Why strange duets make tills ring at Christmas
As singer Robbie Williams teams up with boxer Tyson Fury, for the release of a Christmas duet, one feels compelled to explore the eternal appeal of the incongruous festive double act.
Their song, Bad Sharon,
urges listeners to “forget everything that went wrong and all sing along” before it becomes a bawdy anthem about a Christmas party.
Williams and Fury entreat listeners to put on their glad rags, drink shots and “grab that Sharon from the office”.
“If it catches on, it could be huge,” says the Official Charts Company, which lists the single as a contender to be a Christmas number one.
Bad Sharon is the latest in a long line of incongruous duets that stubbornly pop up every Christmas.
A few have become classics
— the Pogues and Kirsty MacColl’s Fairytale of New York or David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s
Little Drummer Boy, for example.
Some work due to the sheer unexpectedness of the pairing, such as crooner Tony Bennett’s version of Winter Wonderland
with avant-garde pop queen Lady Gaga.
But most — from Sir Terry Wogan’s pairing with Aled Jones on 2009’s Silver Bells, to Justin Bieber joining forces with rapper Busta Rhymes on 2011’s Drummer Boy, to Williams and Fury — are the aural equivalent of the Christmas jumper — cheesy, gaudy and throwaway.
So why do people still buy them?
Prof Darren Sproston, director of the School of Arts and Media at the University of Chester, says the phenomenon is related to the traditions of carolling and “society coming together as amateurs to participate in music-making”.
It is only when he lists all the past Christmas number ones with “amateur” elements that yuletide acceptance of the unpolished becomes clear.
Many of the hits weren’t even Christmas songs.
Paul McCartney and Wings had the Christmas number one in 1977 with the pared-back Mull of Kintyre.
Two years later, Pink Floyd topped the chart with Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2), a song underpinned by a coarse children’s choir singing “we don’t need no education”.
The next year St Winifred’s School Choir took the honours with There’s No-one Quite Like
Grandma.
2018’s number one was a poor rendition of Starship’s We Built This City (in which the words “rock n roll” were transposed with “sausage rolls”) by YouTube star LadBaby.
These songs all sound at least partially home-made.
Even Fairytale of New York
is infused with a DIY spirit.
“It has that folky element,” Sproston said.
There is “way more bad Christmas music than good”, says US filmmaker Mitchell Kezin.
Kezin’s 2013 documentary Jingle Bell Rocks! features people, like him, who think nothing of spending eight hours in a dusty church basement looking for obscure and offbeat festive 45s.
Songs mentioned in the film include Santa Came on a Nuclear Missile by Heather Noel, Santa Claus is a Black Man by Teddy and Akim Vann, and Close Your Mouth (It’s Christmas) by the Free Design.
Kezin says people tend to be emotionally vulnerable at Christmas.
“They think, ‘Oh, I love that artist and it’s a Christmas album. I’m going to buy it and love it, and throw my critical listening skills out of the window’.
“The record companies, of course, know this and take full advantage.”
Nevertheless, Kezin says, there are some crackers among the turkeys.
Swedish rockers the Hives’ collaboration with Eighties pop star Cyndi Lauper in 2008, A Christmas Duel, is both “funny and filthy”, he says.
“I bought no gift this year and I slept with your sister,” bellows the Hives’ Pelle Almqvist.
“I bought no tree this year and I slept with your brother,” Lauper retorts.
Kezin says a good Christmas duet is heartfelt, meaningful and original.
Perhaps we should add another key Christmas tenet — forgiveness.
It’s the season of goodwill, so it’s time for us all — in the words of one of 2019’s wouldbe smash hits — to “forget everything that went wrong and all sing along”. —