The Best Christmas Album In The World... Ever!

Remember K-Tel? They were a record label in the 1970's that specialized in LP's stuffed to the gills with current hit songs, marketed through TV commercials, and sold convenience stores, truck stops, and supermarkets - as opposed to actual record stores. K-Tel could fit more than 20 tracks on a single album by editing down the songs and narrowing the grooves. So, ultimately, what you got was a crappy-sounding LP full of your clumsily truncated favorites. But, it was a bargain!

One of the side-effects of the advent of the compact disc in the 1980's was that we got a new generation of K-Tel albums - but without the accompanying musical degradation. A CD could hold well over an hour of music, and it didn't take long for the major record labels to start exploiting their catalogs on the new medium. Especially in England and Europe, we got albums packed with hits and favorites both old and new, and Virgin's The Best Christmas Album In The World... Ever! was one of the first and best to be aimed at people who love holiday music. It was part of a large, loose series launched in 1993 with The Best Dance Album In The World, followed later that year by the first of four holiday collections. The first edition, however, was simply titled The Best Christmas... Ever!

The series sputtered out after the turn of the century, but Virgin had also been instrumental in launching an even larger series called Now That's What I Call Music! in 1983. The Now series has a long history of Christmas releases, as well, and it had continued prolifically to this day. When Now That's What I Call Music! kicked off in the United States in 1998, the virus officially spread to our shores - the first such series to crossover from the European continent to the Americas, at least since the halcyon days of K-Tel.

Something for Everybody

Relative to the enormity of what came later, the Best Christmas Album series was modest and short-lived. Each of the four editions consisted of two CD's delivering over 40 tracks, and the track listing didn't vary a whole lot with each new iteration. That means that you don't need all four volumes - any one given edition will likely suffice unless you are a hopeless completist. The programme crosses a lot of genres (pop, rock, folk, country, jazz, easy listening) and spans many decades, starting with Bing Crosby' foundational 1942 hit, "White Christmas," and continuing to recent efforts like the Spice Girls' 1996 take on "Sleigh Ride." The series is indisputably generic, but it is also very democratic. Simply put, there's something for everybody!

To a Christmas music enthusiast, many of these tracks are very familiar and arguably pedestrian. For instance, John & Yoko's "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" is definitely a classic, but most of us have heard it a million times, and serious collectors probably own a few dozen copies of the song. The same can be said for tracks by Slade ("Merry Xmas Everybody"), Wham ("Last Christmas"), Paul McCartney ("Wonderful Christmastime"), Elton John ("Step Into Christmas"), Greg Lake's "I Believe In Father Christmas," and Band Aid ("Do They Know It's Christmas?"). And, more traditional selections by artists like Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, and Dean Martin are fine, but hardly rare, unusual, or - to coin a phrase - hip. But, to a novice, collections like The Best Christmas Album can be a treasure trove, and they are certainly a good value for the casual collector.

Bloody Well Right

What distinguishes the Best Christmas Album series is its regional flavor. If you are not from the United Kingdom, in particular, many tracks will be unfamiliar. Quite a few of these songs were big hits, but only in the UK, including Jona Lewie's "Stop The Cavalry" (#3), Gary Glitter's "Another Rock And Roll Christmas" (#7), Mel & Kim's "Rockin' Around The Christmas" (#3), Shakin' Stevens' "Merry Christmas Everyone" (#), Mud's "Lonely This Christmas" (#1), Mike Oldfield's "In Dulce Jubilo" (#4), Adam Faith's "Lonely Pup (In A Christmas Shop)" (#4), Steeleye Span's "Gaudete" (#14), David Essex's " A Winter's Tale" (#5), Aled Jones' "Walking In The Air" (#5), and numerous hits by Cliff Richard. Another track, Chris de Burgh's "A Spaceman Came Travelling," charted #40 in the UK in 1986 (following the enormous success of his "Lady In Red" single), but it had been a #1 hit in Ireland back in 1976. Of the songs that were not chart hits, most are by acts well-established in the Island Kingdom but nearly unknown elsewhere - some so British they practically have bad teeth (Bert Jansch, King's Singers, Band Of The Welsh Guards).

