Holiday ongs
Music is the one gift everyone gets for the holidays. As much as we love the catchy tunes, the stories behind the songs can be fascinating too. Here are eight of the most dramatic. Go to Parade.com/music for more.
1 “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
The kickoff single from the album A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector had the unfortunate fate to be released on the day President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. In deference to the tragedy, both the single—voiced by girl group mainstay Darlene Love— and the album were temporarily pulled from stores. The song didn’t click until 1986 when Love performed it on Late Night With David Letterman, kicking off a tradition that lasted until 2014. In 2015, Love started belting the classic on The View, and it broke into Billboard’s Top 20 this past January.
2 “Christmas Time Is Here”
The first Peanuts-related TV special, A Charlie Brown Christmas, which debuted in 1965, has earned as much love for its music as for its characters and script. Cool jazz hipster Vince Guaraldi composed the score, and “Christmas Time Is Here,” which matches his plaintive piano to a chorus of singing kids, is both aching and gorgeous.
3 “All I Want for Christmas Is You”
Nearly every “holiday classic” was written at least 40 years ago. In 1994, however, Mariah Carey cooked up a song that stands with the best of them. She later admitted it was written not from memories of a happy childhood (which she did not have) but “from my early fantasies of family and friendship.”
“White Christmas” 4
Irving Berlin wrote the classic and Bing Crosby first sang it in the 1942 movie Holiday Inn. The song resonated with American sol`iers spen`ing their first holiday away from home in the Pacific in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. Ironically, 33 years later, the song marked the end of the Vietnam War after it was played by the American Radio Service to signal troops to make their final evacuation.
5 “Feliz Navidad”
Combining two cultures gave José Feliciano one of the most beautiful hits of his career. For his 1970 release, he sang the verses in English and the chorus in Spanish. Fifty years later, this cross-cultural hit made a deeper impact than ever, hitting its all-time peak on the Billboard chart at No. 6.
6 “The Chanukah Song”
Despite many of the best-known holiday songs being penned by Jewish writers, including “White Christmas,” “The Christmas Song” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” it took a comic to score a Top 10 Hanukkah song. Adam Sandler debuted his witty piece in 1994 on Saturday Night Live, stuffing it with names of celebrities who are either fully Jewish (David Lee Roth), part Jewish (Paul Newman) or not at all Jewish (O.J. Simpson).
7 “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)”
Amid a July heatwave in 1945, songwriter Robert Wells decided to “stay cool by thinking cool,” according to singer Mel Tormé, his writing partner on this song. The pair took just 40 minutes to write what became the most-performed cold-season song of all time. Tormé wasn’t the first singer to perform it. The Nat King Cole Trio had the initial crack. In fact, Cole wound up cutting four separate versions, the last of which (in 1961) became the one most fans cherish.
8 “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”
The youngest person ever to score a hit holiday classic was 13-year-old Brenda Lee. The 1958 song was penned by Johnny Marks, who had already written seasonal standards like “A Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rudolph the RedNosed Reindeer.” It hit Billboard’s Top 10 as recently as 2019.