How a 1987 Christmas album changed the way the holiday sounds
Jimmy Iovine was sitting on the floor of his sister’s house in Staten Island, on the phone with Bruce Springsteen, when he made the decision. It was 1985, and Iovine’s father, Vincent, had died suddenly on what the music producer says is “still the worst day of my life.”
“I had an extraordinary relationship with my father,” Iovine says. “It was very devastating because he, his mother and his father all died within eight weeks from natural causes.”
Springsteen had called to offer his condolences, Iovine recalls, and “at that moment, I just said, ‘I’m going to make a Christmas album for my dad.’”
He asked Springsteen whether he could help out. He could. “And I got off the phone, and I put all the energy that I’ve ever put into anything, and I said, ‘I’m gonna make this album,’” Iovine says.
“A Very Special Christmas” came out 35 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1987. Some of the biggest names of the MTV era accepted Iovine’s invitation, all for a deserving charity. Madonna, Sting, Stevie Nicks, the Pretenders, Whitney Houston, U2, Bob Seger, the Pointer Sisters and Run-DMC are among those who contributed, as did Springsteen and his E Street Band.
By the ‘80s, Christmas and pop music were certainly well acquainted: “White Christmas,” Bing Crosby’s perennial 1940s hit, still reigned as one of the most popular recordings of all time. Motown artists, Paul McCartney, Elton John and others made significant contributions to the seasonal canon in the 1960s and ‘70s. But “A Very Special Christmas” arguably altered the recording industry’s relationship to holiday music, and the way Christmas sounds in the present day.
“This is such a huge album in terms of its impact, just because there hadn’t been anything like it. It changed the place of Christmas in pop culture,” says music critic and author Rob Sheffield, who believes “A Very Special Christmas” represents “a before-and-after moment in the history of Christmas in pop culture. It’s a thing that had never existed before, and afterwards was never going to not exist again. Pop stars now all want to do Christmas albums.”
Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Destiny’s Child, Bob Dylan, Kacey Musgraves, John Legend, Kelly Clarkson: Name a popular artist today, and there’s good money they have a holiday record. Or think of it this way: Without “A Very Special Christmas,” the path to Mariah Carey’s 1994 permahit “All I Want for Christmas” becomes far less clear.
To understand the album’s influence, it helps to bask in the seeming simplicity of its lineup, the matching of artist to song in a multigenre journey through the religious and the secular, the solemn and the goofy, beginning with Santa’s journey to town and ending with the Nativity. Hark, the original track list:
• The Pointer Sisters - “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”
• Eurythmics - “Winter Wonderland”
• Whitney Houston - “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
• Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - “Merry Christmas, Baby”
• Pretenders - “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
• John Mellencamp - “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”
• Sting - “Gabriel’s Message”
• Run-DMC - “Christmas in Hollis”
• U2 - “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
• Madonna - “Santa Baby”
• Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band - “The Little Drummer Boy”
• Bryan Adams - “Run Rudolph Run”
• Bon Jovi - “Back Door Santa”
• Alison Moyet - “The Coventry Carol”
• Stevie Nicks - “Silent Night”
Iovine initially found inspiration in “A Christmas Gift for You from Phil Spector,” the producer’s 1963 holiday album, which timelessly featured Darlene Love, the Ronettes and Bob B. Soxx and the Blue Jeans. He was drawn “not so much to the sound, but the idea of it - a lot of contemporary people singing great songs.”