- Cliff Richard: Mistletoe and Wine
- Kylie & Jason: Especially for You
- Erasure: Crackers International
- Angry Anderson: Suddenly
- Status Quo: Burning Bridges (On and Off and On Again)
- Inner City: Good Life
- Neneh Cherry: Buffalo Stance
- Bros: Cat Among the Pigeons / Silent Night
- The Four Tops: Loco in Acapulco
- Phil Collins: Two Hearts
- Petula Clark: Downtown '88
- U2: Angel of Harlem
- Michael Jackson: Smooth Criminal
- Kim Wilde: Four Letter Word
- Freihheit: Keeping the Dream Alive
- Rick Astley: Take Me to Your Heart
- New Order: Fine Time
- a-ha: You Are the One
- Londonbeat: 9 a.m. (The Comfort Zone)
- Enya: Evening Falls
- A Tribe of Toffs: John Kettley Is a Weatherman
- Robin Beck: First Time
- Shakin' Stevens: True Love
- Bananarama: Nathan Jones
- INXS: Need You Tonight
- Bomb the Bass featuring Maureen: Say a Little Prayer
- Tiffany: Radio Romance
- Annie Lennox & Al Green: Put a Little Love in Your Heart
- Bon Jovi: Born to Be My Baby
- Chris de Burgh: Missing You
- Traveling Wilburys: Handle with Care
- Gloria Estefan & Miami Sound Machine: Rhythm Is Gonna Get You
- Pet Shop Boys: Left to My Own Devices
- Natalie Cole: I Live for Your Love
- Alexander O'Neal: The Christmas Song / Thank You for a Good Year
- Hithouse: Jack to the Sound of the Underground
- The Beach Boys: Kokomo
- Humanoid: Stakker Humanoid
- Boy Meets Girl: Waiting for a Star to Fall
- Reggae Philharmonic Orchestra: Minnie the Moocher
~~~~~
Do They Know It's Christmas, Happy Xmas Everybody, I Wish It Would Be Christmas Everyday, Fairytale of New York, Last Christmas: modern British pop's seasonal canon. These songs, as well as a host of others, seem to crop up on every budget Christmas compilation album and are regularly covered by a wide variety of artists - including some nauseatingly cheap versions that you always hear in M&S stores. So predominant are they that it's easy to assume they became part of the canon right from the start. Back in '88, however, these favourites were no where to be found: pub jukeboxes were spinning the likes of Inner City and Status Quo, whose Top 10 hits earmarked a certain festive goodwill even if they had nothing to do with Christmas. It felt as if the charts were loaded with surrogate Christmas hits.
Two notable Christmas songs, however, came out in 1988 and they perfectly represent just how a contemporary success may be ignored in the future - and vice versa. I've already written more than enough about Mistletoe and Wine, although it's been a not unpleasant surprise to discover it being a drinking song in the film The Little Matchgirl starring Twiggy and Roger Daltry. The other is nowhere to be seen on this week's Top 40. Chris Rea's Driving Home for Christmas many not have troubled the hit parade that year but it has gone on to become a holiday classic and a veritable member of the aforementioned canon. Like all my favourite Christmas songs, it brings in a sense of reality into the mix of seasonal magic. Someone had to write a song all about traveling a long distance to be home for the holidays, looking forward to seeing the family but dreading the traffic jams. "I take a look at the driver next to me," sings the gravelly-voiced Rea, "He's just the same": a Christmas experience everyone can relate to - especially someone like me who just completed an exhausting thirty hour trip from Korea back to Canada for the big day.
"Paul? Paul?" my mum whispered sweetly, "It's time to get up. It's Christmas." It's come to this: Christmas morning and my parents had to get me out of bed. I'd previously been through many a sleepless Christmas Eve, wondering if we could see what Santa had left for us at 4 a.m. or simply eschewing convention and my parents' feelings altogether by helping myself to some presents while everyone else slept. But here I was on the verge of my teenage years, puberty just kicking in and, with it, a greater priority on sleep and, thus, I went from getting everyone else up to having to be woken up. Christmas, it must be said, has never quite been the same.
I was sharing a room with Mum and Dad at the Olivia Court, Torquay; my sister had a room to herself down the hall. Being fifteen, she had to be woken up too. Dad handed me my stocking: this time my Christmas sock was a receptacle for all my gifts, not simply an appendix of odds and sods thrown together by my dad. And it was at this moment that I realised that all those items I'd pointed at to my folks in shops on Regent St and Carnaby St and Oxford Circus a few weeks back were in fact my Christmas presents. It's as if they'd double-bluffed the boy who always managed to find his mum and dad's secret hiding place for presents. Still, getting the very same objects you'd asked for had a definite up side. Imagine that...
