or even all that annoyed. The breaking point hadn’t been reached yet, but the near-silent sing-alongs started. The appeal of Christmas music seems to be pretty obvious. Much like karaoke staples, these are the only songs that everyone knows by heart. They become beloved because pretty much anyone can sing them.
5:03 a.m.: Bieber and Bublé about to come back-to-back. It would be hard not to talk about Christmas in 2011 without touching on the biggest holiday releases in the world at the moment, both of which come from two of Canada’s most profitable exports.
Bieber’s album offers a decent mix of old standards and originals, but the songs in neither are particularly inspired. This is exactly the kind of album that gives Christmas albums a bad rap. They’re competently made, but wholly unoriginal.
Something also has to be said about Bieber’s lead single, “Mistletoe.” It’s very clear that Beebz’ voice has changed something fierce, since this isn’t so much an R&B ballad as it is a rejected Bruno Mars or Jason Mraz song. It feels like the vocals were delivered from a lounge chair in the Cayman Islands instead of in a snowy, chestnut-roasting climate. Then again, the notoriously hard-working Bieber can probably get more done in an hour on a chaise lounge than I could in a lifetime. So there’s that.
5:51 a.m.: Now to Michael Bublé, Canada’s gift to the adult-contemporary crooning world. It could be the ungodly early hour and the fact that the end is in sight, but this generically titled Christmas album isn’t half bad. Showing a diversity of styles—a straight-up Sinatra parody of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” that blows Bieber’s abomination into orbit, possibly the best cover of “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” ever done—Bublé proves to be the real deal when it comes to being completely inoffensive and thoroughly talented.
6:13 a.m.: It’s probably not a good idea to admit having a soft spot for Bryan Adams after slagging so many other holiday artists. But not even a hardened fan of guitar-driven soft rock can excuse the utterly repetitive “Christmas Time” (which simply repeats endlessly and vaguely that there’s “something” about the season). But I can sign off on the delightfully batshit B-zide “Reggae Christmas,” especially when it conjures images of the 1984 MTV taped live performance with a dreadlocked Pee Wee Herman dancing with some proto-hipster chicks who were clearly just ahead of the curve.
7:43 a.m.: By now everyone probably thinks that Canada’s other main holiday export and source of derision Anne Murray had been forgotten. She hasn’t. Having already suffered through MacNeil, and at the point where I’m starting to get punchy (in that I’m punching myself in the leg to stay awake), it’s safe to say that Murray’s by far the lesser of two evils. Free of the God-awful caterwauling plaguing every single one of MacNeil’s efforts, I find there is something more genuinely pleasing about listening to some country-tinged old-folks’ music when you’re half a step away from passing out.
8:13 a.m.: Celine Dion’s 1998 Christmas album These Are Special Times—her second holiday album if one were to include her 1981 French-language Chante Noel—brings on the realization that very few Canadian artists attempt to have fun with the holiday season. It’s mostly regurgitation and self-seriousness, with nary a “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” in sight. Is it the politeness thing, or the lack of a true cultural Christmas identity?
8:55 a.m.: Now I’m listening to Barenaked Ladies’ Barenaked For The Holidays. Definitely zoning out. Thinking about this entire album being sung by The Muppets. Have to give the band credit for actually including one of the few Hanukkah songs of the evening, and for being guys who’ve barely ever come across as serious, even on their proper studio albums. Shrug-worthy and sleep-inducing.
9:30am: Going out with a bang, as Fucked Up and almost half of the known musical world (and David Cross) team up for a cover of “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” I drop to my knees holding red and green flares in my hands like Nicolas Cage at the end of The Rock, knowing that I won’t actively have to listen to anymore Christmas music this season. Making it to the end feels like a true Christmas miracle.
Replay Value: This year, not very high. There really is no way to discern what a true Canadian Christmas means from a bunch of cover songs, but there are definitely some yuletide staples here that will get some play during the last-second blitz of holiday shopping I forgot to do because I created this stupid assignment instead.