Thanks to the interwebs, such isolated hits are much less common these days. Music by artists from Korea or Nigeria or rural Wyoming can be heard (and purchased) almost instantly all over the world. But, in the 60's, 70's, and 80's - when all of those songs were released - England was still very much an island. Getting heard meant airplay, and distribution meant boats, planes, and trucks. There's more than one reason that "Lonely Pup (In A Christmas Shop)" didn't become a worldwide sensation - it's also very English and unspeakably precious - but the fact that radio waves only reach so far explains part of it.

Finally, it's also worth noting that all editions of The Best Christmas Album drop in a few songs that simply aren't Christmas songs, though they kind-of, sort-of fit musically and/or thematically. For instance, the first edition includes Enigma's 1991 left-field hit "Sadeness" for some reason - the Gregorian chanting, I guess? Other volumes included "The Power Of Love" by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, "Mull Of Kintyre" by Paul McCartney, "I Believe" by Robson & Jerome, "Mary Had A Little Boy" by Snap!, "Angels" by Robbie Williams, "Mad World" by Michael Andrews featuring Gary Jules, "Keeping The Dream Alive" by Freiheit, and "Only You" by the Flying Pickets - all huge hits in the UK, and all categorically not Christmas songs. For that matter, all four editions include Cliff Richard's "Millennium Prayer," which is little more than the words of the Lord's Prayer set to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne." Big in England, though... To be fair, a few of these songs were Christmas number ones, something that means a lot if you are English - and not much if you aren't.

Best Is A Relative Term

All that adds up to a couple of things. First, The Best Christmas Album In The World... Ever! almost lives up to its name - albeit skewed in a decidedly mainstream and distinctly English fashion. Second, if you are not English, it's doubtful you've heard many of these songs, let alone own the records. I'm American, and I have a lot of Christmas records - literally thousands of them - and nearly half the tracks on my copy of The Best Christmas Album appear nowhere else in my collection. Admittedly, some of them are genuinely odd listening experiences, as they are eccentric in a way only the British seem to love - the songs by boy soprano Aled Jones and Stiff Records weirdo Jona Lewie spring to mind. But, for what that's worth, those songs are unique.

For all these reasons, I've included a larger-than-usual percentage of the cumulative track listing in my "essential songs" (see below). Because of the nature of the Best Christmas Album series, a high percentage of the tracks are historically significant - at least to Christmas buffs like us. Many were hits, some were good, but fewer were both.

If you live in the Eastern Hemisphere, you know that the Best Christmas Album and Now That's What I Call Christmas series were the first wave of a ceaseless tide. In Europe - much more than America - every year brings dozens of Christmas compilations, most recycling the same songs ad infinitum, with ever-diminishing results - at least for dedicated collectors. In the wake of the Best Christmas Album series, BMG began compiling their Christmas Hits series and Universal their Ultimate Christmas series - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Suffice it to say, I won't live long enough to review them all, but The Best Christmas Album In The World... Ever! is a good place to start.

Pointless Ephemera

Later, Virgin and/or EMI, their corporate parent, released several more volumes in the Best Christmas Album series, all of them effectively outside the scope of our present discussion. Most unusually, they created a special 4-CD Polish edition in 2006, in case you are from Rzeczpospolita Polska (or love someone who is). Of the four discs, two resemble the English editions very much, while the other two are distinctly Polish (or something equally foreign to my ugly American ears). Then, they added additional volumes of karaoke (2007) and Christmas carols (2011).

And, K-Tel still exists, by the way, though they inarguably had their greatest cultural impact during the 1970's with albums like 22 Explosive Hits, Believe In Music, and Super Bad. These days, they seem to be largely a licensing agency, endlessly peddling all those hit songs they mangled so badly back in the day.

Finally, caveat emptor: The Spinners' track "The Twelve Days Of Christmas" appears on all four editions of The Best Christmas Album, but it is probably not what you think. The group is a Liverpool-based folk quartet, and the song is from their 1972 album Sing Out, Shout With Joy. Imagine my disappointment when I figured out it was not a long-lost holiday recording by the legendary Detroit vocal group responsible for soul classics like "I'll Be Around," "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love," and "The Rubberband Man." [top of page]