Hip Christmas

Welcome To Hip Christmas! I think you'll enjoy my dysfunctionally vast web archive dedicated to holiday music that rocks, rolls, swings, and twangs. If you do, please support me by shopping at Amazon, Apple Music, and Sheet Music Plus! Regardless, the best of the season to you - no matter what month it is! [about me]

What's New In 2024? Believe it or not, they've begun announcing new Christmas albums - lots of vinyl reissues, mainly - plus indie darlings Dean & Britta and the Sunturns, and a few big names like Jennifer Hudson, Clay Aiken, and Little Big Town. So, I've started my annual, obsessive, quixotic attempt to keep up with it all. Highlights also include a full-length Tower Of Power album, a new collection from the Carpenters, and yet another Bear Family compilation. [gimme gimme]

Well, Now I'm Excited! So far, the biggest news for me this year is Ben Folds' first-ever Christmas album, Sleigher. It's out on October 25. Most of the tracks are new, original songs - one assumes with his usual mix of pathos and humor - plus keen musicianship. Read more in Variety and preorder the CD or vinyl at Amazon.

Spotify, Schmotify. Once again, the company busy destroying the music industry is taking a breather to add new new tracks to their ever-growing, exclusive holiday playlist. It's free to stream, but you'll have to upgrade if you want to download. This year's biggest name is Kesha who does a nifty cover of Lindsay Buckingham's "Holiday Road." [spot me]

The Christmas Jukebox. My online Christmas music player is bulging with over 700 hip tunes - and counting! You can listen to the music I write about - the coolest, weirdest, and loudest holiday songs ever - all while enjoying my inimitable prose. [press play]

My Face, Your Book. There's a lot of holiday hilarity going on over at Facebook, in case you can't get enough on my website - or vice versa. Check out the Hip Christmas page, and follow me for maximum holiday fun all year long. No Russian trolls, please. I also post cool cover art on Instagram and Pinterest. [follow me]

Um, Hooray? I never miss a chance to say how disappointed I was when I finally heard Christmas With The Everly Brothers (1962). I love the Everly Brothers, but the album is dull and reverential - and gets trampled to death by the Boys Town Choir. It was finally reissued on CD by Rhino in 2005 and then sporadically ever since. [read more]

Instant Record Collection. Christmas Classics is as close to an instant record collection as you could find when it was released in 1988. It was one of the first installments in Rhino's historic Christmas compilations, and all 18 tracks are, indeed, classic - even if the album lacks the focus that would make the series so great. [read more]

Santa Goes To Memphis. Six soul music stalwarts from the 60's sing 12 holiday favorites arranged in the classic style of Stax Records. That was the concept behind Christmas Soul Special, a 1982 album produced by a long-forgotten New York label. It turned out to be a better concept on paper than in reality, but it's still a lotta fun! [read more]

Christmas Is Going To The Dogs. The beloved 1966 TV special How The Grinch Stole Christmas included barely three songs, but one of them is an all-time classic. In the years since, it's been covered dozens of times, and the TV show spawned two movies, a Broadway musical, a raft of merchandise, and a lot more music. [read more]

Top 40 Christmas Oldies Songs. The web is crammed with blogs and tweets, obscuring the fact that experts might know more than know-it-alls armed with a quick wit and a laptop. To me, that's sad, and this rock solid list from (now defunct) About.com shows why. [read more]

Hag's Christmas. Merle Haggard had a reputation for his rough and rowdy ways. Maybe so, but his music was less so, usually sounding soft-spoken, dignified, and even genteel. Across his 50-plus year career, the Stranger recorded three middlin' Christmas albums - and one uncontested work of genius, "If We Make It Through December." [learn more]

I Can't Help Myself. The Four Tops were the biggest Motown act to never record a Christmas album - until 1995 when they briefly returned to the label to cut Christmas Here With You. It's a solid album, but it doesn't have that magic Motown sound that made songs leap out of tiny transistor radios and into our hearts. [read more]

Not-So-Smooth Grooves. Rhino Records' Smooth Grooves: A Sensual Christmas is a contradiction. First, lots of the songs aren't smooth at all - they're uptempo R&B jams. Second, it fails to live up to the standards set by Rhino's series of historic Christmas compilations - even though all 12 tracks are essential holiday listening. [read more]

Exactly How Is This Stuff "Hip"? The music on Nickelodeon's Classic Cartoon Christmas series isn't very hip, but it's, um, hip adjacent. Every generation since the Boomers grew up watching Rudolph, Frosty, and Charlie Brown, and those cartoons - and their soundtracks - influenced the art they would make. [read more]

Christmas Gumbo. It's taken me a while to take a close look at Rhino Records' Alligator Stomp: Cajun Christmas. Why? I don't really like Cajun music that much. But, that's my problem. On its own terms, it's a great way to spice up your holidays. But, compared to Rhino's other compilations, it's got some problems. [read more]

Christmas Is Coming. In the 90's, Oglio Records issued two fine, if bewildering, compilations, The Coolest Christmas and The Edge Of Christmas. Nearly all the tracks are keepers, a few are all-time classics, and several are pretty rare including singles by George Thorogood, the Cocteau Twins, and Canadian power poppers the Payolas. [read more]

A Super Sunny Christmas. Rodney Bingenheimer, aka Rodney On The ROQ, was a Los Angeles disc jockey who figured prominently in the rise of American punk, new wave, and power pop. He also compiled several influential albums including two rockin' volumes of Santa's Got A GTO. His story turns ugly, I'm afraid, but the music remains. [read more]

Dreaming Of A Crosby Christmas. Bing Crosby may not be a paragon of hip, but he made more holiday music than anyone this side of Charles Brown. My review of Der Bingle's Christmas catalog takes you from "Silent Night" (1935) to the famous TV duet with David Bowie that aired after Crosby's death in 1977. [read more]

Tortured Carols. Punk and new wave helped pull Christmas music back from the brink, embracing the genre with great abandon and irreverence, helping spur the revival that continues unabated to this day. Rhino's New Wave Xmas collects 17 of the musically lighter moments, including classics by the Pogues, Pretenders, and Squeeze. [read more]

Christmas From The Not-So-Latin Lounge. Despite appearances, Rhino's Mambo Santa Mambo isn't about Latin music, per se. Rather, it's about the Latin music craze that gripped American pop like a tropical fever during the 1950's - think Ricky Ricardo or Carmen Miranda. This was Latin music smartly packaged for the white market. [read more]

A Christmas Gift For You. Every year, I offer five free MP3's from my voluminous collection - all unavailable easily or legitimately in the music marketplace. In 2023, I chose lost treasures by the Pretenders' Chrissie Hynde, XTC in disguise, fake Rolling Stones, Boston's barbecue guru, and a Christmas bummer by Concrete Blonde. [listen or download]

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