'Cause it's never too early
Sep. 8th, 2009 06:18 amHave any Christmas songs written after 1960 become standards? By "standard" I don't mean "people listen to Mariah's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' every year," but rather that it's regularly performed and recorded by other performers as well. The only one I can think of is the Greenwich-Barry-Spector "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," which is still pretty old, and I'm not sure it is a standard, just something that David Letterman has Darlene Love reprise every year. (Allmusic lists 31 covers, including Mariah Carey's, Death Cab For Cutie's, Hanson's, U2's, Kidz Bop's, and a freestyle version by Brenda K. Starr. A quick look at Google video indicates that the U2, the Mariah, and the Death Cab are the only non-Darlene versions to get any traction.)
The two interpolated lines of rock 'n' roll that Spector sticks into the Crystals' version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" have become a bit standard, or anyway the Springsteen version that includes the interpolation gets played a lot.
Allmusic actually gives uncertain results for the Carey-Afanasieff "All I Want For Christmas Is You," since the same title has been used by other songwriters too, and there are a bunch of compilations with no songwriter or performer listed by Allmusic so you can't tell if it's Mariah's or some other version or some other "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (though presumably it's not Mariah's version on the zydeco collection, though maybe it's her song). I'm only getting ten for certain, including the likes of Jive Bunny and Kidz Bop, though the number could be far higher. But it won't be within an order of magnitude of, for instance, "I'll Be Home For Christmas," which runs into hundreds upon hundreds.
h/t Tom Ewing
EDIT: I think we've got a winner, but you'll have to check the comments to find out what it is.
The two interpolated lines of rock 'n' roll that Spector sticks into the Crystals' version of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" have become a bit standard, or anyway the Springsteen version that includes the interpolation gets played a lot.
Allmusic actually gives uncertain results for the Carey-Afanasieff "All I Want For Christmas Is You," since the same title has been used by other songwriters too, and there are a bunch of compilations with no songwriter or performer listed by Allmusic so you can't tell if it's Mariah's or some other version or some other "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (though presumably it's not Mariah's version on the zydeco collection, though maybe it's her song). I'm only getting ten for certain, including the likes of Jive Bunny and Kidz Bop, though the number could be far higher. But it won't be within an order of magnitude of, for instance, "I'll Be Home For Christmas," which runs into hundreds upon hundreds.
h/t Tom Ewing
EDIT: I think we've got a winner, but you'll have to check the comments to find out what it is.