That night, the four of us stood at a pay phone just inside the Olivia Court's front doors. If there was one thing that threatened to ruin our Christmas in England it was thinking about our family back home and the turkey dinner with either cabbage rolls (at Grandma Betty & Grandpa Roy's and/or Auntie Fay and Uncle Harold's) or Chinese chews and jumbo raisin cookies for desert (at Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill's). While it was nice hearing their voices and I did miss all of them, it was a nice reminder that our Christmas was worth enjoying too. Grandma Betty's in Lethbridge was a bit chaotic: at my end of the phone I could hear several relatives talking a varying decibels. The line from Devon to Alberta was poor enough as it was but then I had shouting cousins and uncles picking up the receiver to wish me a merry Christmas out of nowhere when I thought I was talking to my great grandma to contend with - and that's pretty much like every Christmas with them was like. A call to my grandparents in Calgary was then placed. Suddenly a dozen or so relatives who wanted to talk to me all at the same time didn't seem so bad: hardly anyone was at Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill's that Christmas and it seemed to bring back memories of awkward silences when no one had anything to say. In the years ahead my mum would look back at our Christmas in Torquay as our best ever and I always thought of those phone calls home as the moment it dawn on us how nice it was.
With Christmas Day winding down, a middle-aged woman showed up and began setting up a keyboard and microphones in the dining room. She'd be entertaining us with some songs. At the time I fancied my self a singer and was keen to get up to the microphone. My hubris having been bolstered by an impromptu bit of singing the night before when I delighted my mum and our new friends and fellow Olivia Court guests Bill and Pat with renditions of Food Glorious Food and Sunrise, Sunset, which I'd performed in the Mayflower choir a month earlier. Having the backing of a professional musician, I decided to switch things up with The Locomotion. Too bad I didn't know the words very well. A good thing, then, that my sister got me the Kylie Minogue tape for Christmas: there'd be plenty of time to learn.
~~~~~
young Paul's Christmas #1: Especially for You
older Paul's retro Christmas chart topper: Left to My Own Devices
"Paul? Paul?" my mum whispered sweetly, "It's time to get up. It's Christmas." It's come to this: Christmas morning and my parents had to get me out of bed. I'd previously been through many a sleepless Christmas Eve, wondering if we could see what Santa had left for us at 4 a.m. or simply eschewing convention and my parents' feelings altogether by helping myself to some presents while everyone else slept. But here I was on the verge of my teenage years, puberty just kicking in and, with it, a greater priority on sleep and, thus, I went from getting everyone else up to having to be woken up. Christmas, it must be said, has never quite been the same.
I was sharing a room with Mum and Dad at the Olivia Court, Torquay; my sister had a room to herself down the hall. Being fifteen, she had to be woken up too. Dad handed me my stocking: this time my Christmas sock was a receptacle for all my gifts, not simply an appendix of odds and sods thrown together by my dad. And it was at this moment that I realised that all those items I'd pointed at to my folks in shops on Regent St and Carnaby St and Oxford Circus a few weeks back were in fact my Christmas presents. It's as if they'd double-bluffed the boy who always managed to find his mum and dad's secret hiding place for presents. Still, getting the very same objects you'd asked for had a definite up side. Imagine that...
That night, the four of us stood at a pay phone just inside the Olivia Court's front doors. If there was one thing that threatened to ruin our Christmas in England it was thinking about our family back home and the turkey dinner with either cabbage rolls (at Grandma Betty & Grandpa Roy's and/or Auntie Fay and Uncle Harold's) or Chinese chews and jumbo raisin cookies for desert (at Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill's). While it was nice hearing their voices and I did miss all of them, it was a nice reminder that our Christmas was worth enjoying too. Grandma Betty's in Lethbridge was a bit chaotic: at my end of the phone I could hear several relatives talking a varying decibels. The line from Devon to Alberta was poor enough as it was but then I had shouting cousins and uncles picking up the receiver to wish me a merry Christmas out of nowhere when I thought I was talking to my great grandma to contend with - and that's pretty much like every Christmas with them was like. A call to my grandparents in Calgary was then placed. Suddenly a dozen or so relatives who wanted to talk to me all at the same time didn't seem so bad: hardly anyone was at Grandma Ella and Grandpa Bill's that Christmas and it seemed to bring back memories of awkward silences when no one had anything to say. In the years ahead my mum would look back at our Christmas in Torquay as our best ever and I always thought of those phone calls home as the moment it dawn on us how nice it was.
With Christmas Day winding down, a middle-aged woman showed up and began setting up a keyboard and microphones in the dining room. She'd be entertaining us with some songs. At the time I fancied my self a singer and was keen to get up to the microphone. My hubris having been bolstered by an impromptu bit of singing the night before when I delighted my mum and our new friends and fellow Olivia Court guests Bill and Pat with renditions of Food Glorious Food and Sunrise, Sunset, which I'd performed in the Mayflower choir a month earlier. Having the backing of a professional musician, I decided to switch things up with The Locomotion. Too bad I didn't know the words very well. A good thing, then, that my sister got me the Kylie Minogue tape for Christmas: there'd be plenty of time to learn.
~~~~~
young Paul's Christmas #1: Especially for You
older Paul's retro Christmas chart topper: Left to My Own Devices
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