2018 has been a helluva year.
I’ve been depressed and unproductive for the past couple of years, but these days I’m starting to feel better. My Christmas song this year, I hope, reflects this.
Of course, it’s a song that is beyond my ability, which has become an unwritten rule for The revision99 Holiday Recording Pageant. This year the song I’m trying to do that I can’t really do justice to is “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”
It was sung by Darlene Love and released in 1962 on the LP I have come to think of as “Phil Spector’s Christmas Album,” but which in fact was called “A Christmas Gift For You From Philles Records.” It was a compilation of new and old Christmas-themed songs produced by Spector. The version of the LP that I had didn’t look like the current one I see around here and there, but it did feature a picture of Phil in a Santa suit and sporting a lapel button that read “Back to Mono.” The songwriters are Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry, although Phil himself managed to get shared credit.
The video is really just something to keep your attention while the song is playing. However, if I had to analyze it, I would say it’s jarring and unsettling at the beginning (to reflect how I felt about life and the world at the beginning of 2018), but it turns gentle in the middle (to coincide with a softening of my own mood), and mostly stays soft and good-natured through to the end. All the pretty, decorated homes in the video are those of my neighbors, who don’t know their houses are on the internet, so please don’t tell them.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Excellent!